Yes. More or less I agree with what you have said. The main point is that the complaint against the TV show is ridiculous as the show is created for the purpose of entertainment, not veracity.
It's interesting that some people think of TV as somehow "true." Maybe it is emotionally true, but it is not reality. Reality is having to commute 90 minutes to work on a TV show that portrays reality falsely as many of my colleagues do.
Thank you. Look, this is not a place for video editors (in specific), i.e. you're literally on a startup forum. I don't know if you have any experience with startups other than via Shark Tank, but after reviewing after you've written I've come to the conclusion that your calling the show a lie is completely unwarranted, and informed more by your prior experience e.g. "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." -- but you did not give any examples of anything nearly that bad as regards the deals.
You may not know this, but in normal negotiations with startups, there are many, many meetings involved over a very long period of time. So many deals fall through that there had to be a Handshake protocol invented just to keep VC's to their word - https://www.ycombinator.com/handshake/
"Silicon valley runs on handshake deals." Yeah, due dilligence gets done afterward, not on the spot! Of course all pitches are rehearsed very, very heavily. I mean these are actual businesses that were built for a decade at times, you know?
I think you go way too far writing "with just enough truth to keep 'suspension of disbelief' aloft." These are real businesses that continue whether or not anyone ever films them again. They're actual deals. A lie would be if these businesses (and their sales numbers, etc) were fabricated out of thin air and did not actually exist. Example: Silicon Valley, the show, like Pied Piper. If Pied Piper were presented as reality, and its numbers shown as reality, without even so much as existing - that would be a lie.
The most telling is that you call Mark Cuban, who is by no means a celebrity first and investor second, a "talent". He's not some actor playing a role on Shark Tank.
So I simply am not on board with your original comment that I replied to - it goes too far.
You should have simply said that the interactions were heavily edited, and represent deals that continue after the part that is aired.
A lie would be if an actor were playing the character invented for the "talents" you mentioned, but these people did not exist in real life, were not really business people at all, let alone actual investors investing in startups with real deals, or if the businesses were fabricated.
So after reviewing what you've written I would suggest that you tone it down a bit. I had skype conversations with the businesses shown. My conversations had a startup on the other side - I wasn't talking with some character, like Homer Simpson. They also matched what I saw on screen (more or less, of course, heavily edited.)
These are businesses first, and short shark tank segments only incidentally. They're not lies or fabrications.
> Look, this is not a place for video editors (in specific),
Says who? You?
HN is a community of people interested in hacking. I don't recall submitting a Carnegie Mellon degree to join.
As an editor myself, editing is a great form of hacking. Your job is to build a timeline to very often immovable constraints measured in seconds; to consult a library of techniques and effects to produce a desirable presentation. Shit, editors even get the best A/B testing of all when test screenings are involved.
When Katrina happened my job was to show my audience what was going on. There wasn't even time to edit -- I've "edited" news live on air by pushing the TD out of the way because I knew what was there. This included hot patching. If this doesn't remind you of a late night optimizing your growth metrics, I don't know what will.
Above all, an editor is the silent hand in a production guiding your feelings as a viewer. If I linger on someone's face after they're done speaking, you're going to study their emotions and likely transfer them. If I cut away immediately you get distracted by the next thing. If I hold too long it ruins the moment and makes you realize you are watching television. That's the thought that goes into a single edit. Editors tell you how to feel and you don't even know it. That's almost the purest of UX design.
Engineers aren't special and there is no single definition of hacking. There is a lot of ingenuity and craft that goes into things with which you are not familiar.
> He's not some actor
Talent is an industry term for "the people paid to be on camera," and applies to anybody. It is the antonym of crew and exists because "cast" doesn't always apply. It is not a career. Mark Cuban became talent when he agreed to perform his services on a television show. You don't know this because you're not in television, which is perspective you do not have and oddly ironic given that you're basically lecturing this guy for lack of perspective on your field.
You are being incredibly condescending to someone you don't know, including explaining negotiations to someone after admitting you don't know what experience they have. I didn't have to go far in their comment history to determine that you've almost certainly misjudged them.
After reviewing what you've written I would suggest that you tone it down a bit. Yours is honestly the most out-of-place comment I've read on Hacker News in a while, regardless of who you are or what authority you think you've been granted to speak on behalf of the community.
What a completely off-base comment. You missed the part where the person claimed that as an insider,
>I worked on Shark Tank. It is a lie (but not unlike almost every other TV show) with just enough truth to keep "suspension of disbelief" aloft.
that is a wildly inaccurate mischaracterization. Your whole comment is off-base because you missed that. No, there is not "just enough truth to keep suspension of disbelief aloft" with the whole thing being a lie.
It's genuine negotiation that reflects real businesses, real talks with investors, and real investment.
There is one fake aspect, which I highlighted: when discussing the valuation, the entrepreneurs don't tell the sharks about the shark tank exposure ("when this airs... ") even though it is a huge point of leverage.
Shark Tank in my estimation is not inherently a lie (except this part). It is heavily edited, obviously.
If you think my comment had anything to do with Shark Tank or a claim I missed (I didn't), I'm not the one that's off-base, I can wholeheartedly assure you.
Then you should go ahead and delete that comment (or replace it with an X) and I'll delete my reply.
My:
>I've come to the conclusion that your calling the show a lie is completely unwarranted
is the summary of the comment you object to. A video editor can't come here and start calling a pitch event an inherent lie with just enough truth for suspension of disbelief. That's not wht it is.
might have affected your judgment, as it purposefully badly misquotes that HN is not for video editors in specific (by leaving out "in specific") and taking a trollish tone. There's nothing unusual about a skype conversation with a startup. For what it's worth, the reason I didn't mention the name of my contact is due to not wanting this kind of trolling.
Shark Tank is real. Anyone with a company reading this can apply and exposure on it will likely be beneficial if it happens. There's nothing inherently fake about it, other than not mentioning its own effect. (I've also never heard an entrepreneur give a purposefully evasive answer to margins saying, "well I don't want to give an exact amount to all the shark tank viewers, but our bill of materials is in the low single digit percentages" rather than saying "it costs us $1 to make and we sell it for $39.99")
Except for those self-referential aspects missing, the show appears to me to be reality.
You continue to arrive at the false conclusion that I have made an error in judgment, or missed something in forming my remarks rather than being a tiny bit introspective. I would reiterate that I am not talking about bloody Shark Tank at all (despite your best effort), but thinking about how to phrase that is yielding a lot of four letter words.
I don't sense a productive future from this thread, sorry. And no, I'm not deleting anything. You should re-read what both you and I have written tomorrow.
>I don't sense a productive future from this thread, sorry.
I agree and don't want to clutter this thread any worse. If you want you can email me (profile has it) but I won't reply here any more. I enjoy your other posts on HN.
I worked on Shark Tank. It is a lie (but not unlike almost every other TV show) with just enough truth to keep "suspension of disbelief" aloft. It was designed that way from the beginning. Almost all TV shows are designed this way. The "lie" is called entertainment. The subject of "high stakes" investing is ready-made for TV, but no investor can adequately research a business in the 15 minutes it takes to shoot each pitch.
Is Mark Cuban's claim that he funds approximately half of the deals he makes on the show in the ballpark? I also remember him saying something about the each pitch actually taking up to an hour, that is then cut down for TV. But you're saying it takes 15 minutes to shoot each. Which is it?
I can imagine that only Mark Cuban has access to that information as they are private companies. Mark definitely seems to have the entrepreneurs interests more in mind, but they are all "sharks."
Do you trust a "shark" who claims to have your best interests in mind? If they are good at what they do, yes. All the way up to the time they don't have your best interests in mind.
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.
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.
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?
That's my take as well (plus Mark Cuban actually said it takes much longer than you see on air). I don't want to call anyone a liar, which is why I asked the questions I did. For all I know he did work there. But it was certainly a suspect comment.
Between pitches, production takes long breaks where Mark Cuban and the other talent have nothing to do, but sit and wait.
TV production is not very exciting. Post-production even less so. A lot of sitting and waiting. A lot of looking through useless footage to try to find the juice.
I have worked in TV for over a decade. I am leaving Santa Monica to move to Mission Bay in San Francisco in November. I hope not to work on another TV show for the rest of my life, but God laughs when we make plans.
The only thing that takes 15 minutes in television is airing 15 minutes of television. A rule of thumb is that each minute of edited television takes about nine minutes of shot footage if you're in a hurry. I'm suspicious, but not overly so.
Source: Former ENG photographer, production intern, technical director, occasional live broadcast director with an emphasis on sports. (Just tossing it out since people are demanding credentials; I'm not bothered if you believe me or not.)
Edit: Since the guy showed up and backed himself up and I immediately got downvoted, it's worth pointing out that I was actually somewhat standing up for the person and not accusing him of lying unlike the other commenters in this thread. I was suspicious, but not enough to question someone's integrity like other folks in this thread.
I met a writer a decade + ago who wrote for two of the most popular "reality" shows at the time. This individual confided in me everything on the shows was scripted and rehearsed. Everything. The NDA's prevent contestants and workers from disclosing such information, apparently. Studios loved them because, back in the day, they didn't have to pay "scale" to these people who weren't actors at all.
This is the assumption I am operating on, so this is a great link. They all seem kind of mechanical, which is what I am using for some of the humor in the book. So, it was fun to watch these robots in action after having imagined what it would look like in my head for so long.
The purpose is comedy, haha, but the need I have is to realistically estimate when companion robots (clean) will become conversational. Some of the robots in the book are more mechanical-looking. Some more "human-like," meaning: difficult to discern from humans. It's all for the purpose of serving the story, and I can see your point about where the market is. That is helpful as I can see that if these nonsexual companionship robots come to exist, it will be well after every other area is dominated by more useful robots. Thanks!
> That is helpful as I can see that if these nonsexual companionship robots come to exist, it will be well after every other area is dominated by more useful robots.
Actually I think conversational companion robots can happen before more useful domestic servants. Elisa was from the 1960s, voice recognition is pretty good already. You can do a lot of comedy around a robot that can hold a conversation but can't find it way from the kitchen to the living room (in an open floor plan).
Laundry is actually a hard problem, and there isn't much research going into it. (it might be easier than speech, but a lot of research is going into speech)
I am using SendGrid on one project. Another surprising thing is that nobody from SendGrid is responding to this thread to explain and rectify as I have seen other companies do.
This practice happens all the time with books that are successful. Other books leech on to the traffic by using the same keywords, but what you'll notice is that the quality of the books is very poor because the author's heart and soul are not invested in the project. Startups that do well, like books, seem to all enjoy the participation of leadership and creativity aligned around a passionate interest in the problem, creative or logical or both.
In the spirit of providing feedback to help improve the documentation, and with regard to the bold text:
The article made it difficult to find out what React Storybook is quickly.
The style of article is informational, which is usually written like a pyramid. High level information at the top, then works into more detail-oriented sections, most important first. For example, "any react application" would probably come in the second paragraph, after the high level intro as that was an important point (based on the repetition) in the bullets.
It's interesting that some people think of TV as somehow "true." Maybe it is emotionally true, but it is not reality. Reality is having to commute 90 minutes to work on a TV show that portrays reality falsely as many of my colleagues do.