Are Newsroom Backgrounds Real Or Fake?

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1:19Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment, Questions and Answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm very, very well. From the way you're looking at your notes, I think you might have some any other business. I have some amusing any other business. We talked last week about people finding out they've been killed off. Oh, actors finding out they've been killed off. My friend Rob Hutton, who is wonderful, he's the sketch writer for The Critic, and he's got a great podcast about war movies called War Movie Theatre. But he writes to me to say, when I was on the Sunday Mirror, I told the Oxo family that they were being killed off.

1:55They didn't actually die in the adverse, obviously. So I think that's one of those door knocks where you say, and how do you feel about the fact that they're killing you off? No. Not that the Oxford family all live together. I think he would have... They would have done it like when you see the police raids on organised crime gangs and it has to be synchronised. It's exactly like that when you're telling a TV advertising family that they're no longer going to be in the ad. There are four different journalists at 5am. No, it's awful because honestly, if you're in a big long-running advert as well, that's good money for not much work.

2:22They should have had the call from the advertising agency, but as so often, things fall through the cracks. Didn't happen. Speaking of reporters, but this is a rather, I don't want to downgrade your reporting, Rob, but a rather more serious reporting, war reporting. Angela Sharp would like to know, I was listening to a news report the other day talking about the lack of access to any food or water for the population in one of the war zones and wondering when war reporters are living in conflict zones, how do the team manage to get access to food and electricity? Thank you, Angela. It's rather multifaceted because most conflict zones are very different.

2:55Most war zones are very different. I spoke to my good friend Ramita Navai, who's won like a million Emmys for war reporting and foreign reporting. Last thing she did, she literally, she smuggled a camera into a woman's prison in Afghanistan that she'd shot undercover footage. So she's always doing extraordinary things in extraordinary places. So I talked to her about, she's always in a conflict zone whenever I speak to her. It's almost like she's a jinx. So she said, well, there's a series of different things. So front lines, front line can mean a number of different things. If you see some of the slightly softer, newsy things of somebody in a trench, by and large, they're very safe and they're away from any of the action.

3:29If you're actually in the trenches, like in a war zone, so she's got a friend of hers who's in Ukraine at the moment, then if you're in the trenches, you're embedded with a military unit. And so your rations or whatever the military unit's rations are, and your safety is whatever their safety is. You're not always embedded, but if you are embedded, this is how being embedded works. If you're on the front line, you will be embedded. if you're in the trenches you're embedded most of the job of an actual war reporter is off to the side where unusual things are happening and if you're in somewhere like when there was fighting in Mosul the whole of Mosul is not a no-go zone there's pockets of Mosul where if you're a war reporter that's where you go, that's where you stay and you can go and report on the action or you'd be in a bill and you'd drive in every morning because you'd be in territory that was safe and you would go as close as possible to the front line and Ramita says anytime there's any situation like where there's, you know, an ever-shifting front line, a huge sort of shanty town builds up of almost like a Wild West prospecting town of people coming in and setting up stores.

4:30She said there's a madam goes from war zone to war zone and sets up brothels. So whenever there is war, there is like this weird sort of subsystem of people who come in and make a bit of cash out of it because they know there's, you know, there's going to be news crews and film crews and freelancers and all sorts of people there. She talked about when the militias were chasing ISIS out of Iraq, and she's embedded with one of the militias. And on there, she said, well, you don't know where the front line is because you don't know where ISIS are. So you essentially go from village to village with the militia, and ISIS wouldn't be there.

5:04And then you go to the next village, and they would have just disappeared. And she said she was going to one village where ISIS had literally disappeared so recently. She sat down in a trench and pulled a blanket over her, and it was still warm. and you can see the ISIS flag kind of 300 yards away. So all conflict zones are different. If you are absolutely at the front line of it, you're either with soldiers or fighters of various sides and you have what they have, or you're slightly further back. If you went down to Afghanistan, for example, and you're a reporter, you'd stay at Camp Bastion. You might be driven out to a front line and then driven back to Camp Bastion.

5:39So you'd be looked after in that way. The people who are, you know, the Ramita Navayis of this world who will fly out anywhere and try and tell stories of people whose stories aren't being told, they will find what they can where they can. They're not, by and large, going along to five-star hotels and having breakfast and then popping down to the front line, although there are certain war reporters who would do that. The ones I know, the ones I talk to do everything they can to help and find ways to funnel funds to people and find ways to funnel help as well. It's very hard to do that job and see the things you see and not find a humanitarian response inside you.

6:13So you tell the story of the war, which is all well and good, but the aftermath of the war is usually the story. A question to you, Marina, from Owen Keenan. Thanks, Owen. Recently, the Minecraft movie trailer came out. They can't say we don't have range, can they? We've gone from Mosul to Minecraft very quickly. Recently, the Minecraft movie trailer came out and has been heavily review-bombed. In recent years, the same thing happened with the Sonic movie trailer, and following this, they completely redid the CGI of the character. What room is there for movie reshoots, re-edits and changes after a trailer comes out?

6:44The short answer is there is a lot if you have money. That Minecraft movie trailer is absolutely hated. It's got millions of dislikes on YouTube. And the trouble is when you have these kind of very engaged fan bases who are sometimes gamers. Is it a coincidence? They are the audience to whom you are trying to sell the film. So you have to do something about it. I have to say trailers are absolutely huge still and the way they come to people now is in different ways to how they used to, but people are seeing them on YouTube all the time and they have a huge number of views. They are made by people who are not the director and who are totally designed to just do trailers.

7:23I was talking to a big director who said that on his second day of shooting a big franchise movie, he was asked, can we have this? We need the shots of the trailer. And he was like, sorry, the trailer? I've just started shooting. Day one or two for a teaser trailer shot. It might just be one shot of, I don't know, a weapon or a car or whatever it is. It sets the tone really early. And then obviously, as you know, there are several trailers for every movie now. Now, the first one for Gladiator 2 that's about to come out, which people hated that. And not because of anything they were seeing on the screen.

7:54And as I said, it was very Denzel heavy because he's going to get you out to the audience and you might stay to the theatres and you might stay for Paul Mascow or whatever it is. But it was because it had Kanye and Jay-Z, that no church, no church in the world. and people thought, no, when I think of Gladiator, I think of classical music and blah, blah, and I don't like the way you've done this at all. Now, Sonic, which you also mentioned, Sonic was really difficult because they had a load of toy deals. If you want to start injection molding that plastic, you've got to do it quite early. You're not doing it the night before the movie comes out.

8:21So they knew that they were going to jeopardize. It was a problem with the teeth and some other stuff with Sonic. They knew that they were going to really jeopardize those toy deals and that it was going to be very, very expensive. Obviously, it is your audience, and they did it and it became very successful and it's now on its sort of third iteration or whatever. So it's almost like focus grouping. It is, but you can, you can go too far. Now what about that? Snakes on a plane, right? Everyone saw that trailer and was like, sorry, Samuel L. Jackson is just going, I'm done with these fucking snakes on his fucking plane.

8:54You know, everyone was like, this is amazing. I want to see this movie. But these people were ironists, Richard. They didn't really, and so everyone's like, everyone loves this movie because the trailer just went viral. And so they've spent, they pumped more money into the movie because obviously it hadn't quite been finished at this point. They pumped more money. They didn't even make back the marketing right for this movie, okay? People liking things ironically has cost an awful lot of money to an awful lot of people over the years. By the way, semantically, I'm very, very interested in M-fucking.

9:22Yeah, so am I. While I was saying it, I was like, why didn't I say it the other way? As you know, I just can't get any of these things in the right order. It's just as... Because mother effing, is that better? That's sort of worse. I basically swear a lot try and censor it. I don't know how to do it. What's wrong with the word mother? It's the other one that I... Mother effing. That's how I should have done it. That's quite bad as well, though, isn't it? People listen to this with kids in their car. As always, kids, we've said it a million times, adults mustn't swear in front of kids, kids mustn't swear in front of adults.

9:50And look, I don't even know how to do it, kids. You know, I strongly advise us to just bleep everything. Just bleep everything, please. Impose production on this. It might cost a lot of money, and we might have to go back on some of our toy deals, but please, can you bleep everything? People have listened to the trailer and by and large they like it, but they wondered if you could bleep every single word. They would have liked that more. I tell you what, sorry, randomly I've just remembered in terms of trailers and changing things. Sometimes it gets really close. Return of the Jedi was called Revenge of the Jedi till really, really late.

10:23And there were posters up in shopping malls and you can still buy Revenge of the Jedi posters. They're real like, you know, collector's items. and they changed, George Lucas changed it really near at the end because he thought that a true Jedi was too class, it would never seem revenge. And so really right up to the last minute, things are changing. Yes, they are heavily retooling aspects of that Minecraft movie because if the fan base don't like it, the existing fan base, you're going to have a problem. God, imagine being involved in that heavy retooling. It's sort of building blocks, isn't it?

10:55I'm not going to get into it, but they are heavy retooling. One of my absolute favourite things of your show, The Franchise, is just the constant, just changing things on the hoof as to who's available and when. And just so you know, the world of big franchises and what they need from you. And just, you know, suddenly throwing new problems to directors. And I can't imagine just being the Minecraft production team. In the end, people are just shooting things in these franchise movies with a sort of big green nebulous shape. When everyone's stopped arguing and when the fan base has stopped threatening to kill you, you will CGI in a weapon that is acceptable to the fan base, the plot, the director.

11:31I mean, it's the various stakeholders in this scenario. So yeah, everything is so last minute. Shall we go to a break and then entirely retool the second half of the podcast? Yes, let's do that. Lowe's knows how to help make your home holiday ready for less. Get Select Style Selections Vinyl Flooring for just$1.99 per square foot and have it installed before the festivities begin. Our team can help you every step of the way. See a Lowe's Red Vest Associate or visit lowes.com slash holiday install to get started. Lowe's, we help you save. Basic install only. Date restrictions apply. Subject to availability.

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13:12Welcome back, everybody. Now, here is a very good question from Miranda Kreese about regional TV. She says, we're following your advice and watching Rivals. Well done. However, in doing so, we have become fixated on the nuances of, I knew people would do this, on the nuances of regional ITV franchising in the 1980s. Did the clergy really have the prominent role in franchising decisions that the programme suggests it did? Was there some sort of public vote to decide who got the franchise? Honestly, it's amazing. By the way, I'm still one episode out. We're really trying to eke it out. It's so good.

13:46So good. I don't want it to finish. I'm really really enjoying it but yeah to have the battle for a regional ITV franchise can we just expect more franchises for people who haven't watched the show absolutely so if you haven't watched the show so ITV used to be split into 15 different companies you'd have the big ones which were Granada Thames and so on and then there'd be these regional franchises you know in the south west the south east Tynetees you know things like that Borders and they would make regional programs and then essentially tie into the rest of ITV so some ITV shows like Coronation Street would show across all of the network.

14:20The regional franchisees would make the news programmes, magazine programmes, occasionally make shows that would go across the whole network. So Anglia Television used to make, say, the Century, things like that. So it was 15 different companies that were all ITV, all of which had sort of opt-outs, but all of which made things for the network as well. And they came up for renewal every... Every 10 years or so. And they were insanely lucrative at the time. Like anything in the 1980s, they were insanely lucrative. 80s money. Because, you know, it's advert money from the 80s. It's a lot, I would say.

14:53And so Rivals was written in the mid-80s, and the franchise ran, which I'm guessing that Jilly Cooper is thinking of, was 81. And, yeah, the stories are amazing. Anyone who ever bid for an ITV franchise, they would always be the incumbent, and then they would say every 10 years, a sort of new consortium or new consortium would come together. What she does in the Rivals, which is, you know, people sort of go, I'm going to find a local vicar, local restaurateur is exactly what they all did. Pretty much all of the consortia were led by some white boy who would then team up with a lord. They'd like get somebody who was like the Earl of somewhere.

15:31So say it's for the West Country, they'd literally look through who's who and go, well, who's an Earl who lives in Dorset? Talk to a number of Earls until one of them said, yes, I'll do it for 8%. Yeah, of course I will. They would then have to build a sort of coalition of people from all different areas. Supposedly the great and the good. Supposedly the great and the good. There's one story, I think it might have been the West Country franchise in 81 and there were two rival consortia and they were all after the same people because it's the early 80s. They would sit with who's who and go through it, find anyone who lived in that franchise area who did anything that was of any interest whatsoever and then go to their house and talk to them.

16:09That is the way they would do it. But there's a brilliant thing almost like a transfer between these two consortia that someone said give you my lord for two of your bishops that was those were the sort of coalitions they were building it they would get local hoteliers they would get like head teachers of primary schools like anybody to be on the in in these consortia they would uh try and you know to answer the question was there a public vote it wasn't it was decided by the iba who were their own cattle of fish oh i mean and that was full of lords You think that was beyond reproach? That's the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

16:44Interesting use of both independent and authority. And they would be full of lords and what have you as well. So it was absolutely that wonderful 80s thing of, I need a member of the House of Lords. I need some landed gentry. I need someone who owns a shop. I need like three people who've made a television programme. Like, oh, yeah. I mean, we've got someone, yeah, we've got someone who can do drama, is it? Is that that strand? But that's it. But yeah, it would always be, oh, no, this guy, I know that this guy did a kid's cartoon in Wales in the mid-60s, so he's come on board. It feels like such a weird idea for a drama, but it was absolutely real, absolutely true, and it's exactly what happened.

17:20You know, even in rivals, they talk to the guy who owns the bar, and you're like, yeah, that's what they would do. There's wonderful bits where they're sort of saying, so I think, okay, what have we got? So we've got the church leader, that's great. We've got the leader of Somerset County Council. saw okay that's really good uh we've got someone who once directed a television uh advertisement great we got a the leader of a car dealer i think we got that covered uh we've got a um an actor good that's that's the arts we've got a um a sports star that's brilliant i tell you one thing we are missing uh is a woman and that's genuinely there's amazing uh article i was reading about and they just okay that's we we need to find a woman uh so they would they would go off and find one.

18:03But yeah, it's really, I'm not surprised that Julie Cooper, having lived through that 1981 franchise row, I'm not surprised she thought, oh my God, this is an amazing idea for a book. Especially for someone who's interested in the social comedy of a county or a fictional county. It just is a way to bring all of those different types of characters in and just in a completely credible way. It's essentially almost all of the consortia where a series of Big fish in small ponds with one or two small fish in big ponds. Alistair Otto has a question for you, Marina. Have a guess as to whether I like Alistair Otto as a name.

18:41I think you love it. Very much so. Thanks, Alistair. Alistair says, When watching Sky News the other morning, it struck me that some poor folk have to do their day jobs in full view of us, the viewer. Why do broadcast channels like Sky and the BBC do this? Are there certain expectations of those who are doing their day job adjacent to live TV studios? And do they have contractual terms which outline they will work in a live TV environment. I totally agree. Like what you, if you're in the background sort of picking your nose, you're not very happy about it. The way they get around it is, first of all, Sky News, that is the office.

19:10And it wasn't that long ago that someone was doing some item about the latest piece of skullduggery by some water company. And then in the background, you can see this woman really losing her temper. You know, I don't know what about, potentially about the greatest, latest piece of skullduggery by the water company. So Sky do actually have, Sky News I'm talking about because, you know, that's the office environment you see. The BBC, sorry to break the illusion here, because my children, by the way, used to watch it, my husband works at the BBC and they used to watch it trying to see if they would see their father.

19:38It's like, yeah, he doesn't work in the news bit anyway. But you know when you see that big thing at New Broadcasting House? He's literally, he hasn't had a job for seven years. No, no, he just goes out. He's in the park. We actually have a joke that that's where he is, but I think he does actually go in. Anyhow, the New Broadcasting House one, the BBC News one, is a loop. So if you watch it... You're kidding me. No, it's a loop. You can see the same guy go over to the same desk with the same piece of papers. I'm sorry, it works better that way. Can you imagine? Given that every story about the BBC is completely demented, anything that happened in the background of that, there would be like four Daily Mail reporters whose job was simply to watch the background to see if anything vaguely...

20:12Oh, hold on. This feels demented. Something vaguely weird is happening in the background. Are you saying it's fake news? Well, no, I'm saying it's fake news background. The BBC is selling us a simulation. Okay. The ITV news studio is sort of in a dungeon and there's someone whose job it is every day to go outside and see what the weather is so they know what background to put, like a sunny background or something. So literally someone has to go outside, see what the weather is, come back in and tell the news. Wow. That's just reminded me, there was a This Morning where they pretended to be doing, in the Phil and Holly era, obviously, where they pretended to be doing it live on Christmas Day.

20:48Why would you do that? Just say it to people. People got really angry. First of all, what are you doing watching This Morning on Christmas morning anyway? but they could see the people sort of commuting to work. And by that stage, I think it was in lockdown, and I think that they changed to some obscure tier system. All these things that happened in lockdown, I can't remember. And people were really annoyed, like, well, you wouldn't be allowed to be doing that. So the illusion of the Christmas Day ITV this morning was broken. In any case, in terms of just to slightly widen your question, Alistair, if your office, say, decides to have a Dunder Mifflin or a Wernham Hogg-style office documentary made in it, you can refuse because that's a different type of content and you can say i don't sign the release form and there has to be for those type of shows there has to be a release form for journalism there doesn't have to be so if you're filming on a street um because you're saying a crime is taking place or whatever and there are people walking past in the background that's just bad luck that's journalism it's got separate rules but if they film yeah if they feel yeah you don't have to get the sign off of everyone who's walking past because it you have to make allowances that otherwise you couldn't really have outside broadcast.

21:52But in terms of filming your office, you can say no and say, I don't want to be part of this. That was, we were watching, literally every single one of my anecdotes now starts, we were watching Below Deck the other day. There was like a brief shot of someone else with the captain and we're like, oh, who's that? I mean, he obviously works there. He's just, he's a guy who doesn't particularly want to be on camera. You think, oh, of course it would make sense actually that the captain would have more help than the hapless people he's got around him. So yeah, I like that. And often when you watch documentaries, some faces will be pixelated.

22:28Those people have said, no, thank you. I don't want to be in it. But they think the footage is too much gold. So there's a level of pixelation that people will accept. And a sort of third way, which is if you're filming something live somewhere, you will often, even a studio audience, you'll have a sign on the door saying, by walking in here, you consent to being filmed and you consent to that film being on television. So there's like a blanket. They have signs up in the airports when they're doing any of the custom shows saying, by the way, we're filming today and if you walk past this sign, you've basically signed a release form.