“Bridezillas” – day 2

That’s a wrap. Hurry up and wait has never been truer than on this project. And my opinion of reality TV hasn’t changed. What’s interesting is that shooting reality TV is very much like shooting a documentary. You log tons and tons of footage that will eventually be broken down into a short amount of time. I don’t envy documentary editors. I don’t envy reality TV editors. What I find interesting in both is with the footage you end up with, you can cut together a million different shows to tell whatever story you choose. You can make the good guy look like a bad guy, you can make the bad guy look like the good guy. You hold the marionette strings and you pick shots to tell whatever story you choose. No social commentary or judgment on my part, just an interesting observation. Being of a narrative mind though, I like to have my story first, then go out and make the actors perform it.

I was thinking that if a camera followed me everywhere for a day, someone could edit the footage down to make me look any way they want. I could look cool, giving, selfish, clumsy, mean, helpful, smooth, frustrated, etc. The emotions a person shows on a daily basis runs the gamut, we just have the luxury of not showing all of our sides to everyone all of the time. And that’s a good thing. At least from my perspective. There are plenty of people out there that think I’m the sweetest guy. And there are plenty that know otherwise.

The moral of the story – if someone is filming your life, the one person you need to be nice to is your editor.