Create Competition Reality Shows: 3 Keys to Success

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???

Announcer: This episode…

Biagio: Episode 15, we’re finally able to tell you a little bit more about our top secret show on A&E, the three keys of making an entertaining reality competition series. One of our shows is now available for free on Hulu. Check it out. We tell you why actresses always look better covered in blood.

Announcer: Music courtesy of Dave Pelman Music, davepelman.com

Biagio: Hey, everybody! She is Joke.

Joke: He’s Biagio.

Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same hopefully by teaming up with us. Well, welcome to episode 15, a nice round number and the episode where we finally get to tell you what Joke?

Joke: What show we’ve been working on!

Biagio: The show that we’ve been working on forever. We’re allowed to tell you what it is and where you can learn more but we’re not allowed to say too much about it yet. Anyway, the show is going to be on A&E. It’s a new show called Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne.

Joke: Yes and if you go to facebook.com/DontTrustAndrewMayne.

Biagio: Yes facebook.com/DontTrustAndrewMayne.

Joke: You’ll see a promo for the show that aired during the Duck Dynasty finale.

Biagio: Yes, now the promo will tell you a little bit about what the show is but it still doesn’t give everything away. So a lot has to remain shrouded in mystery for a little while. The network is doing their own roll out and of course we respect that.

But we’re so excited to finally be able to tell you at least a little bit about it because it has taken up a good portion of our lives for the last year and a half.

Joke: Yes, once we can get into the whole story we can talk about how we came to be here. Just know that right now it’s scheduled to air in January. So between now and then there’s probably another what six podcasts.

Biagio: At least.

Joke: So there’ll be plenty of time for us to get into the nitty-gritty details. But we’re also very excited to announce that our show Scream Queens which we did two seasons of for VH1 is now available for free on Hulu.

Biagio: For free! And this is awesome because it was two seasons of some of the most fun television we’ve ever made. This was as big art competition elimination reality show where actresses were competing for a leading role in a Saw movie, one of the Saw sequels.

Joke: Yes and this was right at the height of Saw and everything that was going with it. That was super exciting. Yeah as an acting competition elimination, we think the reason our show did well is because the horror genre allowed us to not take things too seriously.

You could both be very challenging which it is very challenging to be a Scream Queen because you have to be both fierce, and strong and vulnerable. You have to be able to cry and scream. You have to be sexy and kickass. So there’s a lot that goes into being a Scream Queen which allowed us to tap into a lot of fun challenges for the girls.

Biagio: Yes because listen I’m sure you could imagine being in Hollywood everybody and their uncle and their cousin and their very distant relative have pitched an acting competition elimination show. Everybody pitches acting reality shows.

Nobody wants them because honestly acting is kind of boring to watch. It is in a competition setting unless the girls are covered in blood or cockroaches or things are exploding. Pyrotechnics, any of the great stuff that comes into play in a horror movie, we were able to make use of on our show.

Joke: So yes it’s a lot of fun. We had a great time making it. It was kind of a big show that put us on the map. We still are in contact with a lot of the cast. It’s a nice little flashback for us.

Biagio: The post for this episode which will be ProducingUnscripted.com/015. We’ll put up the EPK, the Electronic Press Kit which was kind of like the making of Scream Queens, a little behind the scenes which is a ton of fun to watch. You got to check it out.

Now, the fact that Scream Queens is up for free on Hulu actually brings us to this subject of this week’s podcast which is three keys to creating excellent arced competition elimination reality shows.

Joke: Yes and I mean to be fair, this is kind of also in the execution of it. Developing an arced competition elimination show is it’s hard to shell those formats unless you can really have an asset you can combine with it, like a prize or it’s a world that you have access to with judges that are amazing and extraordinary.

So they are harder to sell but really look at this episode for the keys that go into executing a great one.

Biagio: Because I’ll just say right up front, if we would have walked in and pitched the reality show called Scream Queens and all we had was the idea, forget about it. Show would have never sold. It would never have sold. But when you walk in Lions Gate is offering up a Saw sequel, that’s a show.

That’s called packaging and we talked about that in episode two and episode three. You should go back and check those episodes when you get a chance.

Joke: And also, let’s be fair on how this show came to be was a network executive, Jim Ackerman at that time at VH1 had wanted to play in this area. He reached out to Lions Gate to see if they would offer up a prize. They said sure but we don’t know if it’s going to be Saw VI or Butterfly Effect 28.

And so at least there was a prize and then Lions Gate had worked with us and VH1 had worked with us so they came to us and said, okay can you help us develop a show.

So we really started focusing on the other elements like some of these keys that were going to come to play on how to really bring this show to life. Then once we kind of fleshed that out for them then we made a pilot. Then the pilot was received very well and then we went into season one and then a season two.

Biagio: Yes, now all that said, these are three sort of broad keys to success. Obviously, the specifics will change for every competition elimination show that gets created or produced but we want to start with these three keys. So key number one, casting.

Joke: Casting is key in these shows like number one, the most important thing is casting and even as a television viewer you’ll know. Like some seasons of Top Chef you’re more into than others, or American Idol or even Survivor, Bachelor, Bachelorette, any of these arced competition elimination shows.

If you have a great cast member that you attach yourself to that you get invested in or that upsets you, that you keep wanting to come back, see if they’re going to get eliminated this week. Those are the kind of things that keep you going.

There has to be a sense of both credibility, people who feel like they deserve to be there, they deserve to be competing for this- and excitability, people who just make for good television, who are loud and pop and who you just can’t believe was coming out of their mouth next.

Biagio: Yes but Joke I think you actually said it best when we’re talking with a network executive. You always say smart things when we’re talking with network executives. But you basically boiled down to casting as a little bit of a science experiment because it’s not just about great people, it’s about the right people in the house with each other, correct?

Joke: Well I must say that was a produce more statement. I don’t remember saying that but yes now I absolutely feel that way. It’s you find great people and then it’s about putting that group of people together who is going to work well with others.

Again, I’m trying to explain this to you in the most simple terms as possible. But on Survivor, even though maybe that season they may find 10 great older grey guys, they’re not all 10 going to get a spot on the show. So it’s about the dynamics amongst the cast members that you can put together.

So on Scream Queens, it was important for us to find someone who has had a lot of experience and someone with no experience. Someone who was coming from a different walk of life, different diversities, different kinds of training, someone who was classically trained and someone who was just commercially trained or more of a model training.

So it’s important that you bring people together that can add things to each other. Then this is going back to the real world which that wasn’t a competition elimination but that’s one of the original and kind of house shows where you put a bunch of people together in the house, and you want people from different backgrounds so that they bring something to the show.

Otherwise, if it’s a whole bunch of twins sitting there staring at each other because they agree with everything then you don’t have a show either. So again, but in the casting you have to have those people that you believe have a chance at winning, deserve to win so that your audience has someone to root for.

Biagio: Yes and in its simplest terms, you want to put people in that you know are going to give you good story and good drama because we don’t go in and fake drama. That’s a big fallacy, at least for our company like you just have to hope the drama happens.

So you’re going to get drama if you put in a bunch of people who are exactly the same or you’re going to get drama if you put someone in who’s a total slob and you put them in next to someone who is a complete OCD neat freak. That’s going to give you drama on its simplest, most basic level.

So moving on, key number two, challenges and the drama they caused.

Joke: Challenges are extremely important in the sense that if they have to move the game along. So the reason why they have these reward challenges is so that there would be losers. The reason why they choose winners at these challenges is so that other people would feel like oh my God I may be eliminated. I need to step it up.

So the challenges serve purpose of constantly ranking the people in the house so that they know I’m the leader of the pack or I’m at the bottom of the temple. I’m about to go home and it’s just really important that the challenges are there to drive the story forward and to make them even better. Especially on Scream Queens, it was really important that our challenges tapped into something emotional so that it also drove an emotional story for.

So if it was some task or some skill that someone was really afraid of it was important to see if they would step it up and go through it. So it’s both in terms of the Survivors and the Amazing Races as kind of a leader board as it is for some of the other shows like Scream Queens and The Top Chefs. It’s like you’re testing them on a very specific skill.

Biagio: Yes and the reason that this story’s plot is so important is if you think about a competition elimination reality show, part of the show is competition but part of the show is reality. It’s the reality scenes between competitions and some bad reality competition shows end up being challenges with little house montages in between.

We’re firm believers that the best reality competition shows are those where you get real story in between those challenges. The best way to guarantee that is by planning challenges you know will create a real emotional reaction in your cast.

All right so that brings us to key number three, the prize and how you get there. This is so important because it speaks to what Joke?

Joke: The credibility of your show. Ultimately, the prize it has to be something the audience can get invested in. Do they feel it’s worthy of all the stuff you’re running them through, all the challenges, and the heartache and the emotional investment that your cast members are making and therefore also your audience. The price has to be worth it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Butterfly Effect 28 but by being able to offer Saw as a prize, it definitely boosted our show and it boosted the girl’s involvement in the competition. They were way more excited to be participating in the show. I think also for our audience it helped it’s like okay this is very real.

Now, in how to get there in Scream Queens obviously we had judges. So it’s important that your judges bring a certain credibility to it. It’s important to us that your judges don’t all say the same thing. A key to a good judging panel really is people who are outspoken but also bring different perspectives to it.

They can teach the girls something from the different perspective of it. The reason why you see American Idol or The X Factor or some of these shows work so hard on trying to put together a dynamic judging panel is because those are such an important part of these competition elimination shows.

It’s not always easy and not every judging panel hits it out of the park but to bring the right combination together is super, super important. And if you are doing a competition elimination show that doesn’t involve judges like a Survivor or an Amazing Race, it is super-duper important that there is a very clean structure, the rules of the game on how you win.

If it’s not in someone else’s hands like judges, then how do you get there? And so with Survivor being these tribal councils and is very much the people you’re competing against are also the ones judging you.

With Amazing Race, it’s really your time and who gets there first but how to get to the prize and those eliminations along the way are super-duper important in shows like this.

Biagio: When you’re going to do a show with judges and this is one thing I think season one of Scream Queen did really well, it’s great if each judge can bring some sort of different perspective.

For example on season one of Scream Queens, we had John Homa who truly was an acting coach of the stars. Had coached people like Kirsten Dunst and Jennifer Love Hewitt and Michelle Williams.

You had Shawnee Smith who not only is an actress, was an actress in the Saw franchise so could definitely speak to being a Scream Queen in this very series of movies.

And you had James Gunn, a bonafide movie director who at the time had directed Slither, written Dawn of the Dead, had gone on after that to direct Super and is now directing Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel.

That was a great dynamic panel and they each brought a unique perspective. So when they were judging the girl’s performances, they could argue over which performance to like best because they were each coming from a different perspective.

Joke: Yes and Jamie King filled that role nicely as well in Season two. Again, it’s important to know what you’re getting from each judge as a contestant and to know what can I get and what is their perspective and what can I learn from each of them. Because our judges were also mentors which is a little bit different than some other shows do it.

Biagio: And again having different judges or clean cut rules serves one purpose, create more drama for the home audience. So to wrap things up, the three keys in our mind to competition elimination reality shows.

Key number one casting. Cast to give yourself great drama. Key number two, challenges. Create challenges that will give you great drama. And key number three, the prize and how you get there. Make sure it’s a great prize everybody wants and the rules to win it or that the judges that you choose all add to the drama of the show.

So there you have it everybody. Go check out Scream Queens on Hulu, two seasons for you. You’ll love it. Check out the EPK over at ProducingUnscripted.com/015 a little four minute behind the scenes that you guys will enjoy. It’s even got some of the people from Avatar in there that we worked with that season.

Joke: Yeah it’s a very fun show. I should binge watch it. It’s been a while. I just watched the super tease that opened to the very first episode. There was just so many fun memories. I was like right! We did this! And that’s right we did that! So I’m super excited about it being available for people to see.

Biagio: And last but not least, we can finally tell you the name of our top secret show which is Don’t Trust Andrew Mayne. That’s all we can say for now other than go over to Facebook.com/DontTrustAndrewMayne to learn a little bit more. All right. That’s it. See you next time everybody. Couple of weeks.

Joke: Bye-bye.

Biagio: Bye-Bye.

Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

www.producingunscripted.com