Career Confidential: A Reality TV Editor Reveals The Most And Least Fake Shows
When "Survivor" first came out, that was considered a reality show. It was kind of like unscripted but in a totally scripted setting.
Now reality television has somewhat changed (some refer to it as 'docudrama') with shows like
Deadliest Catch,
Swamp People,
Ax Men,
Keeping up with the Kardashians (if you're into that), etc. That's when you basically just go observe people doing what they were normally doing anyway. The show is supposed to just be like a fly on the wall, but now the industry has changed drastically.
I used to watch Swamp People and Ax Men like crazy, but once those shows got popular, it seems that the dynamic changed as though a producer came in and started giving orders. Now those shows are all, in my opinion, very much changed by the producers, to the point where I can't watch them anymore. They aren't scripted in the literal since, but they are IMO improv, where the producer makes up the storyline and gives the guys a direction for where they want the scene to go and what they want to have happen, but the scene itself was a fabrication and not the truth.
On the one hand, it's still more real than watching a totally scripted sit-com like Friends or Seinfeld, which is kind of like the argument pro wrestling fans make to those who say pro wrestling is stupid because it's fake. These are real people that do have real jobs, or at least did at first. However, you are now taking guys who used to be lumberjacks for a living, and telling them to act and do improv, and it just is so obvious sometimes when they are in a BS situation.
Also, I don't think people realize how powerful editing can be. I don't mean just cutting out stuff, I mean adding in facial reactions from totally different conversations and clipping together different sentences to completely fabricate a storyline that has nothing to do with what was actually being talked about in real life.
The worst thing about it is it's insulting that they think I'm that stupid. I mean honestly why is there a camera on this truck facing backwards as these guys are driving home from work? And he flips the boat trailer over because of some unbelievably fake reaction to a guy touching the radio, you don't think I'm going to realize that's fake? It turns out that if you look closely, it's apparent that isn't even their boat.
[video=youtube;12A7Ao9rXlM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12A7Ao9rXlM[/video]
I trained with Jeff Bloovman, the young guy in this video. He was telling me that he and James Yeager (the bald white guy) had trained with each other for years before this show, but the producers wanted them to pretend they didn't know each other. He also is a very humble and nice guy, not at all the dickhead they asked him to be in this.
[video=youtube;wYL266zmq1s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYL266zmq1s[/video]
Sorry for the slightly off-topic rant but basically, if you find the show entertaining, then that's what TV is for, but to answer your question, those are probably guys who know something about street racing but everything in the show they were told to do by the producer or was deceptively edited. The police were probably there the whole time and closed the street down for the show, and then pretended to only show up at the end.
