Reality TV: An Insider's Guide to TV's Hottest Market (24 page)

Phone Numbers

Phone numbers featured in advertising, store windows, billboards, etc., may need to be blurred in postproduction.

Wide Area Releases

Whether you’re shooting in a hair salon with strangers coming and going all day or at an event like a concert with hundreds or thousands of people in attendance, getting a “wide area release” is critical. These are posted on signs at all entrances to a venue warning people who enter that by doing so, their image and likeness may be recorded for broadcast. Your field team needs to not only post these signs, but ensure that they get a shot of the sign at the location and in context (meaning that the sign and its location are both identifiable in the shot). Without this, the shots gathered at the event or location will likely have to be altered to blur the faces of folks seen therein, or worse yet, cost you use of the scene.

Note

1.
No kidding! Permission to use the “Hollywood” sign must be obtained from a company called Global Icons.

Moving on to product integration, you may remember my earlier mention of the
Seventh Heaven
scripted storyline wherein the characters talked about Oreo cookies incessantly. The idea is to hear the name of the product in a way that can be perceived as organic to action. Your cast may have to “hurry up and get in the Lexus” to get to their next destination, or simply figure out how “life is like a box of Junior Mints.” Your show may go even further by creating challenges around specific products, as with a challenge featured on NBC’s
The Apprentice
in which participants had to create their own specialty pizza for Domino’s. The winning “American Classic Cheeseburger Pizza” was subsequently marketed by the company nationwide, capitalizing on the promotion the newly conceived product gained on the show.

Not all advertising is paid for. Sometimes companies and services flat-out donate product in exchange for a little screen time in a process known as “tradeouts.” When you see a room full of Dell computers or multiple characters checking messages on their sexy, ultra-high-end Sprint mobile phones in an extreme close-up with the logo visible, it’s possible that the products could have been provided to the show as tradeouts. No money (or very little money) has changed hands in exchange for featuring the products.

Product placement and integration aren’t always screamingly obvious, so asking for information about what’s required to appear on screen is critical. If there are deals in place, a tradeout sheet may be available. This document will tell you what products have deals with the show, and what the conditions of those deals are.

Yours may look something like this:

Executive Producer Carmen Mitcho and Supervising Producer Dena Waxman work together to lock an episode. (photo courtesy of Dena Waxman)

Seems pretty direct, doesn’t it?

You’ve got a start date, the amount you’ll be paid and the credit you should receive outlined. Take a closer look, though, and see what you’ve really signed up for. You’ll see many of these provisions time and time again, and they’re always engineered to protect the company’s interests, not yours.

First of all, take a peek at Sections 1 and 2 of your deal memo. Notice that phrase “at will”? That means that if you’re no longer needed at any point, it doesn’t matter if you were told you’d be on board for ten weeks or twenty, they can cut you loose at any time. Most companies are fairly inflexible on this, and while it seems frightening in contrast to traditional jobs that may offer two weeks notice or severance, it’s pretty much standard. The phrase pay-or-play refers to being paid whether or not your services are required and the show is in production or on hiatus. If your show goes down for a week for any reason, you may be sitting at home and not being paid.

In Section 2, you’re offered $2,200/wk, which is inclusive of your agency’s 10%. That means your agency will be getting $220 per week from your gross, not in additional monies from the employer, Big Reality.

Section 3 refers to a series of riders that are not attached to the deal memo. How can you be expected to abide by terms you’ve never seen? Don’t sign anything until you’ve seen everything. I’ll tell you why in just a bit.

Section 4 states that you will be paid a
per diem
(an amount intended to cover your basic expenses) only while shooting on location. I wouldn’t raise a fuss about it, but I’d ask whoever’s doing your deal what the standard
per diem
is and whether it’s paid in advance or at the completion of the shoot as a reimbursement. The amount is important… what if the
per diem
is $40/day and your location is a remote luxury resort where the cheapest thing on the hotel menu is a $23 omelet? You’ll be eating once a day or going into your own pocket.

In Section 5, you’ll be given a Story Producer credit at the sole discretion of the production company. While the possibility is remote, this may mean that your name may not appear in the end credits if your employment is terminated, if another Story Producer is brought in to rewrite your work, or if the network decides they want a shorter credit roll. I recently saw a show on National Geographic that referred viewers to their website to view production credits.

In Section 6, you’re asked to sign both copies of the deal memo and return them to the company. Before you do that, you should probably make yourself a copy of the document for posterity, just as I’d always advise you to do with time cards.

While deal memos can be tricky business, it’s wise to pick your battles and not appear to be too upset with anything you’d prefer to discuss or alter. I very seldom strike out and initial anything in a deal memo… but there is one thing I always add or review and revise: cross-indemnification provisions.

I know. You were enjoying the book up until I went all lawyer-ish on you. Sorry, but you should know how to protect yourself out there.

Aside from never signing a death or dismemberment waiver (which should be obvious), signing off blindly on indemnification clauses in a non-disclosure agreement is about the craziest thing you can do.

The Non-Disclosure Agreement And Cross-Indemnification

Here’s a pretty dense bit of legalese that can get you in real trouble. Nondisclosure agreements protect the company in the event that one of their employees jumps online and blabs the dramatic end of the series to a social networking site or to the media. The show is devalued, meaning viewership may suffer and ad revenue may be lost. This only makes sense, but the amounts specified in non-disclosure agreements can be staggering. Two million dollars. Five million dollars. They’re primarily in place to scare the pants off of you, and while they’re rarely enforced, I don’t suggest pressing your luck.

If phrasing in the document or any riders aims to put you on the hook for damages in the event that the show suffers some sort of financial hit as a result of your action or asks you to hold the producers harmless for any issues, I highly recommend writing in the phrase, “Agreed under condition of cross-indemnification” with your initials following next to the offending provision. In other words, you’ll hold them harmless if they’ll return the favor.