Reality TV: An Insider's Guide to TV's Hottest Market by Troy DeVolld

enough here to show that story is developing, but enough restraint in relaying the info that it reads in a straightforward and factual manner.
    Here’s the kind of hot sheet you don’t want going around:
    “BEACHES” HOT SHEET: DAY ONE (07/09)
    SUMMARY:
    Arrivals at the beach house went smoothly today except it’s totally obvious that Zoe is an uncoordinated fool who will probably drown herself if she ever gets near a surfboard.
    Tara and Dana hate each other, and it shows. Expect big blowups there!
    Bitchy Penny won the surf-off and a new longboard, and started a HUUUGE fight back at the house afterward when she went off about surf bums and Frank got mad at her about it. She is already an outcast — don’t be surprised if she doesn’t come out of her room again for the rest of the show.
    Boy, do I hate hot sheets like this one. Everything is oversold, there’s tons of conjecture about what will happen in the days to come, and character types have become so crystallized that if Penny wakes up tomorrow and apologizes, Tara and Dana get their heads in the game or Zoe simply manages to not drown, it’ll be a disappointment to everyone who expected something else to happen. Hot sheets like this one can jam up the note process in postproduction when your execs and the network start seeing rough cuts that don’t deliver what the overly hyper, exclamationpointed hot sheet content implied.
    Interviews
    Let’s revisit the interview process for a moment now that we’ve moved on to production, as your characters are now in motion and your needs have changed.
    The purpose of interview content gathered during production is twofold: to provide clarification of action or emotion in anticipation of or in reaction to an event, or to provide context in establishing locations or purposes for being at those locations.
    Using interview in any other way is usually superfluous to story. Why would a character simply narrate an action we can clearly see is happening?
    Interviews vs. OTFs
    Once things that demand commentary start going down in the field, you and your Field Producers have a decision to make — pull your cast aside for a small amount of time during or just after important events to grab a few quick OTF (“On The Fly”) quotes and responses, or hold off to do formal sit-down interviews every few days to recap events.
    I’m a big fan of the OTF interview because the reactions are so much more authentic. You’ll get tears, passion, laughter, rage… big, big energy. If you wait a few days to ask someone to recap an event in a more visually composed setting (I’ve worked on shows that rely only on formal interviews conducted several days, a week, even two weeks apart), you’ll likely lose that sense of emotional immediacy — a high price to pay for a pretty interview shot.
    In fairness, formal interviews have their own advantages. If you’re crushed for time in the field, you can cover a lot more ground by getting many days worth of content in one sitting. You have time to mull content over, figure out how you think it’ll be used, and tailor your questions and desired responses more closely to what you’ll be needing them for.
    Here’s another exercise for you that will illustrate the usefulness of formal interviews in comparison to OTFs:
    Remember that analogy I made where I compared home improvement shows to lab frogs? Well, put on your lab jacket and goggles again, because I’m about to have you take that scalpel and t-pins to your favorite hour-long series.
    Grab that same old pad and pen and cue-up three episodes of your favorite show, preferably one where participants don’t spend all their time in a uniform of some sort. Now watch the episodes, keeping track of what people are wearing in their formal interviews. It’s easier if you pick one or two people rather than trying to track a full cast.
    Be sure to watch for:
    •  Characters wearing the same outfit in-interview over multiple episodes or seeming