The Rest Is Entertainment - Are Newsroom Backgrounds Real Or Fake?

Episode Date: November 7, 2024

Are those people working, or eating their lunch, in the background of newsrooms live, or is it all faked? What is the thought process behind adaptations and who decides if it is best to adapt for film or TV? When reporters are in a war zone, do they have access to water, food, power? And how safe are they? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde answer your questions. *** The first The Rest Is Entertainment Live takes place on Wednesday 4th December at the world famous Royal Albert Hall. Enjoy a live Q&A, podcast favourites and more surprises get your tickets at www.therestisentertainment.com *** Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport As always we appreciate your feedback on The Rest Is Entertainment to help make the podcast better: https://forms.gle/GeDLCfbXwMSLHSUHA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment Questions and Answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osmond. 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. They 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 Oxo family all live together, I think he would have... They would have done it like when you see the police raids on organized crime gangs and they have to be synchronized. It's exactly like that when you're telling a TV advertising family that they're no longer

going to be in the industry. There are four different journalists at 5am. Just um, 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. They 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 did the team manage to get access to food and electricity? Thank you Angela. It's rather multifaceted because most conflict zones are very different, most war zones are very different. I spoke to my good friend Ramita Navani 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 as she shot undercover footage. So she's always doing...

She's amazing. ...extraordinary things in extraordinary places. So I talked to her about... she's always in a conflict zone. Yeah. Whenever I speak to her, it's almost like she's a jinx. So she said, well, look, 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. If you're actually

in the trenches, like in a war zone, so I've just 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 units' rations are and your safety is whatever their safety is. You're not always embedded, but if you are embedded, this is whatever their safety is. You're not always embedded but if you are embedded this is how it works. If you're on the front line you will be embedded. Yeah. 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 you know when there was fighting in Mosul, the whole of Mosul is not a no-go zone. There will be the 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 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, 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. She 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 frontline 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. And then you go to the next village and they would have just disappeared. 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 she could 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 sizes 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, so 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. So 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 recently It's 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? The 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. 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. I 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 for 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 and as I said it was very Denzel Heavy because he's gonna get you out to the audience and you might stay for to the theaters and you might stay for Paul Maskell 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. So 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 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 go too far. Now what about about that? Snakes on a Plane, right? Everyone saw that trailer and was like, sorry, Simon L. Jackson is just going, I'm done with these fucking snakes on this fucking plane. Everyone was like, this is amazing. I want to see this movie. But these people were ironists, Richard. And so everyone's like, everyone loves this movie

because the trailer just went viral. And so 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.

Yeah, so am I. While I was saying it, I was like, why didn't I say it the other way? But as you know, I just can't get any of these things in the right order. It's just a self. Because of mother effing? Is that better? That's sort of worse. I basically swear a lot and when I have to try and censor it, I don't know how to do it. And I think that is the... Yeah. 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, 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. And look, I don't even know how to do it kids, you know, I'm like, I strongly advise us to just bleep everything, just bleep everything please, in post-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 like that more I tell you what sorry I was just randomly I've just remembered in terms of traders and changing things sometimes it gets really close return of the Jedi was called revenge of the Jedi till really really late and there were posters up in shopping malls and you can still buy

revenge of the Jedi posters They're real like, you know collectors 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 see revenge. And so really right up to the last minute things are changing Yes I they will they are heavily retooling aspects of that Minecraft movie because if the fanbase don't like it, the existing fanbase, you're gonna have a problem. God, imagine being involved in that heavy retooling. It's sort of building blocks, isn't it?

I'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 you know the world of big franchises and what they need from you and just you know suddenly throwing new problems to directors and oh my god imagine just being the Minecraft production team. Oh I know, 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 actually needing to kill you, you will see GI in a weapon that is acceptable to the fan base, the plot, the direct... I 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. Welcome 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. So 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 right in the middle of a drama.

Can we just expect more franchises as well 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 Southwest, the Southeast, Tinties, 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. The regional franchises would make the news programs, magazine programs, 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 a sort of opt-outs but all of which made things for the network as well and they came up for renewal every every ten years or so and it was and they were insanely lucrative at the time and like anything in the 1980s they were insanely because you know it's advert money from the 80s it's it's it's it's it's a lot I would say and so rivals has written the mid 80s and that the franchise ran which I'm guessing that Judy Cooper is thinking of was 81 and I'll make you

have the stories of her amazing anyone who ever bid for an ITV franchise they would always be there be the incumbent and then they say every 10 years sort of new consortium or new consortium would come together. What she does in the rivals, which is, you know, people sort of going, I'm going to find a local vicar, a 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. So 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. That is the way they would do it. But there's a brilliant thing about almost like a transfer between these two consortia that someone said, give you my lord for two of your bishops. Those were the sort of coalitions they were building

here. They would get local hoteliers, they would get like head teachers of primary schools, like anybody to be on these consortia. They would 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? I mean, and that was full of lords. I didn't think that was beyond reproach. That's the Independent Broadcasting Authority. Interesting 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 program. Like oh yeah, I mean we've got someone who can do drama, is it? That's that strand? But that's it, but yeah, it would always be, oh no, this guy, I know that this guy did a yeah, like a kid's cartoon in Wales in the in the mid 60s so he's come on board

yeah feels it's such a weird idea for a drama but it was absolutely real absolutely true and it's exactly what happened you know even in rivals you know they do they talk to the guy who owns the bar and you're like yeah that's that's what they would do yeah there's wonderful bits where where where they're sort of saying um ah so i think okay what have we got so we've got um we've got the church leader that's great we've got the church leader, that's great. We've got the leader of Somerset County Council, okay, that's really good. We've got someone who once directed a television advertisement, great. We've got the leader of a car dealer, I think we've got that covered. We've got an actor, good, that's the arts. We've got

a sports star, that's brilliant. I tell you, one thing we are missing is a woman. And that's genuinely, there's amazing articles I was reading about. And they just say, OK, we need to find a woman. So they would go off and find one. But yeah, it's really, I'm not surprised that Judy Cooper, having lived through that 1981 franchise, Rao, I'm not surprised he thought oh my god this is 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 and small ponds with one or two small fish in big ponds. Alastair Otto has a question for you Marina. Have a guess as to whether I like Alastair Otto as a name? I think you love it. Very much so.

Thanks Alastair. Alastair 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 and 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 yet by the reason watch it looking my husband works the BBC They used to watch it trying to see if they would see their father So yeah, he doesn't work in the news bit anyway But you know when you see that big thing at new ball cause he's in the East literally he hasn't had a job for seven years

No, he just goes out. He's in the park We have a joke that that's where he is But I think he it does actually go in anyhow thehow, 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 like... 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 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 a live on Christmas Day. Why would you do that? Just say it's a pre-record. 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 for those type of shows, there has to be a release form for journalism. That doesn't have to be.

So if you're filming on a street, you know, 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 it, yeah, if they feel you don't have to get the sign off of everyone is walking past because it you have to make allowances that otherwise you couldn't really have outside broadcast. But in terms of filming your office, you can say no and say, I don't want to be part of this. We were watching literally every single one of my anecdotes now starts. We were watching Below Deck the other day. There was a brief shot of someone else with the captain and we're like, who's that?

Obviously works there. 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 because you know… Those people have said, no thank you, I don't want to be in it, but they think the footage is too much gold to just… so there's a level of pixelation that people will accept. And a sort of third way, which is if you're doing something, 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 customs shows saying by the way we're filming today and if you walk past this sign you've basically signed a release form. Oh I had that we once went to an antiques place and they were filming I think Dickinson's real deal and it said there if you if you if you walk past this line you are consenting to being filmed.

I love that you were in it like uncredited. I'm gonna stand this side of the line but like really loom. You do loom. You're one of the great loomers. Make sure I'm in the back of a shot but that you can't use me. That was a whole day's filming. Oh my god, if you ever film... A 6 or 7 pixelated individual in the back of this. Is that? Hold on a minute. When we were filming Who Do You Think You Are? we were individual in the back of this. Is that? Yeah, hold on a minute. When we were filming, who do you think you are? We were filming in the back street in Brighton and this guy ran a jewellery shop. When we started filming, he kept coming out and going, if you give me some money, I will walk back into my shop. And we're like, right, okay, so we're just filming one thing. So we start filming again.

He goes, guys, guys, we're going to walk 10 yards down here and film it somewhere else. Oh my god. It's amazing, isn't it? I wonder what you'd have thought would have been, I wonder what money you would have settled on. It's really interesting. Like, what's the price? Yeah, what's the price? Four grand? I know. He would have asked for that.

Well, listen, what's it worth? Would have done it for four pounds as well. Yeah. But somewhere between those two figures. Anyway, we've really gone off track. Sorry, we've gone off track, Yes. Here we go with book adaptations. Caitlin Kingsford would like to say, for book adaptations, how do you decide to do a film versus a TV show?

With the rise of Netflix and TV series, is the film adaptation dead? Yeah, that's an interesting one. When I sold the rights to Thursday Murder Club, which would have been, it was just, it was before it came out, so let's say five and a bit years ago. Certainly the receive wisdom was don't do a movie. The receive wisdom is everything is Netflix, everything is bingeable box sets. What about if Mr Spielberg's company asks you to do it? In which case, do a movie. Well, quite. So for me, there was an auction and various people came in and said, we want to do a TV series of it. Amblin came in and said, we want to do a movie of it.

And because the prevailing wisdom was don't do a movie, I thought, oh, maybe it would be fun to do a movie. And so, yeah, I decided that. And also, you know, it's counterintuitive, but you absolutely had the choice. It could have been either. And lots of people now, lots of authors or whatever or whatever think oh my work is best suited to a Really long form thing, but you know if you look at something like those Lord of the Rings movies Which sorry are far better than the TV series that is going at the moment

I call the Lord of the Rings the Thursday Mordor Club That's I I love this and that other thing we said the other week, TV really devours plot. So you need a lot for a sort of long form television series. That's the interesting thing. So Thursday Motor Club, you would think this probably, what would it be? Four and a half hours if you were to do the whole thing. So that's too long for a movie and too short for a six parter. So you either cut it down and do a movie and

take the advantages of that or you expand it out and make it as a TV series. But you're sensible to know that because lots of people don't know that. Lots of people think, well, hang on, you'd have to do almost every chapter as one Sunday night episode. Lots of authors don't necessarily see that. Yes, it's interesting. Because you know about television that you do. But also, you know, in that world, there are people whose job is to be an agent for film and television and for books and, you know, there are good people out there who will give

you good advice about stuff. The new novel, We Solved Murders, I'm doing as a TV series instead. And for no reason other than I did the last one as a film and I thought, well, that would be an interesting way of doing that. But you do think, well, it would be great to make an eight-parter. Is there enough in it for an eight-parter? So you're the the problem is as you say expanding rather than contracting and books are books are a very awkward length Yeah, by and large. It's an interesting question one one of the other things I've noticed because what you know I'm I'm not going to get involved in the film. I have to leave other people to do that

But the thing I'm interested in, of course, is does it give publicity for the book? And so are there new readers out there who will hear about the book and read the book? Because the book is, you know, the book I love and I want as many people as possible to read it. And the one thing I've noticed over the last couple of years is TV series by and large don't really sell books.

I mean, it'll give you a bit of a bump, but even something like Rivals, you know, it's sold more, but it hasn't sort of gone crazy. It used to be such a big thing. Do you remember they do a new cover for the TV series came out, they do a new cover with a balloon. They still do. They still do. It's just, it doesn't go crazy. But movies, because of weirdly, because of what we talked about earlier with trailers, because the trailer industry is so huge that suddenly these trailers are going out that people are watching kind of two minutes Watching a two minute advert for your book So, you know, they're not necessarily go see the film, but hopefully they will but they will then go and buy the book

So that the trailer industry that movies has in a way that and TV does have it but is it's a bit society different vibe Movies has in a way that and TV does have it but is it's a bit society different vibe That seems to sell books which I which I think is very interesting But in answer to the question it really is I would say it's a case-by-case basis some books suit film some books suit television some books only get film offers some books only get television offers So, you know you take what's there both of those industries are voracious buyers of writes to books and of stories and things like that. And it's it's it is up to the author, the author does get to choose which they want to do. But as you say, so it's, it's sort of quite a difficult choice

to make. All right, then everybody, I think that's about us for the week. Yeah, that was fun. Very fun. Shall we see you next Tuesday? See you next Tuesday, everyone.