On The Lot On My Mind
So last night was the premiere of "the most anticipated reality program of the summer", Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnette's "On The Lot" on Fox. When first hearing of this program, I was pretty dead set on NOT watching it, knowing exactly how I would feel about it. But, seeing as how the show was there, pushing the Season Finale of House to next week, and there is not much else on a Tuesday night at 9pm (at least that I care to watch), I figured, what the hell, might as well give it a shot.
The show started off with only 50 contestants, all of whom sent in short films. I can only assume more then 50 people sent in their shorts, and these are the lucky few whom got picked from their work to go on to the "pilot" episode. Unfortunately (or very fortunately) for the audience, we never get to see these short films except for random half second clips they show of the judges watching a hand full of films from the 50 contestants. The contestants get treated to a back-lot tour of Universal Studios, while clips of contestant "thoughts" are intermitantly spliced through the tour footage. Then we meet the judges, which is one of the parts of the show that keeps me interested. Judging the contestants through the entire process of the show until the final day when we find out who gets a $1,000,000 development deal with Dreamworks Pictures (but doesn't mean they will necessarily get a movie made), are Gary Marshal, Carrie Fisher, and Brett Ratner; three people in the movie business who actually have respectable careers and left some kind of positive mark on the industry that is Hollywood. Now I must also say that by no means are these three people the cream of the crop, but the show isn't dragging out garbage either. And I still hate Brett Ratner for what he did to the X-Men, but I'll just put that to the side, for now.
The contestants are given no time to rest when they are handed their first assignment. They are given 24 hours to create a pitch based on one of five log lines decided upon by the producers (I guess, they never say where the log lines come from). A log line is a very basic synopsis of a movie to the very barest of bones, pretty much in one or two sentences at most. One of them was "A rat gets kidnapped by a pharmacutical company and has to break out" and another "a slacker jokingly applies to the CIA and gets accepted" etc. The contestants find out which log-line they have to work on by a piece of paper taped under their chair. They have to do this all on their own and are sent off to start working. One problem with this first task is Hollywood driectors rarely, if ever, have to actually pitch a movie that is not something they are also producing. But it was still funny to see some of these people struggle. They eliminated 14 people with this process and started the end of the program with the begining of the second task for the remaining conestants (they are clearly moving to the meat and potatoes (read the finals) of the show as fast as possible). The second task was in groups of three (of their own choosing) to write direct and edit a 2.5 minute short based on three pre-assigned locations and 2 pre-assigned actors. Let the drama begin!
My personal take on the show is pretty much exactly what I expected. It started out with a hint of extreme jelousy (spell?) for not only missing the announcement for auditions, but also knowing even if I got it, I would not have been able to participate (thanks to my unfortunate personal history). Then once I got past the jelousy (still spell?) I felt a sense of familiarity, not that I felt personally conected to any of these contestants on any kind of remarkable level, but that I could pin point everyone as someone whom I attended film classes with at one point or another. They had a couple of the "classic" dow-ca-bags (the guys who wear the $2,500 suits with blue-tooth earpieces and all), the crazy tattooed artist chicks, the non-film school wannabes, the quiet know-it-alls (who explodes as soon as his ideas are shot down), the jittery jews, the overly talkative people who really have nothing to say, et al. In the pitch contest, it was fun to see some of these people suffer, and a few "decent" seeming people succeed. I found about 80% of the contestants they showed to have really bad ideas, and as soon as I heard the log lines, I thought of decent ideas for all of them. Some of them I even thought of two. Which brings me to the third feeling watching the show, which I am sure I shared with every other film student who was at home watching after a long day of working their non-film related jobs. It was a feeling of "I am so much better then these people, none of them deserve this. I should be up there kicking all their asses." This feeling then led to me feeling semi-unaccomplished, but that quickly faded, thanks to my starting on the slow path to victory (the slow path is better then no path). After all this, I still don't know whether I am willing to commit to the entire series, but if my tuesday nights are slow this summer, my DVR is set to record it. We'll just have to see what happens.
The show started off with only 50 contestants, all of whom sent in short films. I can only assume more then 50 people sent in their shorts, and these are the lucky few whom got picked from their work to go on to the "pilot" episode. Unfortunately (or very fortunately) for the audience, we never get to see these short films except for random half second clips they show of the judges watching a hand full of films from the 50 contestants. The contestants get treated to a back-lot tour of Universal Studios, while clips of contestant "thoughts" are intermitantly spliced through the tour footage. Then we meet the judges, which is one of the parts of the show that keeps me interested. Judging the contestants through the entire process of the show until the final day when we find out who gets a $1,000,000 development deal with Dreamworks Pictures (but doesn't mean they will necessarily get a movie made), are Gary Marshal, Carrie Fisher, and Brett Ratner; three people in the movie business who actually have respectable careers and left some kind of positive mark on the industry that is Hollywood. Now I must also say that by no means are these three people the cream of the crop, but the show isn't dragging out garbage either. And I still hate Brett Ratner for what he did to the X-Men, but I'll just put that to the side, for now.
The contestants are given no time to rest when they are handed their first assignment. They are given 24 hours to create a pitch based on one of five log lines decided upon by the producers (I guess, they never say where the log lines come from). A log line is a very basic synopsis of a movie to the very barest of bones, pretty much in one or two sentences at most. One of them was "A rat gets kidnapped by a pharmacutical company and has to break out" and another "a slacker jokingly applies to the CIA and gets accepted" etc. The contestants find out which log-line they have to work on by a piece of paper taped under their chair. They have to do this all on their own and are sent off to start working. One problem with this first task is Hollywood driectors rarely, if ever, have to actually pitch a movie that is not something they are also producing. But it was still funny to see some of these people struggle. They eliminated 14 people with this process and started the end of the program with the begining of the second task for the remaining conestants (they are clearly moving to the meat and potatoes (read the finals) of the show as fast as possible). The second task was in groups of three (of their own choosing) to write direct and edit a 2.5 minute short based on three pre-assigned locations and 2 pre-assigned actors. Let the drama begin!
My personal take on the show is pretty much exactly what I expected. It started out with a hint of extreme jelousy (spell?) for not only missing the announcement for auditions, but also knowing even if I got it, I would not have been able to participate (thanks to my unfortunate personal history). Then once I got past the jelousy (still spell?) I felt a sense of familiarity, not that I felt personally conected to any of these contestants on any kind of remarkable level, but that I could pin point everyone as someone whom I attended film classes with at one point or another. They had a couple of the "classic" dow-ca-bags (the guys who wear the $2,500 suits with blue-tooth earpieces and all), the crazy tattooed artist chicks, the non-film school wannabes, the quiet know-it-alls (who explodes as soon as his ideas are shot down), the jittery jews, the overly talkative people who really have nothing to say, et al. In the pitch contest, it was fun to see some of these people suffer, and a few "decent" seeming people succeed. I found about 80% of the contestants they showed to have really bad ideas, and as soon as I heard the log lines, I thought of decent ideas for all of them. Some of them I even thought of two. Which brings me to the third feeling watching the show, which I am sure I shared with every other film student who was at home watching after a long day of working their non-film related jobs. It was a feeling of "I am so much better then these people, none of them deserve this. I should be up there kicking all their asses." This feeling then led to me feeling semi-unaccomplished, but that quickly faded, thanks to my starting on the slow path to victory (the slow path is better then no path). After all this, I still don't know whether I am willing to commit to the entire series, but if my tuesday nights are slow this summer, my DVR is set to record it. We'll just have to see what happens.