Reality TV

What’s it like working in Reality TV?

/ meganestes / 1 Comment

I get asked this question a lot – many people have told me that they want to do my job, so I thought I would open a window to let those folks peek into what it’s really like to work on a reality TV show.

First thing to know is that every single reality show is different. Speak to any crew member and there will be three classifications to which a show can fall: Good, It’s ok and it’s a NIGHTMARE.  And the worst part is that much like life and a box of chocolates, you absolutely never know what you are going to get. You see, there is a myriad of elements that play out behind the scenes on a reality show that can make or break your experience. A few examples include; how diva or professional the cast can be – do they show up on time or 90 minutes late everyday, how dickish or cool are your coworkers – are they your drinking buddies at the hotel bar after work or do they hold a grudge against you b/c on shoot day 5 someone forgot to order a side of ranch with their lunch – Also, how many days straight have you been working (10, 20, 30 – yes, an American human can be required to work 30 days straight and in reality world if you are “salaried,” or exempt from overtime pay, you most certainly will) and finally, have you had the opportunity to sleep more than 5 hours a night because budget constraints have created a grueling schedule? You see, this is why it’s difficult to tell you what it’s like, I would do between 3-6 shows per year and each had their pros and cons. More often than not, I’d tell someone who asks – It’s fun, but exhausting. And that’s true.

I can’t stress enough how much the exhaustion part takes a toll on reality staff members. A long work week for most people is having to stay late a night or two during the week, or heaven forbid – coming into an office on a Saturday.  40-hour workweek for us is considered a part time job. I figured out there are exactly three kinds of days I’ve had during my 10 year career working on reality shows:

THE EASY DAY – 4% occurrence 

Typically, this type of day only applies to the first and last few days on a show. You wake up at 7:30am, in the office by 9:00am. Check three things off your to-do list, attend a few meetings and be physically present just in case anyone needs anything. You actually get to take a lunch. Leave office at 6:30pm. Take calls until 9pm.  Total work hours: 9

THE TYPICAL DAY – 63% occurrence 

Wake up at 5:30am, buy coffee and bagels on the way into the office and wait for the rest of the crew to arrive for their 7am call. Run around town all day supporting your crew through 12 hours of filming, return to the office for wrap out and prepare for the next day. 50% of the time you have time to eat your lunch while working. Leave the office at 9:00pm. Total work hours: 15

THE WORST DAY(S) OF YOUR LIFE – 33% occurrence

Wake up at 5am – not that you actually slept thanks to crippling anxiety. There is a major event coming up in the next 48 hours and everything has to be booked by the end of business that day.  You’ve sent a dozen emails and texts to department heads hoping people will make decisions – WHY O WHY in the world is everyone ignoring you like you’re patient zero?!? It’s 6am, you are in the office alone, might as well use this time to restock the copier and crafty tables. 7am, you get the crew out the door, you will be chained to your desk, so they nominate the assistant coordinator to go in your place on set for the day. You wait at your desk – wonder when the decision makers will arrive while acid in your stomach tears a slow hole. 9am, still not here, but it’s a perfectly fine hour to take all those above-mentioned emails and replay all with one word, “bump” and a smiley face. 8 minutes later, the power-people walk through the door. You try to act casual with a bunch of “good mornings and coffee is extra delicious today,” and then you immediately drop your real agenda, “did you see my email yet? Oh, no? Well just a reminder we only have until x o’clock and it’s just me to do it all, so the sooner the better.” They assure you will be the first to know. And then you wait. You skip lunch, convinced the moment you step out of the office they will pull the trigger. It’s 2pm, you start calling vendors put on your sexiest damsel in distress voice and plead – please.. please, if we place the order at closing time can you have someone stay late to work on it? This works somehow. It’s 4 o’clock, boss man emerges from the office – “Do it!” he tells you and you hit the phones like a 1940’s switchboard operator. You lock vendors until 8pm when the crew returns, then you wrap them out and do timecards. It’s 9:00pm, the creative teams email you something they need 1000 color copies of, also, they want to know  if you can have a banner made and ready for on-screen at 9am. You spend the next 45 minutes making calls – the person at the nearest 24 hour Kinkos laughs at you, however, you find another Kinkos 39 miles away that can do it, and your Line Producer approves the cost of a banner twice the size requested because “it should pop” but won’t let you order the copies from Kinkos because there is a “perfectly good one-sheet color printer at the the office that the show already sunk $58 dollars into.” So, you send the one person who was helping you make the 1000 copies off to middle-earth to await the banner. After beating up the printer a dozen times for jamming, you run out of color ink and make a trip at midnight to Walgreens – you will do a dance like you’ve just won the Superbowl when you find out they do have the correct ink in stock. It’s 1:30am, the PA finally returns with the banner, you close down the office and count on one hand the hours until you have to be awake again. You go to your hotel, pat yourself on the back for saving the entire show and do a fully-clothed belly flop onto your bed.  Total work hours: 19.5

As you can see, being this kind of productive is one of the most challenging and rewarding experiences. I’d say that if you can hang in those types of situations, you will be able to work with some of the most ambitious people on the planet. I never understood why it takes three years to build an overpass, if I put my art guys on it, we’d have it up in three weeks.  Bottom line, in reality tv, you are making magic happen every day.

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Memory Lane: That time I hung out with John Mayer and that guy from Heroes

/ meganestes / 1 Comment

One thing I always loved about living in LA is that even on a supposedly mundane night, the most unbelievable events can unfold around you. Whether it’s Tara Reid puking on your shoes at the Henson lot’s private Halloween extravaganza, or constantly turning around to see Travis Barker  trailing you in so many different locations that you start to believe perhaps he’s stalking you. But one of my most favorite stories I love to regale when I am entertaining a group of people is of the night I went to hang out with my friend and his band at the Three Clubs in Hollywood.

It was right before the banks nearly broke America, around 2007, and I was working as a Coordinator for a tiny production company that had one well-known show. There was an attempt to do a spin-off and as usual, I was recruited midway through when things weren’t going as smooth as they should. I’m happy to say the people I was working with were fantastic humans and it was probably one of only a few shows I’ve ever worked on where I felt truly needed and in turn, greatly appreciated. You’d be surprised how understaffed reality shows are compared to scripted, each person has to take on 4-5 full time jobs, and you are often run into the ground working 7 days a week, 16-hour days. The worst thing for me was never the schedule, though now that I am older I will not allow a job to consume my life, but in these scenarios, a lot of superiors who are never physically present tend to harp on the one or two things that didn’t go well and completely ignore the fact you sacrificed months of food and sleep to manifest thousands of positive and perfectly executed tasks. The silver lining in this unrelenting, intense pressure/sleep-deprivation/isolation type of situation, is that you tend to become very close with that small group of people with you in the field and often for the duration of the run of a show, these people become your closest friends. And that is how I became a fleeting friend of former Bachelor, Bob Guiney.

Unlike some other semi-celebs I’ve known, Bob is one cool dude. He’s endlessly positive, super down-to-earth and best of all, from my home state of Michigan.  I didn’t really know much about him at the time because I had been sucked in by the reality tv production vortex for a few years already, and rarely had a moment to myself to catch up on trivial things like current events. One day, after the show was in the can, Bob invited a bunch of the crew out to see him perform with his band. Since I had a friend in town and was looking for fun stuff to do, this seemed like the perfect LA experience to show to an out-of-towner.

We showed up fashionably late, partially on purpose and partially because I spent 30 minutes looking for parking. Since I was in my early 20’s and extremely underpaid, I adamantly refused to pay $10 to park anywhere ever. I have no idea how many songs deep the band was before we arrived, but the performance space they were in was tiny, it looked like a banquet area in the back of restaurant with a small stage only a foot or so off of the ground. The crowd was light, so it didn’t take long for me to scan the room and see that nobody else I knew came. My focus shifted to the band, who actually sounded pretty awesome, and I was a little shocked when I began to realize that everyone up there was famous. James Denton from Desperate Housewives on bass, Greg Grunberg from Heroes played the drums and that House guy from House MD strummed his guitar. Holy crap, my semi-famous friend is in a band with his super famous friends – how cool is that? My girlfriend suggested we move to the front and in-between songs, and we did just that. Not one second after seizing our new spots, Bob saw me, shouted hi and gave me a high five – it was such a rock star moment.

A few songs later, a special guest took to the mini-stage and wailed on the guitar while crooning with the voice of a much older man. It was none other than John Mayer. Though, I knew of John and his music I wasn’t really a fan until that night. The handful of pop song that streamed the airwaves during the previous few years gave no hint at the profound talent and deep emotional connection Mayer has with music itself. He stayed for about 3 or 4 songs and I believe he only played one of his own, it was an awesome sight.  Shortly after, the gig was over, the lights came up and everyone was getting kicked out. Bob told us we could stick around and like the good little production solider I was, I volunteered me and my friend to help Greg pack up his drum kit and load it into his SUV. He didn’t drink, so he wasn’t going to stick around, but he was grateful for the help, so my friend ended up getting a picture with him (o-o-towners, am i right?!).

When we got back in I made a beeline for the bathroom but some angry looking bouncer told me if I crossed over this invisible line he was guarding, I wouldn’t be able to come back. I whined about having to pee but he just shrugged his shoulders. I was just about to turn around when a man emerged from the packed crowd on the other side of the invisible line and was physically stopped by another protector of the line. It was John Mayer, he was just performing and needed to get back there, he explained politely. “You’re not getting through” the a-hole bouncer/UTI proponent quipped while holding out his meaty arms. I couldn’t believe what was going on and in that moment of intoxication I decided to step in, “hey guys, you do know that is John Mayer, right?” I asked to blank stares. I could see they weren’t getting it, so I started to croak out a few lines from some of his greatest hits, Your Body is a Wonderland, and Daughters – I even scrunched up my face to look like his when he sings, all while failing miserably to actually know the words to his songs. Eventually, when I opened up my squinted eyes, John seemed to be holding back a laugh and brought his hands together in front of his chest and told me “Please… it’s ok, just go get someone from the band.” Did John Mayer just beg me to stop singing his songs out loud? Um, yep – ’cause I’m a f*cking rockstar.

John made his way back with the help of the spitfire female in the band and me and my friend spent the next hour hanging out with these guys doing shots of whiskey and trying to act like rubbing elbows with celebs happens to us all of the time. Eventually, even we all got kicked out, said our goodbyes, and made the half mile trek back to where I had parked the car. Luckily, my girlfriend didn’t drink much so I slid into the passenger seat, clunked the seat back to chillax mode and asked”Did that all really just happen?”

“Hell yeah, it did!” she confirmed.