Unscripted Content
Unscripted production is my passion and I particularly enjoy competition shows. Reality Room and its spin-off Reality Room: Battle Royale were my first two original competition formats, created for Elon University’s student television station. There were many challenges creating quality content on a college campus and our production was one of the biggest and most extensive productions Elon has ever seen. In 2021 I was awarded Elon’s Producer of the Year for my work on these shows.
I also developed a competition dating show during my time as an intern at Lighthearted Entertainment called The Melting Pot, which focuses on the LGBTQ+ dating scene in a modern, heteronormative world.
During my internship with Fox Entertainment, I created two shows. The first was Trivia Crack: The Show, a larger-than-life quiz show and the second was Voodoo: New Orleans, a voyeuristic reality show following the lives of people who practice Voodoo in New Orleans that demystifies the religion and its stereotypes.
Production
My experience in unscripted production almost fully stems from my time producing Reality Room and Reality Room: Battle Royale in college. These productions taught me a lot about the types of characters needed, how to frame stories, and what type of game elements can truly bring a season to it’s full potential. I was also allowed to carry out a wide variety of roles as our college production had a very small crew. This variety in roles on set allowed me to discover my love for story producing.
Reality Room
Creator • Producer • Head of Development • Story Producer • Casting Director • Editor • Post Production Supervisor • Music Supervisor • Graphics • Set Designer • Props • Social Media Manager • Host
RR1 was my first experience in television production. Produced for Elon Student Television, Reality Room is a competition reality show in which contestants, known as roommates, are paired up and strive to win challenges to ensure their safety while voting out one pair each week. Season 1 featured 8 episodes, 14 contestants, and 11 unique challenges. Because this was the first season, I took on most of the production process from creating the format, to casting, to designing competitions, and even editing a majority of the final product. I also acted as music supervisor and curated a music library to help solidify the aesthetic of the program.
This is the Reality Room series premiere. The complete first season is available on YouTube.
Reality Room: Battle of the Sexes
Creator • Producer • Head of Development • Story Producer • Casting Director • Editor • Post Production Supervisor • Music Supervisor • Graphics • Set Designer • Props • Social Media Manager • Host
Reality Room: Battle of the Sexes is the second season of Reality Room. This season featured 6 returning roommates and 8 new roommates that were paired up based on their self-identified sexes. To raise the stakes of the game, the sex that racks up the most competition wins over the course of the season guarantees themself a jury vote in the final two. Halfway through the season, the teams were split up and for the first time, roommates competed as individuals. At the final 6, production shut down due to COVID-19 and we were forced to have an online semi-final. The final four then had to campaign to the public, and one male and one female were voted into the final 2. This was an incredible challenge to take on over both a pandemic and an academic year, but the show must go on and my ingenuity prevailed!
This is the premiere of Reality Room: Battle of the Sexes. The full season is available on YouTube.
Reality Room: The Virus
Reality Room: The Virus was going to be the third season of Reality Room. Elon student Television implemented COVID-19 set restrictions, limiting sets to a measly 10 people. With a cast of 12 people, we were unable to continue with our original format and this season was never produced. In addition to this, although it was developed prior to the coronavirus outbreak, having a “virus” themed season would’ve been in poor taste. The season had a high-tech theme and the twist was that a computer virus has infiltrated the Reality Room supercomputer. This virus would materialize in the form of a roommate accurately labeled ‘The Virus.’ For the first time, 12 contestants would be competing as individuals for the entirety of the season, but one roommate wasn’t going to be an Elon student. This roommate would have to keep this a secret and as the virus in the game, would receive secret missions each week to wreak havoc amongst the other roommates. For every completed mission, The Virus would receive a portion of the prize fund and if they successfully kept their identity a secret would be faced with an ultimatum at the midpoint of the game: Expose themselves and leave with half the prize fund, or choose to stay and keep their identity a secret, competing for the rest of the season as a traditional Roommate. Voting would also be completed by points, with each roommate having 5 points to disperse amongst two at-risk roommates, the two with the most points being banished each week.
I also developed a plan for casting Reality Room. The first season featured a cast of new competitors, the second had six returners and eight newbies, the third would have a split cast of half returners and half newbies, and the fourth season would culminate in an all-stars season of entirely new roommates. Utilizing returning cast members had several benefits. Firstly, we had a small population to cast from (Elon students), and while I vetted each contestant to create the most dynamic cast possible, not every contestant was as entertaining as expected. Returners were our safety net, allowing us to cast people we already knew would be good players, who already knew the inner workings of the show, and knew the commitment it required. Secondly, we had a small audience and knew that bringing back fan favorites would help attract returning viewers. Thirdly, because we were on a college campus, everyone involved in the show was only going to be around for a maximum of four years, including myself! Having a four-season story arc allowed us to create deeper storylines as contestants’ relationships evolved over their time on the show, who doesn’t love a good vendetta? If things had gone according to plan, I would have graduated after the fourth season. The all-stars season would’ve been a final showcase of everything I had learned over the past three seasons and would allow me to show how the format had evolved. This season would also be more cost-effective as each competition would’ve been a callback to competitions from the first three seasons, meaning we could re-use materials and focus more of our budget on the visual aesthetic of the show. Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to utilize this casting plan, but I was able to incorporate it into the development of Reality Room: Battle Royale.
Reality Room: The Virus was a concept I developed for season three, but was never produced due to Covid restrictions
Reality Room: Battle Royale
Creator • Producer • Head of Development • Story Producer • Casting Director • Editor • Post Production Supervisor • Music Supervisor • Graphics
Reality Room: Battle Royale is the COVID-19 compliant spin-off of Reality Room. The season 1 format involves four roommates competing in three competitions in each episode, leaving a single winner each week. The winner of the first competition wins safety and cannot vote, while the three losers vote off one of their own. The winner of the second competition has the sole vote to banish one final roommate and decide who will move on to the final with them. The winner of the final competition is the reigning champion of Reality Room: Battle Royale, and has the opportunity to return for the following episode to defend their title. In an effort to utilize returning cast members, the season finale featured winners from each episode. There were a total of 6 episodes, 18 contestants, and 18 competitions over the course of the season.
In the second season of Reality Room: Battle Royale, 16 contestants were split into teams of four. In the first round of competition, each team followed the season 1 format, but only competed in two competitions and ended the episode with two roommates left standing. The two surviving roommates of each team completed this process a second time against another team. The final four then completed three challenges, leaving us with a winner of the season. Each competition added $10 to roommates’ personal bank accounts and the roommates could use this money to bribe people throughout the game. The winner of the season also won a $10 bonus for the rest of their team. This season had a total of 7 episodes, 15 competitions, 16 roommates, and $210 in prize money. Unfortunately, the season was never released. After production wrapped in the Spring of 2021, my co-producer Marie Granger and I left Elon to study in Los Angeles for our Fall 2021 semester. We passed the show off to two of our crew members who would become the new producers for Reality Room, but the footage for the entire season was on a hard drive that malfunctioned, and our footage was lost. This season took the Battle Royale format to its greatest evolution and along with excellent development, had some of the best overall design and aesthetic work we had ever done. This was a horrible loss and although the production was better than ever before, it will never get the recognition it deserved!
Season 1 of Reality Room: Battle Royale is available on YouTube.
The second season of Reality Room: Battle Royale was scheduled for release in Fall 2021.
Development
While my passion in unscripted lies in production, I have also gained experience in the pre-production stage. Learning how to craft a show for specific brands and seeing a show go from development to production has been very helpful in understanding the entirety of the production process.
The Melting Pot
The Melting Pot is a dating show I created while interning at Lighthearted Entertainment. Over 8 weeks, 16 singles move into the Melting Pot compound with the goal of finding their true love, and making it to the end of the game with them.
Each week, they are paired up with their fellow singles based on how they rank each other in terms of compatibility.
Once paired up, the couples compete in a Compatibility Competition, the winners of which receive an extraordinary Escape Date, while the three worst-performing pairs face elimination.
At the end of each week, the couples all vote to drop one of the at-risk couples from the game.
If the singles make it to the end of the game with their true love and they both decide to propose, they win the wedding of their dreams. If not, they leave with nothing.
Trivia Crack: The Show
For my internship in Fox Entertainment’s unscripted department, I pitched two original shows. The first was a larger-than-life game show based on the mobile game Trivia Crack. I wanted to strategically incorporate existing IP into this concept, and also cater to Fox’s love for sleek and over-the-top in-studio game shows.
In each episode, four pairs of possible brainiacs compete to prove themselves as the ultimate Trivia Champ. Taking place on a football-field-sized game board, one contestant will spin a 40-foot-tall wheel that determines how many spaces their partner moves, and what category their trivia question will fall under.
The player on the board answers the trivia questions while their partner spinning the wheel is in charge of playing in minigames. In addition to spaces and categories, the wheel also has a few spaces that can lead to advantages or sabotages.
The first player to make it through all 90 spaces and the final 10 obstacle course spaces win $100,000 and the title of Trivia Champ! In addition to this, viewers at home can play along using the Fox Bet app and earn the chance to win cash prizes and even future appearances on the show.
Voodoo: New Orleans
This is the second show I developed during my internship at Fox. This show is structured as a Real Housewives-esque documentary-style show that follows some of the biggest names in Voodoo culture in New Orleans. From business owners and priests and priestesses, the show focuses on the daily lives of people who practice Voodoo.
The goal of this program is to demystify the religion and expose to the world the truth of Voodoo. There are many stereotypes of Voodoo and people often confuse it with hoodoo which is more like magic than religion.
The beauty of this show is that it has the opportunity to become a franchise and have different series in different parts of the world, as well as target wider audiences as different countries following Voodoo speak different languages.
The most unique aspect of this pitch is that it was developed as a Tubi original program, targeting Fox’s new streaming service.
