Reality television producer Troy DeVolld talked to the AV Club:
TDV: Like with journalism, it’s choosing your moments, choosing what to discard, being able to rearrange that order. Timelines are a big thing in reality TV. Over the course of four months, you’re trying to find six or eight scenes that relate to each other that you can make an episode out of.
AVC: Is a “Frankenbite” another way reality shows condense timelines?
TDV: A Frankenbite, by definition, is just when you take original spoken material and you cut it into a smaller, or different, version of itself. There’s a big difference between the Frankenbiting that you’re probably thinking about most often and the Frankenbite that actually has to happen for a show. If I say, “Yesterday I went to the mall, I bought a lemonade, I rode the kids’ train, and then I bought a pair of pants,” but all I needed to know is there’s a pair of pants, I will Frankenbite it down into, “I went to the mall and I bought a pair of pants.” Because after all, a reality show’s only half an hour to an hour long, and you can’t have somebody, every time they open their mouth, take 20 or 25 seconds to relay the thought. So Frankenbiting should be for the compression of time.
When you are Frankenbiting for the purpose of making someone say something they didn’t say, then there’s a whole ethical thing that comes into play, which is you don’t want someone to say something that isn’t authentic to their character.
But I could take that same sentence that says, “Today, I went to the mall and bought pants” [and say], “Well, there was a scene where she went to a boutique, and it wasn’t at the mall, and I want to set up the top of the scene. And somewhere else she says, ‘My friend at the boutique.’” I could say, “Today I went to the [cut] boutique [cut] and bought pants.” So I’m changing the location. I’m not doing anything sinister. It’s sort of mixing the spackle to hold the show together without having to redo the interviews.
AVC: Do you think you’re held to a different standard of authenticity because it’s a visual medium?
TDV: Exactly. You can’t see the ellipses in reality TV when we’re putting portions of a thought together. So many people are sloppy as bejesus about it. You just hear the shift in pitch when people are speaking. …
AVC: But you’re not actually putting words in their mouths?
TDV: No. In a scene, I might have to say, “Can you guys please have a conversation about what happened last Thursday, because I can’t make sense of these two scenes without you talking about how you got from this point to this point; something happened off-camera.” There are certain things you’re going to have to ask for. Interview content is a little bit different, because there are some people that come in and they’re like, “What do you want me to say?” It’s like, “Well, I want you to answer these questions.” So whenever I write questions for people, I always start with the phrase, “If this is true…” because you’re going to drive the person bananas if you’re like, “So, tell me about how much you hate so and so.” Then they shut off, and they don’t want to work with you anymore.
The Dish 