Wanna' read along? Here’s a machine-generated transcript you can use. Yes...expect a few mistakes, especially with funky industry terms, interesting names and tagging whoever's talking. If something sounds weird, trust your ears. But...sometimes that really is what we said!
Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.
Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke.
Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???
Biagio: This episode. It’s our 50th podcast episode and we’re answering your questions. Can you work on the shows you pitch us or will you be sidelined? Who owns the shows you pitch? What if you live overseas? How much does the setting of your show matter? And yes, I think I make it through this week’s episode without coughing up along. Music courtesy Dave Pelman. Music Dave Pelman.com. Hey, everybody. Sheen’s joke.
Joke: He’s Biagio.
Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.
Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.
Biagio: All right, so the last podcast was pretty short. I was pretty sick. You can probably tell from my voice I am still sick. However, thankfully my beautiful wife is feeling much better, which is important because today is a big episode, right?
Joke: Joe five zero.
Biagio: It’s our 50th podcast episode now, I have to admit, I had these grand illusions. This was going to be like some huge over the top episode that we would do live in an auditorium somewhere. And you know, there’d be like a live audience Q&A. And, you know, as my wife thankfully reminded me, we are not professional podcasters. We are television producers who podcast on the side. And in her infinite wisdom. She did point out, however, that what we should do is try to make the podcast as useful as possible, and that’s why we basically turned over today’s topics to you. Right, honey?
Joke: Yeah. Last podcast, Biagio asked you guys to send in some questions you may have had, that you may have felt we haven’t answered or not answered in depth enough. So here we go.
Biagio: All right. So we’re going to we we received a lot of questions. We tried to pick out the ones where we felt there was some overlap. We couldn’t do all of them. We would it would be a three hour episode. But we’re going to go ahead and take these one at a time. This first one comes from Lynn. Lynn has an interesting legal question. Honey Lin asks. A question I’ve had is how to copyright works. If you want to do an American spin off of a foreign reality show that would only be shown on an internet platform, no broadcast or cable TV. What is the process to even contacting them for copyrights? When you’re a no name and don’t know the language, or do you even have to contact them if it’s available for free on, say, YouTube or Vimeo and you don’t foresee making an immediate profit from the show?
Joke: Well, first of all, we are not lawyers and you should not come to us for legal advice. That being said, whether something is for free on YouTube or Vimeo does not mean that the people who created it have given up their copyright. Quite on the contrary. Or movie dying to do Letterman. You can see for free on Hulu and Hulu Plus, but that does not mean you can just do whatever you want with it. So there’s absolutely so copyright attached to it. You are not allowed to do a spin off of a foreign reality show without getting permission from those copyright owners. Whether or not you foresee making a profit or not. If you were saying, hey, I don’t foresee making a profit, then that’s pretty much what everybody would do. So my best advice is to, you know, do your research. You would be surprised that you know, name or no name doesn’t really mean anything. You know? I mean, obviously a name could help, but depending if nobody has contacted them before you, you might be in luck and they might give you a shot at it, but you should absolutely contact the person. And if that means, you know, doing some investigative work of who owns a copyright or finding a lawyer in that country to help represent you in trying to get a license for that copyright or whatever that is. You know, even just getting a translator to help you contact those people that is on you. But yes, you know, the short answer is you’re not allowed to take someone else’s copyright and do with what you want.
Biagio: Yeah, and don’t forget, you could probably find someone on Fiverr where they charge you five bucks to do a job. Probably write an email and find someone on Fiverr to translate it for you. If you really are really on the cheap, you could also try using Google Translate. So don’t let the fact that there’s a foreign language in other countries stop you from reaching out. That said, I think in the long run you’d probably be better off just creating your own original concept based on real people, places, or things. If what you’re trying to do is break into the unscripted television space. Okay, so our next question comes from Miguel. Miguel says, I work in an office setting. Is there a place on TV for a standard, bland setting that is full of life? Miguel goes on to soft pitch a show that I’m not going to repeat his pitch here, but the show sounds like it might have 1 or 2 interesting characters who are big personalities, who are living it up in the blandest office space in the world, I guess.
Joke: Yeah, there’s a severe. Contradiction here that I can’t quite wrap my head around where it says a bland setting that’s full of life. I mean, if it’s just an office setting where most people might just be on the phone or on their computers, I think it’s important to remember that we all work in a visual medium, and therefore it’s important to think about what are the visuals going to be that you not only see within each episode, but episode to episode, the episode? And if it’s just people sitting in an office, you know, I mean, are your characters as hilarious as the scripted show The Office? Because if not, it’s going to be a really, really hard sell. And and if the conflict and the drama comes from, you know, customers that might be on the phone or that might not come into the office, that’s another thing that, you know, is not necessarily great. But if it’s a kind of office where, you know, there is, let’s say it’s the office of a big, you know, garage or something. And I’m thinking like, you know, the real Sons of Anarchy type. You know, you have the office there and then you have, you know, the big characters that come in and out, you know, maybe there’s something. But again, you know, the pitches of office settings in reality television have been very, very tough. Unless it’s a big concept type show. You know, when you’re talking about an undercover boss and, and those kinds of places. But even in those episodes, you know, the boss goes undercover for different positions within the company. One might be in the office, but the other one might be the assembly line or the truck driving route or a franchise. So, I mean, you know, without going into too much of it, it it’s a very uphill battle. I mean, your characters have to be so dynamic. There has to be such a great continuing storyline. And I would not necessarily spend a lot of time on that one.
Biagio: Yeah, no. And by the way, if you think your characters are awesome and huge, there’s a really easy way to find out. Take your iPhone or whatever. Whatever camera you have handy, it can be a camera phone, it can be a cheap little hero. GoPro, whatever you got, it doesn’t matter. Stick it on them and let them talk. Because if they don’t pop on a cheap little camcorder, they’re not going to pop on a really expensive camera either, you know, and then shoot 2 or 3 minutes of each of your characters if you think they’re hilarious, and you can always submit to us through the pitch portal and submit it. As you know, these are some characters I’ve discovered. And what do you think? Are they big enough for TV? We discuss a lot of that in our free guide, How to Pitch a Reality Show.
Joke: And that’s that. Even if we if we love them, our next question will be what are we going to see week to week? And if the answer is they’re just sitting behind the desk on the phone, it might not be enough for a television show.
Biagio: Well said. Joke. All right, moving on to our next question, which comes from Peter. And I’m going to guess that Peter is writing from Ireland. Why am I going to guess that? Well, his question is, is it possible for someone living abroad like Ireland to make it with a concept? Well, this is a a sort of a loaded, double layered question. First of all, it’s almost impossible for anybody, anywhere to make it with a concept alone. And again, Peter, I’m going to point you over to our free guide, How to Pitch a Reality Show, which you can find on the front page of Producing unscripted. Com but if what you’re talking about as a concept, meaning like you have an idea that you think is like the next survivor or the next the voice or the next American Idol, and you don’t have connections to really big famous people that you’re going to package up with that concept. Nobody can pitch that concept when they’re just starting out like you have, like you can’t pitch American Idol unless you’ve got, you know, record companies on board and big money people behind you and lots of connections to the music industry. It’s one of the biggest mistakes people make. So when it comes to pitching a concept that doesn’t matter if you’re in Ireland or America or Timbuktu, for the most part, a concept alone is not going to be enough. Now, if what you mean was concept is you’re actually pitching a show based on a real person, place or thing, something that we promote very heavily here. It’s always easier to sell a show based on someplace or someone you have real access to. Then, you know, putting together a great tape of those people as your first step. Now, the overseas thing can be a problem here in America. It’s very difficult to sell international casts, international people are international places to American networks. Maybe you’re in Ireland and you happen to know a fantastic American company we haven’t heard of, and your characters happen to be American. Well, that’s a completely different story. You know, then I think it’s an easier pitch, but in general, it’s difficult for someone in another country to pitch characters from their neck of the woods to American networks. So what you would be looking at doing if you discovered, say, a great, interesting group of characters in Ireland, you would probably be looking to pitch within Ireland. And I, unfortunately am not an expert in where to go to pitch their joke. Do you have any ideas or any advice you might like to share with someone pitching overseas?
Joke: Nope. I mean, I definitely know nothing really in Ireland. So everything else you said I agree with.
Biagio: Here’s the thing. Here’s here’s the good news, Peter, is I think the advice we give on our podcast is going to work no matter what country you’re in. As far as pitching a show that has a chance of getting on the air, you just need to do a little research in your neck of the woods, you know, maybe check out the International Documentary Association. You can check out Real Screen and see if Real Screen does any outreach to Ireland. But without a doubt there will be some reality TV or factual programing or documentary association in Ireland that will give you leads on where you can pitch your concepts and never go for any of our overseas listeners. So I hope that’s helpful. I hope that gives you a place to start looking.
Joke: But if you find the joke in Biagio of whatever country you’re in, please share, because we’d love to meet them too.
Biagio: Yeah, yeah. If you find that there’s a joke from Biagio in Ireland doing a podcast about how to pitch reality shows, please let us know. I’d love to make friends with them. Okay, now moving on to this next question. Okay, this one is Loaded Jokes. So get ready now. This one comes from Michael. And first of all, I think that Michael, he’s managed to ask a lot of questions within this one email. This is really like 5 or 6 questions.
Joke: Take them one at.
Biagio: A time. We’re going to take them one. I’m going to read the entire question. And then we’re going to go back and take them a bit at a time. I think that Michael is asking a lot of questions that many of our viewers want to know. Many of our listeners want to know. And while we’ve answered them in different places over the podcast, let’s just try to put a fine pointed on wait right here. So Michael writes, I’d like to get more details on how the deal works. If you like an idea, we pitch things like can we show run the project with you? If we have the experience, we’re listed as a producer. But is that just a name or are we actually producing? How much ownership of this show do we keep? How much are we paid with this deal? I don’t want to pitch ideas and then become sidelined. I want to literally own, co-produce and show run the project with you and just want details on how everything is structured when you like someone’s idea. Thank you. Okay, Michael, that is that is a that is a lot in one question. And I want to tell you, I think you’re going to really like some of the answers and really hate some of the other answers. And you’ll have to take a long, hard look at what you want to do with your career. I think in order to be happy with the answers that we’re going to give you, but we’re going to be totally honest. So let’s back things up, okay. First of all, can we show run the project with you if we have the experience.
Joke: So that’s a loaded question. The answer is yes. But you don’t decide if you have the experience. The network decides what or not you have the experience. So since I don’t know your experience, the answer might be yes or the answer might still be no. If you are involved in the kind of a competition reality show and you happen to have run two seasons of survivor, then the answer is obviously yes. If you’re pitching a docu series and you’ve run one of the housewives shows for a couple season, and the answer is obviously yes, if you have not actually run a a show that is similar to what you’re pitching on a, you know, major cable network level at the very least, and the answer will unfortunately probably be no. So it’s one of those things where showrunners is not just a creative position, they’re not just a logistical position, they’re also a political position. And what we mean by that is they have to be aware of the network politics, they have to have relationships, and they also have to be they have have to have been in the game to really understand how to get what the show needs and to make all the heads happy. For example, we would show Running Beauty and the geek. We were dealing with seven sets of notes, meaning seven different entities. We’re giving us notes. That was that put us in a very political position. So they won’t give that position. Just as someone who is like very passionate about the creative. Yes, you have to have that too. They won’t just give that position to someone who understands how to such a dollar from a production standpoint, yes. No, you need that too. But they also need to make sure that the person they put in that position understands the politics can handle. It is not going to be dejected after, you know, three rounds of notes because it’s just part of the game. So that’s why they look for, you know, similar experience because, you know, every hire is a is a is a chance. But at least that way, you know, the odds are for the project that this person will be able to handle it.
Biagio: Yeah. Now listen, we’re giving you the very technical explanation, you know, the exact explanation of what a showrunner is in our industry. Now, if you’re asking, can you have creative input in the show? Can you help drive the creative? Can you be a part of making the show? The answer is absolutely. And is your voice important? If we’re teaming up with you on your show, your voice is incredibly important and that moves us into the next part of your question, where you ask where listed as producer. But is that just in name or are we actually producing? Well, first off, I want to point anybody who’s listening to that question to a podcast we did back a while ago with their 24th podcast, it was called five Ways You Can Break into Unscripted Television. You can find out at Producing Unscripted two. I will also put that in the show notes. And there we talk about five different types of people who might want to work with us on a show and how they can do that. Now, Michael, in your case, it sounds like you are a real filmmaker. You are someone who likes to get out there and actually make TV. So are you listed as a producer? Absolutely. Is that a name only? I hope not, because there’s nothing I would love more than for you to come in, do a lot of the work, lead, you know, help lead the creative vision of the show and work hand in hand with us to make it a great show. In the meantime, you’ll be learning directly from us what it’s really like to make a show, because until you’ve made five, six, seven, eight shows, there’s just no way to get your head around what it actually takes to finish a television show. And I don’t mean just the shooting and editing part. That’s the easy part. Shooting a show, editing it, making it look pretty, doing the graphics, handing something over. It looks professional, believe me. That’s the easiest part of the process. When you start dealing with the politics, the notes, the different entities who way in and are micromanaging your every move and trying to handle the politics of a good show versus a happy network executive. And knowing that if you do something, the show might be better, but you might not get picked up for a season two, that’s when things get difficult. Making the show is the easy part. So. So again, like if you’re going to work on a show with us, yes, you can absolutely be very hands on if that’s what you want. Now, again, now you’re moving to another question that a lot of I don’t mean to use the term derogatory way, but a lot of newbies ask how much ownership of the show do we keep? Zero, you keep zero, we keep zero.
Joke: Well, and and I think this is something that comes from overseas and comes from in scripted where, you know, a scripted show has a huge budget, right? Per episode. It’s a very expensive to make a scripted show. And so a lot of times the studios make the scripted show, and then the studio owns the show and the network purely licenses it. And so what they pay the studio is actually not enough to cover the cost of making the show, and therefore the studio continues to own it, and they hopefully make their cost back in syndication and international and etc.. Now, because reality television has been at a very, you know, affordable price, what happens is the networks flat out pay for everything. And so because they pay for everything, they insist on owning everything. Now there’s such thing called monkey points in the back end sometimes, you know, for the really established producers. And so in case a show turns into a Jersey shore where it’s a magnet and it crosses pop culture and it’s just, it just becomes that thing where everything and anything with the name Jersey shore on it sells bananas. Sure. At that point, you as the producer couldn’t make some money. But if your show is just a standard reality show that’s even successful and runs many seasons, there’s not necessarily that that humongous like ownership kind of stake. So is it something that, you know, producers are fighting and are trying to see if the networks will allow us to own more and help control the back end rights? Sure. But as a newcomer to the business, this will never happen because even very legit companies can’t make those deals. So it’s not something that, you know, we’re trying to take away from you or someone’s trying to take away from you. It’s just part of how the reality business in the United States works.
Biagio: Yeah. And sometimes you hear people say, well, I’m just going to bring in my own sponsors. We’ll buy the airtime from the network. Well, first of all, the networks that really eager to sell you their airtime.
Joke: Well, they might be able to do that for you at 3 a.m. in the morning as opposed to selling it to an infomercial company. But that doesn’t really behoove you.
Biagio: Yeah. I mean, listen, it’s not that that it’s not that that that business model doesn’t exist in some way, shape or form. It’s just it’s not the way people making shows and the level we’re making shows, they’re not the kind of deals that we’re trying to make. You know, we our shows, basically when we pitch a show, whether it’s our idea, whether it’s an idea we keep up on, we go to a network. The network pays us to make the show. They budget the show, they own the show, and we all work on the show. And working on the show is how we get paid, which, by the way, moves into the next part of your question. Michael, how much are we paid with this deal? Well, I can see that you come from a production background, and clearly you’ve hired a lot of people on your productions. The answer is very easy. You basically get paid for what you do on the show. Can you be a DP? Can you be an editor on the show? Can you fill those line items? Can you fill a line producer line item? Well, it’s pretty easy to do a little research and find out what those positions are generally paid. I mean, obviously it differs by network and size of the show and budget of the show and experience, but you’re literally paid to work on the show. Now, if you’re in the podcast I mentioned earlier about the five ways you can break in. Sure, some people just want to pitch a concept. Maybe they’ve discovered a great cast and they don’t work on the show. And in those cases, the network will allow a very small and I mean very small, what we call walk away fee. This is not retirement money. This is a very small fee that basically you get for doing nothing on the show. But to actually earn money on these shows, you have to work on them. Now, Michael, for someone like you, where it sounds like you really want to work in this business, I think that this is the career path you want to take. It’s the exact career path that me and Joe took, which was pitching our shows to bigger companies, working on those shows, earning our wings on real television shows and real networks, and eventually being able to launch our own company. So we came up pretty much exactly the kind of way it sounds like you’d like to come up. And if you’d like to hear about somebody we recently worked with where we had a very similar deal and they shared their experiences. You can check out the 29th episode of our podcast, A Step by Step TV ID at the TV show, which you can find at Producing Unscripted Combat 29, and that will allow you to hear from a few hands on producers, much like yourself, who we actually teamed up with, made a pitch tape with and sold a pilot to oxygen, and they talked a lot about what the experience was like, so hopefully you’ll find that one helpful. All right, and moving on to our final question. This comes from Laura. Laura says, I’d love to get a little breakdown on lingo of the business. I sold my first show last year. I am a documentarian, so the onset stuff wasn’t new, but many of the terms and abbreviations I had never heard before. Could you walk us through the lingo or more broadly, surprises to be prepared for? And after selling your first show, I’m going to joke this. Take this one, and I think she’s going to give you more of a sort of philosophical take on this.
Joke: I guess the short answer is no, but.
Biagio: The most helpful answer we’ve ever given.
Joke: But that’s not because, you know, I don’t want to do it. It’s just that my advice for you would be, whenever you come across something that you don’t understand, what it means is just ask. Because the truth of the matter is, is every single network we’ve worked with, they all have different lingo for everything from the clock of of a show. Meaning you know how how much time can an episode be? How many act breaks do they need? At what time do those act breaks need to fall, blah blah blah. So everybody, everybody in this business already uses different lingo. And you know, number one, in terms of communication is really just, you know, you just ask you will, you know, and you might ask but like, do you mean X? Because I just don’t want to get this confused. It’s, you know, we literally just got a ton of deliverables for our for a show that we’re doing for a network.
Biagio: A new series we haven’t told you about yet. Stay tuned.
Joke: And so it’s like you get this document that says you need to deliver, you know, X, Y, Z and all these different things and, you know, series trailer and series, promo and series, this and blah, blah, blah. And you’re just like, okay. So it literally was like, we got on the phone. We’re like, what do you mean by this? Do you have an example of this? How would you like us to deliver this? Because everybody does it differently. Every network does it differently. Different production companies do it differently. And frankly, even credits in this town, you know, vary. So all we know is showrunner and EP. Everything else is up for grabs. Some people call them story producer, some people call them post producer. I mean, there’s there’s just so many different, different things. So it’s just really, you know, listen, I hear where you’re coming from. We’ve been in the exact same position. Just ask. No one is going to think less of you for asking what something means, for what they mean by that. And, and just, you know, explain that. It’s just like, you know, you want to do a good job and you don’t want there to be any confusion. So let’s just clear up. What exactly do you mean by x? What are you expecting me to deliver when you ask for Z. And then everybody is super happy to answer.
Biagio: Yeah. Listen, I think at some point somewhere in the history of producing unscripted, you know, maybe there could be a basic terms type thing we put up, but it does change so much. It would take so long that I just don’t think it’s something we can really commit to doing right.
Joke: Updating. And it’s just I mean, it’s like, you know, that’s not the business that we’re in. We’re in the business of actually making TV shows. So again, because the answer is super simple is just ask whoever you’re working with. Just ask, what do they mean by it? I mean, to this day when we hire a DP or somebody, they all have different lingo for sometimes their equipment or their things because they went to a different school or, you know, they learned it from a different crew member who had their own shortcut. And it’s just it just becomes confusing if you’re trying to keep track of everything. So it’s like for whatever show you’re working on, whoever you’re working with, just make sure you guys are all on the same page. And then your next show, you’ll just, you know, make sure you’re on the same page with them as well.
Biagio: All right. So that’s going to wrap it up for episode 50. Boy oh boy 50 episodes. I got to tell you, when we started, we didn’t know if we were going to get past the first five we recorded. We didn’t know if anybody was going to tune in and listen. But I want to say thank you very much to all of you who’ve let us know how much you love the podcast. I really has been your response, not to mention the incredible submissions we received and those of you who have teamed up, teamed up with, and had have had so much fun meeting and getting to know all of that has made the podcast totally worth it and we’re going to keep going. Hopefully, hopefully at least another 50. I’d love to be celebrating our 100th in a couple of years here, but we really do want to say thank you so much. We’ve got a lot more to come. And as always, you know, the main reason we’re doing this is we want to meet talented people who might want to work with us, whether it’s because you want to pitch us a show or you just want to get to know us and you want to come work for us someday. So please, if you’re not already on it. Sign up for our newsletter. You can sign up at Producing Unscripted. It’s pretty hard to miss. I pretty much take it on every page. If you’d like to learn how to pitch a show to us, sign up for that newsletter and follow the directions.
Joke: Yeah, and if you have been able to take some of these advice and do great things with it, even if it wasn’t teaming up with us or somebody else, you know, please send us your story. We want to hear about it.
Unidentified Voice: Yeah, we want to hear about your success stories.
Biagio: We want to brag about you on the podcast and put a link to your website or whatever. So listen, reach out to us. I and really, I really do mean this. Hopefully, as evidenced by the fact that I still can barely talk. And here I am doing another podcast with my wife, I. All you listeners really do mean a lot to us. So thank you so much. And I really do hope that we get to team up with you sometime soon.
Joke: Have a good night or good morning. And whenever time you’re listening to this.
Biagio: Happy 50 of a joke.
Unidentified Voice: Oh, God.
Biagio: It’s it’s podcast.
Joke: Okay okay okay.
Biagio: Podcast. Podcast.
Joke: All right. I was like, are you talking birthday and the versuri because all of that is still a ways away.
Biagio: A ways away. No. Happy 50th podcast.
Joke: Happy for your podcast.
Unidentified Voice: To you. Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagioas you.
