Comment by poppup | Hacker News Reader

Comment by poppup | Hacker News Reader

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The pitches can be shot between 15-60 minutes each. These are ballpark figures, keep in mind, and I am sure that some pitches have taken longer. The point is, there's not enough time to make an informed decision.

Production wants to shoot them as quickly as possible, as they are renting very expensive studio space and paying the talent for every shoot day.

Shark Tank is very efficient as far as TV shows go. Some shows, like Big Brother, shoot 100 minutes for every 1 minute aired. Shark Tank is probably closer to 3-5 minutes shot for every 1 minute aired. It's more like a scripted show in that regard. Certainly, all the pitches are memorized and practiced well in advance.

Someone asked my credentials. I worked on Shark Tank for one season as an editor. I have add'l credits on The Voice and Sarah Palin's Alaska for Mark Burnett Productions. I also worked for 10 other production companies on about 25-30 shows for ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX and SHOWTIME. Some of them I don't remember. Some of them I would like to forget, for example, Famous in 12: http://www.tmz.com/category/famous-in-12/

SPA is a show that I had a lot of influence over. My editing work on the first show was mentioned in a New York Times.

Sarah was very protective of her family's image as it was airing close to the time when one of her daughter's was having or had just had a child out of wedlock.

She had good reason to be protective, but this made it difficult to produce an entertaining TV show. So, the show wasn't really a show until it got to post. The executive producers were really worried.

I remember, one of my fellow editors became frustrated with his supervising producer. He threw a stack of papers into the air and slammed the door in his face.

Also, there was a scene where Sarah'a other daughter had a boyfriend over. The boyfriend wanted to go upstairs to her bedroom. Sarah wouldn't allow it, and she demanded he come back down. We edited it so that he never came back down and that she was calling her daughter's name... as if they were up there naked or something... That is where the "lie" is most evident. When there is a clear departure from the truth, but all of TV is a lie, based on excluding the boring parts. Do I feel bad that we changed what really happened? No. That was probably the most memorable moment of the entire season and drove viewership way up for the entire season, resulting in a more satisfying product for viewers.

Also, once Sarah saw the show, she got it. She had the ability to tell us to change anything she didn't like. She didn't want to change that scene or many others. It was gold.

She does love Alaska. Todd, her husband, seems like an awesome guy. They are a pretty normal family, thrown into the limelight by John McCain.

When I was on Shark Tank our pitch took a little over an hour. Granted we had a complicated audio requirements that took a while to set up, but the pitch lasted a long time.

The beginning 1-minute pitch is memorized, but everything after that when sharks are asking questions is totally free-for-all.

I was surprised and impressed by the professionalism and the speed of the production team. They had it down to almost an assembly-line.

What product did you pitch? Scripted or not, it must have been a cool experience. Did you get funded?

> Sarah Palin's Alaska

Any comments on that one in particular? I wasn't a fan of Palin politically but I saw a bit of the show and she did seem to genuinely love Alaska and want to share it.

I case you missed it, he wrote a response to this question in reply to the parent comment.

Speaking of sharks that tanked, were you lucky enough to work on a reality show called "Love is in the Heir" [1], about a self proclaimed princess of the Pahlavi dynasty in exile?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Is_in_the_Heir

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