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Reality TV workflow!!
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When it gets to be that much work I would employ a 12hr day shift and 12hr night shift with different free lancers.
Stretching people too thin often creates more havoc than its worth.
I’m with Shane, I like to enjoy life too!
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[Shane Ross] “If you calculate it hourly…yes. HA! In my experience, wages have gotten better. But it is based on the network. Survivor editors can get between $3000 and $5000 a week. While the “I LOVE NY” guys get $2000 to $2500 a week.”
So I guess they have gone up. My understanding a few years ago was that reality editors for basic cable shows were getting paid something like $60k a year, and they’d work in cubicles with headphones.
Sean
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[Sean ONeil] “My understanding a few years ago was that reality editors for basic cable shows were getting paid something like $60k a year, and they’d work in cubicles with headphones.”
I’ll take that back. I recall a place offering $1500 a week, and 6 day weeks. And they had bays with TWO edit systems, and the guys were on headphones. I regressed that memory…trying to forget that someplace would actually treat editors like this and offer them that little pay. And the poor hungry young editors who take that work.
I remember laughing at them when I heard the offer and walking out.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I don’t think anyone is coming down overly hard on the OP, but if you aren’t familiar w/how Reality TV works it’s not really something you can jump into a be proficient at mainly because of the large amount of work to be done in a small amount of time. I AE’d on a reality show that had two editors w/Reality backgrounds and two editors from doc backgrounds and the doc guys just couldn’t keep the required pace. They worked longer hours and produced fewer finished minutes than the editors w/reality experience (who typically had to pick up the slack to keep the show on schedule).
Eron, if your friend is okay w/hiring you fully aware of your lack of experience that’s great. But don’t deceive your friend to get a job you aren’t qualified for. You’ll just hamstring the production and most likely strain your relationship w/your friend.
As for wages, obviously it varies between shows, experience, etc., but many of the reality editors I know are in six figure territory annually. To the best of my knowledge none of them really like it, but it pays the bills.
-A
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Hi…thanks for your post…I would really like to know what your experience was like as an AE on a reality show. you mentioned that there were 4 editors other than yourself…how was the footage split up between the editors and what was your role? and were there other AE’S? also what type reality show was it? scripted segments…like an MTV type date my rockstar show??? …or a survivor/follow the contestants around type…
Please…any more info would be so helpfull.
thanks
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Well it’s really important that the editors have a very good relationship with the producers/directors (we didn’t usually have separate writers). It’s up to them to make sure they’re finding and painting the stories the producers want in the episode. I found that after a while it was fairly easy to predict what they’d like and want.
Where a list of changes may be a couple of pages when you begin working with a new producer/director it’s often down to just a few notes after a little while together. The reality producers I know go to great lengths to ensure they work with the editors they like (including flying them back to the country for a new show).
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For the reality show I mentioned, which was of the follow-the-contestants-around variety, there were three AEs (two at night, and me during the day) plus 4 day editors, 1 night editor (although I neglected to mention him before) and 1 online editor once we got to that point in the game. It was an 9 episode show shot over 10 days generating about 2500hrs of footage (at it’s peak there were 24 cameras rolling w/9 of them rolling 24/7). Most of the footage was IMX but the 24/7 cameras recorded to DVCAM. On top of the 4 edit bays there was an “AE station” that was composed of, IIRC, 6 DVCAM decks, 6 Sony J-30 decks, and 6 Avid Adrenalines hooked up to a KVM switch so it could be controlled via one keyboard and mouse. Pretty much the first month of post was nothing but digitizing, organizing, and “grouping and stacking” (creating multicam clips of all the cameras).
Everything came in at low-rez (exactly what AVR I can’t remember) and we started w/a 4TB unity but had to expand up to 8 or 10 TB by the end of the show. We created one mother project (or AE project) that only the AEs used and all media was ingested into that project first and then copied into the appropriate project(s) for the editors (each editor was given a specific act to work on for each 60min episode). Nothing went into the Avids or came out of the Avids unless it went through an AE first. Footage, music, gfx, sound effects, everything has to go thru the AEs or else organization flies right out the window and the uprez becomes a nightmare.
-A
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People have made clear in this thread how much work there is to do on a ‘reality’ show in too little time. Their absolutely right. (I’m putting reality in quotes here not to be derogatory, but to include all manner of non-fiction shows that share this basic dynamic – ungodly gobs of footage from multiple cameras, not nearly enough time.)
What this almost always means is that the amount of footage equals or exceeds the time to cut an episode in. For example, I interviewed for a gig where they shot 85-105 hours of footage per episode, but a rough cut was expected in 2 weeks, or about 100 hours of editing. There’s no way the editor had the luxury of watching in real-time all the footage; something he’d be expected to do on a documentary, for example. This is why experience counts for so much in this type of work… experienced editors can confidently cut the best episode without seeing all the footage.
Usually field producers can help with some general notes. Like, “Bob and Jane got into a big fight before breakfast on tuesday”, or “Steve wrecked the car on Saturday night” etc. Its still up to the editor to find the relevant footage and get a scene together out of that without further direction.
Make sure your edit assistants know how to sync multiple cameras, and enforce a rigorous naming convention. You’ll also rely on assistants to hunt down cutaways and b-roll.
In general, I would say the most important attributes of a reality editor are an ability to improvise creatively and a pig-headed determination to beat the deadline. Improvisation, because as other posters have remarked, the quality of coverage can vary from bad to really bad to ‘are you kidding me? we haven’t got any footage of that!’. Pig-headedness, because once you start falling behind, problems snowball and then things can really get ugly.
And the hours are long. Its another hallmark of ‘reality’ shows that their budgets are ludicrously small compared to other genres. Even talk shows, which ought to be the cheapest, in theory. So producers cut edit time and wages. Many shows are made on razor-thin margins.
Of course, I’m a bit of an old-timer, and there was a time when you could work a 40 hour week and not be considered a slacker. Just because 50 and 60 (and 70 and 80!) hour weeks have become the norm, doesn’t mean they should be. Its just a byproduct of the increased productivity the American economy has enjoyed over the past decade.
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I have no ‘reality’ television experience – just documentaries, TV drama series, MOW’s and features. I once visited an old friend who was cutting on a well known reality/unscripted drama show. From what I saw it was kind of like “welcome to hell, your edit suite is over there.” Not my cup of mud… but good luck anyways.
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DK Davis / Editor/ Post Super
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I like Reality TV (having worked on many of the highest rated reality shows in the country) and I also love Good Eats (I also did some work with the NZ channel that screens it).
Go figure.
For what it’s worth – we in NZ had a ‘people stuck on a remote island competing for prizes’ show in NZ before Survivor was made. I spent two weeks in a tent on the ‘crew island’ for a series once. Fun times.
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