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Survival of the fittest
« on: Oct 15th, 2002, 9:24am » |
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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/14/1034561099400.html
Survival of the fittest
October 15 2002
Reality TV was meant to have done its dash, but one show continues to outwit, outplay and outlast the rest. Greg Hassall talks to Mark Burnett, the man behind Survivor.
Remember Australian Survivor? Channel Nine probably hopes you don't. If anything is going to dampen enthusiasm for Survivor: Thailand, the latest US instalment, it'll be memories of Nine's local version. From the first episode, in which a key challenge literally fizzled out in the wind, to the awkward finale at the Crown Casino, it looked cheap, ill-conceived and poorly executed.
Australian Survivor was a necessary evil for Nine. To show the US version, Nine had to negotiate with CBS, the network that produces it, and Castaway Television Productions, the UK company that owns the format. A condition of the Castaway deal was that Nine produce a local version, but it had to do so without crucial elements of the US version, such as the distinctive music.
Made for a fraction of the cost of the US version, Australian Survivor was hampered by poor casting, dreadful post-production and a barren, wind-blasted setting on the South Australian coast.
Worse still, a scheduling clash meant Australian Survivor aired here instead of the fourth US version, Survivor: Marquesas. That was everything Australian Survivor wasn't, with high production values, a stunning setting, slick editing and enough twists and turns to keep everyone guessing.
Although no one at Nine will admit it, Australian Survivor was not good television and there's a danger it poisoned the well.
Michael Healy, Nine's Sydney program manager, is confident viewers will give Survivor: Thailand a chance, pinning his hopes on a Pavlovian response. "The moment you hear that music it's basically a call to action," he says. "Once you hear that music it all clicks back into place." In other words, they'll realise it's not Australian Survivor 2.
When Survivor: Thailand premiered in the US a few weeks ago it scored the best first-night ratings for the series since Survivor 2. People have been predicting the demise of reality TV for more than a year, so why is Survivor bucking the trend?
"Because it's in a class of it's own," said executive producer Mark Burnett when he spoke to smh.com.au recently. "It's more like a movie. Dramatically it's got great story arcs and it's very intriguing."
Burnett, the brains behind US Survivor and the successfull Eco-Challenge series, speaks quickly. A former British paratrooper, he's business-like and slightly impatient. "A lot of the other shows, I don't think they're willing to spend the money and have the right kind of crew," he continues. "More than half of my crew have never worked in TV; they're actually feature-film professionals. So there's a different look and a feel to the show, and in terms of dramatic story-telling I think we do much better."
While many would agree, Survivor has its share of critics. When the US version first screened in 2000, some deplored its win-at-all-costs philosophy. It was considered the epitome of fin-de-siecle decadence and greed, representing all that was bad about the then-novel genre of reality TV. Now the reality-TV tsunami has washed over us, such criticism seems almost quaint. With shows such as Temptation Island continually lowering the bar, Survivor looks like a beacon of good taste.
Others questioned Survivor's legitimacy as a game show, claiming it was manufactured, even rigged. A contestant from the first series has sued Burnett, claiming he pressured two fellow contestants to vote against her. Burnett denies this and has counter-sued, but was soon playing down the "reality" aspect of the game, calling it "a drama with non-actors in an unscripted, contrived setting".
So, yes, it's manufactured. But all reality TV is about constructing narratives. Selective editing is essential to create storylines and dramatic tension. That's what makes it work as drama.
Harder to counter are criticisms that it's all a bit tacky. Those corny tribe names and rituals, the intrusive product placement. For Australian viewers, particularly, it can all seem terribly American - a celebration of flag-waving, god-bothering hubris. But in some ways its very otherness is part of its appeal. Perhaps one of the reasons Australian Survivor fell so flat was its sheer ordinariness. It was like watching your neighbours squabbling around the barbecue.
Ultimately, Survivor works because its fundamentals are sound; the rules simple but ingenious. For the uninitiated, 16 contestants are stranded somewhere exotic and divided into two tribes. They compete in a variety of challenges - sometimes for rewards, sometimes to determine which group has to vote out a member. When there are eight contestants left they merge and compete among themselves. When two remain, the seven contestants eliminated before them decide who wins $US1 million.
Winning requires a combination of luck and strategy. You must be strong enough to win challenges for your team but not so strong you'll be perceived as a threat when it's one-on-one. And you can't afford to get too many people off-side as ultimately they can stop you winning the prize. Forming voting blocks, or alliances, is very effective, but will only get you so far. And they can unravel spectacularly.
These conditions produce a peculiar kind of stress and it's the psychological aspect of the game that is most compelling. Even Australian Survivor became an absorbing struggle as the last few contestants battled it out. Put hungry, paranoid, sleep-deprived people together and anything can happen. Even though they've all watched the show by now and know all the pit-falls, they inevitably fall into the same traps. They lose their cool, make promises they can't keep and antagonise their team-mates. With Survivor, human nature is the real winner.
To make the most of the game's potential, good casting is essential. Viewers need their heroes and villains. Luckily Burnett has a large pool of applicants to draw on but even he admits it's hard to predict how they'll behave once the game begins.
"How they appear to be in the casting office in the city, you don't know how they're going to turn out when they start being hungry," he says. "All of them have the ability to become a villain, because they're all A-type people who want to be leaders and, of course, only one can lead."
Given Burnett selects ambitious extroverts, it's curious that the most successful strategy is to keep a low profile. With the exception of the arrogant and openly manipulative Richard Hatch, winner of the first Survivor, the other winners have been co-operative, genial people who avoided conflict. It seems a source of mild irritation to Burnett: "No one ever says when you're casting, 'I'm going to be below the radar and say nothing', because it's of no interest to me, is it? So everyone tells you they're going to be aggressive and lead."
Ultimately, however, Burnett holds all the cards and is not afraid to change the rules as the game unfolds. In Survivor 3, set in Africa, a group of smug, lazy twentysomethings looked set to pick-off their elders one by one, until Burnett swapped half the members of each team (an idea he came up with for Survivor 2, but never implemented). Weeks of strategising and carefully constructed alliances went out the window. It might not have been fair, but it was great TV.
"What we have learned is, to keep things working at their best, it's very important that we keep the people playing the game off-balance," Burnett says.
"If they're predicting how the game goes, it doesn't help the show whatsoever. They need to be feeling uncomfortable, and out of their comfort zone.
What makes raw emotional drama is when they cannot predict it."
To that end, it seems, anything goes. With each instalment, Burnett rejigs the format slightly, keeping one step ahead of the contestants. The challenges, too, have become more psychologically complex. But can you get people too off-balance? Survivor is not an easy game and in the closing stages of previous instalments contestants have appeared in varying stages of psychological meltdown.
After all, a shadow hangs over Survivor. In 1997, a version of the format called Expedition Robinson was produced by a Swedish network. One of the first contestants to be voted off was Sinisa Savija, a 34-year-old Bosnian migrant. Not long after he was eliminated he committed suicide, generating a storm of recrimination in Sweden.
Although Burnett had nothing to do with that show, it clearly informs his thinking. Speaking of the strain on contestants, he says: "The most important thing for us is to make sure they've not been psychologically damaged. The embarrassment of being voted off, that's really what we're dealing with, so we have a psychologist on the crew, on location the entire time. In casting, they go through seven hours of testing to determine what kind of person they are and if they're likely to be mentally hurt by the embarrassment of being voted off. Anybody who can't deal with that, we don't choose."
Well, it's worked so far and Burnett seems confident Survivor will run and run. He's already casting Survivor 6, rumoured to be set on the Amazon, and is looking beyond that to future locations. "It's getting much harder because of war situations and terrorism as far as safe locations, but there are still plenty."
Whether that means we'll see another Survivor set in Australia is unclear, though Burnett teasingly adds: "I've now shot two different shows in Australia, so I certainly expect to be shooting in Australia again sometime."
Who knows, maybe he could even make that stretch of South Australian coast look interesting.
Survivor: Thailand begins on Thursday at 9.30pm, followed by a double episode on Saturday at 8.30pm.
Secrets of survival
* The format was conceived by Charlie Parsons, who owns Castaway Television Productions with Bob Geldoff.
* The average age of contestants on each show is 35, give or take a couple of months. With one exception, the winners have been older than that.
* Survivor: Thailand contestants are, on average, the oldest so far.
* There are no losers in Survivor. The first contestant voted off gets $US2500, while the runner-up takes home $US100,000.
* Contestants face expulsion if they conspire to share the winner's prize money.
* The winner of Survivor 2, Tina Wesson, was not one of the 16 originally chosen to take part.
* Only one contestant has dropped out so far - Michael Skupin, who fell into a fire during Survivor 2, receiving burns to his hands and face.
* After Survivor 3, two of the runners-up were reportedly paid significant compensation by CBS after it emerged the answer to a question in the penultimate challenge was wrong. CBS, and the two contestants, have refused to comment.
*Host Jeff Probst is the writer and director of the independent film Finder's Fee (2001), starring James Earl Jones and Robert Forster.
* Probst was stung by a jellyfish during Survivor 1, received an electric shock when he relieved himself on an electric fence in Survivor 2 and was stung by a scorpion in Survivor 3.
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