Does anyone not realize that like "reality TV" in general, these are completely staged shows?
^^This!!!
I'm a photographer, and for a little bit, I dabbled in video. I learned some of the "tricks of the trade," and now I can't help but notice them when watching "reality" TV shows. A few examples:
"Scripted Tension." Ever notice how on Survivor, it almost always comes down to the last vote? They always show you the votes of a couple of the people (the ones you already knew who they were going to vote for anyway) while they're writing them down, but those votes are ALWAYS the first ones Jeff Probst reveals. Because if he didn't show those ones early, and it came down to that last vote, then you'd know what the last vote was before Jeff read it (because you saw them writing it down, and haven't seen Jeff read it yet).
Another one. Biggest Loser. The "Scale" they weigh-in on is not actually a scale at all. It's just a square piece of stainless steel. The contestants are actually weighed earlier that day by a doctor on a standard medical scale (the contestants face away from the scale so they don't know their weight). The producers already know everybody's weight coming into the weigh-in, and the have pre-decided the order they'll "weigh" everyone in, in order to keep the totals close and maximize drama, so it always comes down to those last couple of contestants. Ali/Bob don't know the weights coming into the weigh-in, but they don't get to decide the order, either. The order is fed to them by the producers.
Another "unreal" reality TV trick that's easy to spot is the use of doubles in wide shots. Survivor is notorious for this. Say the contestants are doing a challenge. They'll often have a wide, aerial shot of the challenge in progress, obviously taken from a helicopter. Then they'll immediately cut to an over-the-shoulder shot of a contestant working on a knot or solving a puzzle or whatever. Obviously, there's a cameraman standing right next to them. But 2 seconds ago, in the aerial shot, there were no camerapeople in the shot at all - just the contestants. And in the close-up shots, how come you can never hear a helicopter? Because all that aerial footage was taped hours earlier, when they were doing a "dry-run" of the challenge with doubles, to make sure the puzzle was viable (and get the aerial footage to be edited in later).
Another trick - comments added in post-production. This one is often so obvious, it's almost offensive. Take, for example, Celebrity Apprentice. President Trump will be ... oops, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself ... Donald Trump will be explaining the task to the contestants. Then it will cut to a shot from behind Donald, looking at the contestants, with Don in the shot, but with his back to the camera. He'll then say something important about the challenge, but you don't actually see his mouth moving (because, of course, he's facing away from the camera). Often, this is added in the studio, in post, because they either forgot to say it during the shoot, or it got long-winded and they wanted a quick summary instead, or an airplane was flying by at the time, or whatever. But the point is, they're making it look like he's saying it right there in front of them, but by using a back-shot, they can dub it in in post, after the fact.
One more, and this is more of an editing trick than a "scripting" trick. In video editing, if you collect enough footage, you can edit things together in a way that creates pretty much whatever narrative you want. This includes showing "reaction" shots to a remark that weren't actually in reaction to the remark being portrayed, but actually to something done/said earlier/later in the tribal council/boardroom/whatever. They can also show things out of order to make it look like tempers are building higher and higher, when in fact they were up-and-down during the actual taping.
I love this kind of stuff! The dirty tricks video editors can play.
