Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Reality TV & Documentaries

For me, reality television and documentaries are not so similar to one another. Personally, i think reality television is waaay more popular then the majority of the documentaries out there. Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors. There are several types of reality television and documentaries are one of them.

In many reality television shows, the viewer and the camera are passive observers following people going about their daily personal and professional activities; this style of filming is often referred to as "fly on the wall" or as "Factual television". Usually the "plots" are planned situations, or therefore contructed via editing of all sorts. Within a documentary-style reality television are several variants such as Special living environment, Celebrities, and Professional activities.

Special living environment- In this type of documentary-style, programs place cast members, who in most cases previously did not know each other, in artificial living environments. For example, Big Brother is probably the best known program of this type in the world with different versions produced in many countries around the globe.

Celebrities- Another subset of fly-on-the-wall-style shows involves celebrities. Often these show a celebrity going about their everyday life. Examples of this can easily be The Osbournes and Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica.

Professional activities- Some documentary-style shows portray professionals either going about day-to-day business or performing an entire project over the course of a series. Absolutely no outside experts are brought in to provide any help or anything. An example of this would be Miami Ink.

As a whole, I personally think reality television beats documentaries by far. Reality televsion simply keeps the watchers hooked on and it shows the viewers whats happening in other peoples lives and how they go about with their own lives.

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