Do you have to fish out props that are thrown in the sea?

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1:13Hello and welcome to the Restors Entertainment Questions edition with me, Marina High. And me, Richard Osmond. Welcome to the Question and Answers edition. Hey, Marina, how are you? I'm very well. Yet again, the questions have been terrific. There's some really funny ones and some really intriguing ones. I think we have my favourite question of all time coming up later. And it was both of ours when we saw it, so yes. Shall we start with this? It is a question from Sally Ward. Thank you, Sally. She has three children. She says, over the years, I've been really impressed with the amount of storyline, humour and drama that children's TV writers are able to include in a five or ten minute slot.

1:47E.g. Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom, Danger Mouse, etc. I feel these writers have a tough job to pack so much into that small slot. Her question is, do you think children's TV writers get the respect they deserve from the industry? That is a terrific question. I also love children's TV and having watched a lot of it when I was young, obviously, but also when I've had three children who are still quite small. Things like Hey Dougie, Bluey, I mean, Abney and Teal, which I absolutely loved. What's it called? Abney and Teal. Oh my God, it's absolutely terrific. there's one guy a guy called Andrew Davenport who did Teletubbies In the Night Garden Moon and Me which is the most recent one Oh the guy who lives in the big golden palace Yeah well Russell T.

2:31Davis said I actually think that Andrew Davenport should be considered in the same breath as Tom Stoppard and Samuel Beckett First of all you're so right about the concision required for that type of writing and I always think if you're made to write something short you become a really good writer This is the advice whenever people ask me about journalism I always just say write really small things. Write something in 500 words. I thought you meant write really small. Honestly, write really, really tiny writing. Then see if you can write it in 250 words. Then see if you can write in 100 words and you will not waste a word.

2:59They do not waste a word in Hey Doggy, in Bluey. There's so much plot in five minutes. I mean, there's a lot of plot in five minutes of Peppa Pig. It's extraordinary how they do it and if everyone knew that then you wouldn't be sitting there sometimes when you're watching something on one of the streamers thinking, Jesus Christ, nothing has happened for 25 minutes. We've got nine episodes of this. This is so indulgent. It's so indulgent. Now, children's television has... Come on, Laura Dern, shoot someone. Abney and Teal, which is... And also the people who work on these things, like Adrian Scarborough, an actor I pay a fortune to watch in the theatre and have done on many occasions.

3:32He does the voiceover at Abney and Teal. A lot of really amazing writers, Russell T. Davis being one among them, started in children's television. It is the best training ground in lots of ways. And lots of brilliant comedy writers start out on those shows as well. Pingu is brilliantly funny. it's such a great way to get into the industry and again the short form versions of it do sort of mean it's perfect for our culture and some of the biggest YouTube channels are kids things as well I started years and years ago I used to write with David Walliams when he was David Williams and the first thing we ever did was I think called I Hate This House which is on CBBC and we got into it via there and so many writers get their first break just writing little short things for children's TV you know really properly funny people but that's great bluey is like one of the great philomenons of the world but it's interesting that sally identifies the concision because i think that is such a good way of becoming a good writer at anything is to be able to write short before you do whatever people now think of as long form and a lot of long form journalism is just long the internet has given people an infinite space and they have lost the art of concision and i really think that certainly on television they've learned to write short to anyone writing books as well if you're editing a scene lose the first four paragraphs yeah you know come in as late as possible always come in as late as possible and come out as early as possible and uh you know people will just keep on reading to the next chapter in the next chapter but yeah kids tv sadly you're absolutely right it's genuinely underappreciated treasure and has been for many many years but if you get it right uh incredibly lucrative i've got one okay from sean freeman richard i wondered about multi-camera shows such as gladiators which aren't transmitted live would a director select camera shots as live during the events or would they cut footage together later the answer is both so if you're making gladiators you know the shots that you want you probably i don't know how many cameras they'd have on that but even on a panel show you've got six or seven cameras they've got a lot of cameras because they have so many reactions and they've got lots of fixed rig cameras and all sorts of things so a director knows roughly what's going to happen they've done rehearsals so he knows what a game is like he knows they're going to go from bradley at the beginning and then they're going to go up onto the podium and then there's going to be a fight and then one of them is going to fall down and then there's going to be another interview so you've got a rough idea of the geography of what's happening he sits next to someone called a vision mixer and the vision mixer has the output of all of the cameras essentially so at any one time if you go into a gallery if you see like on sometimes on tv when you see the inside of a gallery and there's kind of 40 different screens yeah and they've got the feeds from every single camera there um and that's when the director's working out that camera four which has got to get the big high shot it actually needs to go to the left because you're missing something there so the director is constantly working out where those cameras are pointed the vision mixer is doing a live cut of the show as it goes along so roughly what you would be watching on tv is what the vision mixer does but then all of that footage goes into the edit so you've got that master which is the vision mixer is put together with you know the director calling out various shots so you know if jewel is taking place uh and you need to cut three seconds out of it that's an edit and the edit of course you've got to go to a different camera shot so when you're in the edit you've got all the footage from all those different cameras you've got your sort of master which has been cut in the studio and you drop in fun reaction shots from the audience or you know if there's a brilliant reaction shot from one of the gladiators so you're always looking for interesting shots which weren't put into the um cut in the studio so it's an incredibly time-consuming process that funnily enough we talked about ai last week i was talking to a very big entertainment producer and i said in entertainment where's the first place we're going to see AI really make an impact he said the edit he said AI will be able to sort of drop in all of those shots that you want almost instantaneously so that first cut of a show is going to be done incredibly quickly.

7:19God I remember people saying right back in the you know when X Factor or whatever was in its absolute pomp and you were almost watching something created by the sort of karaoke Lenny Riefen style and he had And each quarter of that show had its own edit. You know, the milking of emotion. This is why I bring in Levenie Riefenstahl. Trying to make it tug on every nation's heartstrings. Everyone to react in exactly the way he was managing them into reacting. It was so much work that each 15 minutes of the show had its entire own edit team. Yeah. And that, by the way, I don't like. I think that way of doing stuff got found out.

7:53You would see reactions on that show which you knew were not the reactions to what happened. Absolutely. And a decent show. you'll be watching through the master then on your other screens you've got all the other cameras showing exactly what happened at that time so you can put in the reaction of what happened at that time. Occasionally you have to go searching in a different bit of the show to have a reaction that's the same because you didn't quite catch it but they would consciously choose shots from different parts of the show and put it in. Like sometimes they do things like on X-Fact or Britain's Got Talent where there's silence you think someone's come on and they're so bad everyone's silent.

8:26You think But of course they weren't. It was absolutely nonsense. And, you know, they would edit things in a way that I thought was cheating the viewer. But, yeah, by and large, the vision mixer and the director shoot as live, cut it as well as they can live. And then an editor has an incredibly tough job of patching that all together, you know, putting their music on, putting the dub, you know, all of that. But it's a real treat to see a great editor at work. And it's an unbelievable treat to see a director and vision mixer at work together. the speed they work at and the director talking to all the different camera operators also who are brilliant and getting different shots and then being cut up live in a in a gallery it's it's a it's a real art here's a question for you marina it's from henry no surname he probably does have a surname he's declined to include it in this case you know what he's like madonna wherever he lives like in rice lip he's so big people just go yeah henry okay now tell me what he's asking uh henry says oh nothing no just henry says you often refer to a third act in movies uh although it may apply to other formats what is the third act and why is it so important a three-act structure is a sort of pretty traditional but as satisfied it's a satisfying way of telling a story so in the most traditional sense you would have the setup act one a sort of confrontation struggle act two and third act is the resolution so when we talk about why the third act if we don't like the third act it's a bit of a problem because it's the tying up of the film first act we meet people we see where we are we see what the situation is people have done interesting things with this like famously the sort of hollywood producers don simpson and jerry brookheimer in the 80s with their sort of high concept movies really refined and pushed this structure so it was you can almost physically feel it happening you've got like in a very hot first act then a second act with a crisis and a third act with kind of redemption via triumph and probably in the case of their movies like Days of Thunder, Flashdance, a freeze frame ending.

10:23And it was really, you can almost feel it. Funnily enough, my late father, some people it's so ingrained in them. My late father was a filmmaker and he used to say to my husband when he was really small, just when they were watching a movie together and he'd go, end of act one. And so my husband's sort of understanding of story kind of grammar really, it's almost instinctive. and as I say it's a satisfying way of telling a story and by the way this can apply to an episode of lifestyle programming you can yes grand designs grand designs is I was about to say the real three out structure yeah which is here's here's a wreck oh no they're pregnant and the uh the windows haven't arrived let's take a look at this lovely house first act but sometimes Richard sometimes it ends in tragedy because that happens yeah listen tragedy does happen yeah yeah and yeah anything even factual programming can be can be divided like this but it is a satisfying way to tell a story and so when things have problems in the third act it is obviously particularly problematic because that is the resolution of the story and a lot of things kind of can lose their way i think in the third act but i always think also because books also by and large have three acts i certainly always write you never consciously do but i think there's the setup here's the business here's the conclusion but i'm quite good with act one and act three but act two is what Sometimes you think, OK, I know where we are.

11:43I know the situation. I know the characters. I know where we're going to end up. And there's this big sort of set PC type thing. And they think, ah, there's 50 ,000 words in between those two things. And that's where the fun of writing comes, is sort of working your way through that second act. But, yeah, but once you sort of know that structure, you see it absolutely everywhere. But it's a good way of testing. I mean, testing yourself as a writer. brilliant TV writer Brian Fuller who did Hannibal, who's done lots of Star Trek, he's an amazing TV writer, really kind of eccentric genius and he said to me once that, oh yeah if ever I've got a way that I think Act 3 would end, I always say right, I'll take that and I'll put it at the end of Act 1 and then now I've got to because it makes you, yeah instead of thinking, oh that's how it's going to end he'll make that at the end of Act 1 and then you kind of then you've got you're getting deeper into it already.

12:38And so it's a way people can kind of play around with it a lot to kind of test themselves and to challenge themselves. Once you know the rules, you can play about with them. But also it's worth saying that in these sort of big sort of multi-series things that there's all sorts of different structures going on. And also with, you know, shows that have advertising breaks necessarily have to have a slightly different structure than shows without advertising breaks. Yeah, you need to have something exciting before the break. Shakespeare used to have five act plots did he not? There are many different ways but actually if you stand right back from the story and think about it you'll see that there's been a set up then there's been a problem and then there's been a resolution and almost all stories work even if they're happy, sad, whatever will work in that sort of a way if they're satisfying That's the end of our act one Shall we go for a little break?

13:27Just if you are listening to this we still have our favourite question of all time to come Yes This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios' new film, Springsteen, Deliver Me From Nowhere. Starring Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White and Academy Award nominee Jeremy Strong. Scott Cooper, the director of the Academy Award winning movie Crazy Heart, brings you the story of the most pivotal chapter in the life of an icon. Springsteen, Deliver Me From Nowhere. Only in theaters October 24th. Get your tickets now. eczema isn't always obvious but it's real and so is the relief from ebglyss after an initial dosing phase about four in ten people taking ebglyss achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing ebglyss libri kizumab lbkz a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

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15:02I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back, and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the internet last year, and I think this season's lineup is even cooler. And so does my wife, who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online, and in store.

15:35Welcome back to the Restless Entertainment Questions Edition. This is only you can answer this, Richard. Steve Parrott says, on Pointless, do the winners get a trophy each? Do you know what my favourite thing about this podcast is? We go from the entire future of humanity with AI to do people on Pointless get a trophy each. And also, I know which segment is more interesting to people, and it's this one. Yes, they do get a trophy each. And I mean, it would be crazy if they didn't. I guess sometimes people have been on Pointless Celebrities have got more than one trophy each. I think Sean Williamson has four.

16:11That's a guy with a lot of downstairs bathrooms. Yeah. So they do get a trophy each. How big is the Pointless Trophy? It is surprisingly small. However, it is bulky. It's proper cut glass. I mean, you could definitely... And in terms of what it means, it's essentially unscalable. it's enormous it is the single most coveted trophy in the history of television that's the interesting with TV shows obviously in the very first script it said the coveted pointless trophy and I don't think they've ever changed that script so it's the coveted pointless trophy but yeah it's got sharp edges it's heavy you could definitely it's a proper murder weapon just saying if you ever needed one for your book someone has ever anyone ever murdered someone with a quiz awards surely are all just all murder weapons I mean look at an Emmy that could take you out funnily enough in my new book We Solve Murders out in the shops in September but you can pre-order now available to pre-order an award is used as a weapon how about that?

17:06that's a world exclusive very exciting okay yes because if you've ever anyone you're ever holding you're thinking this is simply the sharpest and most dangerous and pointlessly heavy thing that there is yeah so that's spoken to someone who's held a lot of awards I mean I I wouldn't know I've certainly seen Jeremy Kyle hold things that I could only journalism awards but yeah so you get one each but you only get half the money that's showbiz it really is showbiz they light it like it's a monolith like it's the Statue of Liberty they put it on a plinth and turn it round that's the shot they always show so I think when people first see it they think that's not as big as I think it would be but then I think they'd rather like it don't clip that bit out and put that on TikTok come on guys play fair question here from Jason Swaby No one but Swaby in the corner.

17:57He says, The gaming industry is expected to generate over$170 billion this year, five times greater than that of worldwide movie box office revenues. He brackets SourceUSA today. I'd like someone to include their source in the question. Thank you, Jason. At what point do you think the video game industry will be taken seriously by non-gamers and recognised as culturally important and as significant as the film and music industries? Yeah, you're right, Jason. It is interesting. It's ahead of movies and music, I think, but it's behind TV and streaming. I think people sort of recognise it as a fact of commercial and business life.

18:32Like it's like the sort of, I don't know, the marketing industry or the precious metals industry or something, that it's a big industry. But they don't think of it culturally. I think that it wasn't taken seriously for a long time, clearly. Criticism is always an interesting part of it, is that critics have been a big part of making, you know, So the new Hollywood was a big part of making the new Hollywood was Pauline Kyle, the kind of amazing film critic who brought all these filmmakers to people's attention. This is going back to the 1970s. And she kind of created a different way of talking about movies.

19:06And things were taken much more seriously than they had been necessarily before. The gaming industry has been relatively resistant to criticism in some ways, I think. And if you look at things like Gamergate and these kind of big, horrible kind of online pile on scandal things, there is something quite gatekeepery about that as an industry that shuts people out. Also, industries need stars to become mega in that cultural mega way. And you notice that all the people who do, I don't know, voiceovers for games, things like that, they're coming in from another industry. So obviously you'll get some of the kind of games houses and the people who make the games, people think of them as kind of enormous.

19:46But they're like a brand. They're like Disney. In terms of stars, tell me who its stars are. Industries need stars. That kind of cultural industry needs a star to become enormous. Three words. Sonic the Hedgehog. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is they punch massively above their weight. Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto. These things are multi, multi, multi billion franchises. some of the biggest cultural icons of our time mario sonic the mario movie was beyond massive you know legend of zelda is enormous minecraft is massive yeah but i think perhaps because video games came of age slightly after that era where we had the shared mass culture yeah they've always they've always been slightly siloed off you know we grew up with television where everyone watched the same thing and so television became a massive cultural conversation and video games which are beyond huge and affect everything we do affect all the movies we make completely and and a culturally and artistically incredible in many many ways i mean something like grand theft auto you just think this is one of the greatest works of art as i've ever seen in my entire life and they always regarded their competition as movies and not not other games but they put themselves against that to say these are who we compete with but i think to answer the question i think that they don't have the same cultural cut through because of when they came of age i suspect i'm not sure any industry will ever have that cultural cut through again but they seem to be doing all right without it the first ever show i ever ever worked on was a show called games world on sky which is five times a week half out oh my god it's bad uh but you know in the early days you know that was you know when with sega mega drive and all that kind of stuff uh and television has never really done video games brilliantly no it's the truth but it's it's its own world it's its own culture you know fifa is one of the hugest brands in the world and a generation have absolutely grown up with it but it's it's not talked about in the same way as succession no it's not but but weirdly within the industry i mean managers were saying that they'd seen players and obscure players on fifa for the first time i think that's absolutely incredible we've had like pointless There's questions where we said, name a kind of Spanish Premier League team and anyone who's played FIFA just goes through the whole list.

22:02But I suspect if you're waiting for it to become a lingua franca, that probably isn't going to happen. Time, I think, for our favourite question. Our favourite question ever, Colin Skivington. When a character in a TV show or film throws something into a river or the sea, are the production team obliged to retrieve it? Or do they get permission or just do it anyway? I remember an episode of Luther where Idris Elba threw something into the Thames and I thought, surely you can't do that. Colin, epic. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, genuinely, I hadn't thought about it before. I'm not sure I have an answer to this.

22:36I wanted the question read out because I wanted Colin's brain to be represented on the show. But yeah, when someone throws something into the sea or river, what happens next, Marina? I have asked prospect experts about this. Have you? Great. So first of all, they would like to say that the things that go into the water are normally duplicates. If you see someone chuck their phone into the sea or something like that, it is often a rubber duplicate. Unless you're Rebecca Vardy. The agent, please. Oh, sorry, unless you're Rebecca Vardy's agent. And you're just on a classic WAG holiday destination, the North Sea.

23:08Anyway, if a car goes in, it's had its engine, any oil, anything else like that removed, it has to have before it goes in. And obviously, they have to retrieve that. having said that health and safety they don't things like some things degrade if it's photographs or paper you know people chucking a photograph into the sea you can see kind of you you know this kind of visual lexicon of someone on the back of a ferry just tearing up like a wedding photo yeah and just throwing it into the wake yeah we've seen that many times i'll level with you that doesn't get retrieved it's not like eight divers going down off the record but you know or anonymously, perhaps people will say the only time they retrieve them is if they float because they've got to go for another take and it's there standing.

23:52There's already a load of pictures in this sea. Oh, yeah, of course. So someone has got to go on an often on a small boat with a pool skimmer and get it out so that the next phone or rubber phone or photographs or whatever can go in. Who's throwing something that floats? Well, I mean, photos float. You've just described a situation where you rip up the photo and, you know, that will float. Someone's got to go in and then they've got another photo of her that's going to get ripped up again. They might do it 10 times, you see. So you need the pool skimmer. You need the guy in the boat or it might be a lady.

24:23If I was the director, I'd say, you know what? Actually, throw it in the bin. Actually, just put it in the bin. But there are a lot of props at the bottom of sea and of river that have simply not been retrieved because you're not going to get a diver to go down there to get, you know, the phone, the rubber phone that you've thrown in. These are many of the Thames' secrets. It's like a lake full of golf balls on a provincial golf course. Colin, that's such a great question, and I love the fact that you had the answer to it as well. I will never see anyone... I had to ask props people for this. Yeah, but listen, that's given their props.

24:58I'm struggling to remember ever seeing anyone throw something into the sea. I'm not sure I've seen the episode of... Oh, God, I have. Really? Oh, come on. Wedding rings, photos. Yes, definitely. Things off the end of a pier. How many times? Bodies. Yeah, I've seen that. They have to recover those. Yeah, they have to recover those. I'm assuming those poor actors. Yeah. And there's an episode of Seinfeld where they knock golf balls into the sea. Yeah. Okay, I'm so going to keep an eye out for that. The next time there's a big drama where someone throws something into the sea, everyone is going to remember this episode and remember the name Colin Skivington.

25:31Colin, thank you so much. Thank you very much. More on this fame, please. And if you do want to send questions in, there are so many incredible ones, which we'll be getting around to. the address is therestisentertainment at gmail.com and we have a huge repository of questions but please add to it there's a question that I really wanted to get to this week but I think we've run out of time but we'll do next week which is what is the biggest waste of time meeting you've ever had yes please that's good right tune in next week I'll give you a week to think about that one thank you so much for listening everyone we'll see you next week take care bye bye

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