On The Lot: Discuss the show

The "one page in one hour" challenge went away because a) nobody made anything watchable in one hour, so there was nothing to show, and b) no one threw a complete hissy fit during the course of their hour, so there was nothing to show.

The contestants had a week to make these comedies.

Why didn't they tell us what the theme, genre, or challenge for next week's show was gonna be?

"America voted, and they don't care that you made a trailer instead of a comedy..." Really? Can I go on American Idol and sing a Beatles song when they ask for Rolling Stones? How about I go on Bowling For Dollars and shoot the pins with an Uzi?

I'd call this show a train wreck, but those are exciting. How much longer could they stretch out the results? After the first row, I knew who the people on the chopping block were (whoever's in the center of the row) and I knew they weren't ever going to tell us who was cut until after this commercial break and this additional plug for Ford Trucks.

Bah. Humbug.
 
knightly said:
I found those 1 hour bits on the cutting room floor part of the website. Some of it looks pretty darn good.
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Found them, too. Thanks for the heads-up.

Incidentally, Shira-Lee is 42 so there's hope for us old guys if this is our goal. :)
 
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Now this show is beginning to make me wonder. How did we go from a 1 minute Hollywood production back to home towns and handicams? Wasn't the whole point of this show to give the participants access to "The Lot" and all that the studio has to offer? Or did I miss something?

And our attractive host is hardly ready for live television. She is no Ryan Seacrest. She is tripping over the que cards a bit much for this class of production. If this keeps up, I fear there won't be a season 2. It seems that this week they've regressed into nothing more than a televised film festival with mediocre production values, hardly something worthy of a Spielberg attachment. I did like Michael Bay's appearance and agreed with all of his comments at least.

Oh, and what's with them making the participants reveal who voted for whom? Are they trying to create dissention to highten drama in future episides? Some were very hesitant to raise their hands on who voted for the film they disliked most, and I don't blame them. That was lame, IMO.
 
VPTurner said:
If this keeps up, I fear there won't be a season 2.
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I can pretty much guarantee you, there will be NO Season 2. Fox is working as hard as possible just to limp along till the end of Season 1, so they don't make an "enemy" of either Mark Burnett or Steven Spielberg.
 
Yeah, Steve's right. Unless ratings skyrocket and the filmmakers get better, season 2 ain't happenin'.

The format is all wrong. No one wants to see an American Idol type live show, follow the filmmakers as they film, show behind the scenes type stuff and don't just focus on the bad ones, focus on the ones that get it right.

Is it just me, or are the filmmakers regressing?

And could they have picked a worse cast of judges? Carrie Fisher is not nearly as nice or good looking as Paula Abdul, and none of the other revolving judges is as critical or honest as Simon Cowell or cool as Randy Jackson.

It's just bad.
 
I think they're close to the format...the no one who wants to see them in an american idol type of show is us...the american public, from what I've gathered, could care less how it's made, they just want to see the product.

The problem is there's no indication of what the next challenge is...there's no indication of why it's ok for carrie fisher and gary marshall to be sexist about their judging, but claim that what's his face was being prejudicial and cruel towards mentally challenged folks in "Ghetta Rhoom". In "American Idol", the audience is kept in the know about what's happening with the next show all the time. That's missing here.

The host needs more practice with live work.

Michael Bay needs to stay as a judge. He's actually critical of the pieces rather than trying to be really nice to all of the contestants...I guarantee that they wouldn't be that nice to them if they saw them behind closed doors. They'd accuse the filmmakers of wasting their time and send them packing. Maybe Kevin Smith could come and lambast the filmmakers for a bit...or Tarantino...he'd be able to tell them everything they were doing wrong from a film history point of view. I think a film critic would be a good addition too. We need solid honesty in the judging of this show. Everyone can tell good singing when they hear it...not everyone can tell a good movie when they see it...as everyone sees the film differently.
 
I tried to watch the first episode and gave up by minute 16.... it was Reality Show trash to me. Is it still on or was it cancelled?
 
It's still on, these kinds of shows they have to commit to a season for it...otherwise, they'll have to pay out the participants...since it's a live show...at least the results are.
 
I hate the format. Stupid Idol shows.

Micheal Bay was hilarious! I hate the compressed hour. 5 filmmakers each round? What is that? Why is the show trying to be like every other reality show? Where's the 'upped' stakes? What's wrong with the poo-poo/fart/barf/re-re humor? Why does there need to be more female directors? What happened to Princess Leia? Where's Spielberg? Is he waiting until the finale, to float down a white staircase on a cloud and propose to the winning filmmaker?

It certainly didn't have much "oomph" to the kick-off... hopefully it'll snowball, but... outlook not so good...
 
Having been sucked into the last season of Idol...this is not following the format closely enough to work quite right. Idol has this format dialled in.

This group of folks hasn't done one before, they should have hired one of the makers of idol to work on this one. They're missing alot of pieces that make the format work:

-Making the audience (i.e. us) feel like they are part of the process

-The judging isn't confident, there's no specifics for the contestants to work on for next week (which aparently they don't even have to do now).

-I don't know why they've shifted to once a week, I don't know why they went home to make their short films or what the specific topic/challenge was.

-I'm not connecting with any of the filmmakers at all like I did with the contestants in Idol.

They need to work on their interpretation of the format. It could work, but they're trying to differentiate themselves for some reason from "American Idol" and targeting the wrong audience. The TV audience at large doesn't care about who the director of a film is...they care about the faces on the screen. We are not the TV audience at large, we do care about who's behind the camera. We are also the only ones watching this show. Actors would have been a better choice for a show of this format, but since they've targetted a smaller audience with the show...they need to show us what we want to see and hook us early on. I was absolutely hooked on Idol from the first show I saw, they have it down to a science. I'm going to suffer through this season of "the lot" and if you'd like to not have to watch it to see what happens, I'll report back from the shallow grave site where this show is headed.
 
Now that I have been laid off I can publicly say that I have been a camera operator on the show since February. We've been under a confidentially agreement and sometimes it's been frustrating not being able to say anything. I still can't talk about some things about how the show was run for example.

We shot a lot of behind the scenes footage and very little of it made it to air. As you all have noticed, they suddenly started leaning more toward an Idol format, but they got very few votes. knightly said it - the general public doesn't care who the director is. Idol works because it's the cult of personality. Even if the person isn't a great singer, people like and vote for personality. On this show even if people like the director, the moment the director "performs" (shows their movie) they are no longer on the screen. The general public loses interest. Even us filmmakers lose interest. You've pointed out that watching the directors at work is what make them interesting as people - not their movie.

That, and the undeniable fact that the general public doesn't watch short films on a regular basis so they have no frame of reference. Even us filmmakers don't watch short films.
 
DR, you got to run a camera on that...did any of your shots make it on the air that I'd have seen? I've even watched the cutting room floor stuff on the website.
 
and laid off? did the show come to a screeching halt? or is that how they end a camera operator job in hollywood if they like you.
 
Very little of the behind the scenes footage made it to air. But there were a few shots of mine. I haven't looked at anything on the site - is there good stuff there?
 
directorik said:
Very little of the behind the scenes footage made it to air. But there were a few shots of mine. I haven't looked at anything on the site - is there good stuff there?
Click to expand...

You should look at the site. Some of the best material is on the cutting room floor. I am more interested in the behind the scenes action than I am about the "presentation" of the short films. I wish they'd cut the dramatic pauses and just lead into each film with some more behind the scenes action. I'm sure they're trying to create suspense, but they're just creating "boring". The pacing sucks, IMO.

Since there is so much content on the web site, it seems as though they are catering moreso to the online community than to the television community.
 
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