Scandal! A continuity flub from a pickup-scene sets the internet ablaze and now the “reality” of reality is being questioned afresh. As a former reality TV editor there was no time in my long career that I thought reality tv was real. I have recorded my own voice in a whisper when needing to make a fake work in a late night bedroom conversation scene. I have recorded kissing and breath sounds to make a scene work. I have used interview tape in scene while the camera pointed at something else. I pull surprised reactions from one moment and add them to another to sell the surprise. I have used footage out of context in every show I have ever edited. In short there is a bag of tricks that are ‘fake’ that make up the shows that feel real. These tricks are lubricants that allow the viewer to have a seamless experience, and today’s viewer demands that the experience is seamless and ‘real’. Well folks, sometimes you find out how they make the sausage and it changes the taste.
As I have emphasized numerous times on these pages the shows are not real in the sense that documentaries are real, but rather they deal with the reality of interpersonal relationships in ways that we can all relate and that hold truths about real social norms of the moment. This reminds me of when the GOT fans lost their latte over the Starbucks coffee cup left in scene. No one was concerned that the fake world of GOT was no longer fake, they just were upset about the coffee mug. My child, when they were 10, would relish in pointing out all the inconsistencies in scenes from film and TV. It tickled some part of the brain that gave a sense of power over this flat portal to a thousand worlds. Settle down everyone! The scene is still real in that a character in the show is expressing the truth about her emotional state and mental health. According to the statement made by Ariana, the cast member in question, the scene retains it’s realness. Apparently the producers, upon editing saw that the scene was good, really good – especially because the character was being real. Unfortunately though for mundane reasons of tv production there was not enough coverage of the original scene to create the illusion that TV viewers have come to expect, so a pickup scene was shot to fill in the edges for the viewers. There was a Starbucks cup left in the scene in the form of Ariana’s longer hair and all hell broke loose. It was like the production company was running slow wi-fi at the cafe that all the out of work writers go to ‘write’ and there was a riot of righteous indignation. Come on people, give everyone a break and enjoy the message of the scene! Sometimes the wi-fi doesn’t work right and you have to just take things in stride.