Hello, and welcome back to the Mass Funny podcast and part two of my interview with former producer Alex Fanelle. If you haven't heard yesterday's part one, yeah, I would urge you to go do that before jumping in here. Otherwise you just you've missed half the chat. Basically where
we left off yesterday. I just asked her about the process of frank and grabbing, which most people would just call massive editing fails, and why they do this, why they chop sentences up and merge them together, and yeah, I'll I'll just jump straight back in so here we go back to the conversation to get back to like you as a producer, I want to bring up this this topic which always comes out in the media every year called frank and biting.
It's actually called franken grabs. Would they say frank and bite. It's week all them frank and grabs.
Okay, So for the listeners to this who don't know what a frank and grab is, it's where you would essentially take maybe a few words from one sentence, a few words from a sentence a few days later of a participant, and you mash it all together to make a whole new sentence, which is often not what we're said in the slightest Uh, that.
Is not what my definition of it is. But the technical side is correct, Yes it is.
Well, look before we let me play a couple of examples of this, so take a listen to these.
I guess for me, when I said I wanted to leave, it was because I was scared. No matter what happens tonight, I think it's important for me to, like Carolyna, know how I'm feeling.
So to me, there I can hear that, you can hear the like different inflection in the words. It goes, I do not like this about like you can tell this fake.
Yeah, Well, but why did I do that?
Because to me, that feels like a sloppy, desperate attempt to say, Okay, we have this storyline, we need to run with it. But they haven't said anything to keep that storyline going, So fuck do what you have to to just like it's it's not real.
Half the time the participants talk in circles and riddles. It's so hard to get a clear sentence from them. Frank and grabbing isn't something that is unique to reality TV. That's something that exists in all TV shows, in all media, in all documentary. Putting sentences together and cutting the shit in the middle and clarifying what somebody says is a technique as old as time in television, in movies. Secondly, ideally,
you don't want to be doing that. Ideally, the participants speak in a way that makes sense for the audience and to the story we're telling. Most of the time, a frank can grab is used to clarify what somebody's trying to say. They still said it, They've got the sentiment of what they're saying.
Sometimes they're like.
Well, you know, it was like, you know, he was, you know, looking at me weird, and you know I felt like pressured and oh, I don't know, like it's all okay, So we know what.
That person's saying, but they didn't say it. So what might.
Happen is you'd find parts where they've said something that implies that. So we're always trying to just clarify what they're doing in terms of taking things completely out of context or saying things. I personally haven't ever used a frank and grab for that. I can actually put hand on heart and say I have never used a Franken grab to make somebody say something that wasn't aligned with
what their sentiment was in that interview. Most of the time, when somebody is being a dick or saying or being salacious, you see it coming out of their mouth, and that's what the audience ultimately knows. They're like, you can blame me edit and the Frankens or whatever, but we saw you saying it. We saw you looking at her like that, we saw you saying it to her face, and so I really do begrudge the whole It's a frank and Grabs.
So when someone comes out and says they blame the idea, I suppose what I'm realizing here talking to you is it's not as simple as them just going that's out of context, because their perception of blaming the edit might be because they will hear a frank and Grab and they go, I didn't say that, but they don't realize that it was like they kind of did, just not in those words.
You can get really hung up on being like, I didn't say that specific thing. But that's like straw man argument, right. It's like, just because you didn't say that specific thing does not then equal that none of this happened.
No.
I love how you've not worked them mapsprokably for years now, and you're like, you're almost like defending it still, And I get that because it's your work. But I suppose me as a person watching this, I'm constantly I almost side with their participants and I'm like, yeah, the fucking fucking editors did them dirty. But then talking to you, it's like, no, this is the reason that looks like that and this sounds like that.
Well, I just don't think it's as salacious as people want it to be. That's the truth. And I'm not really defending this beeause.
Before I worked on Maths, I was just an audience like everybody else, and I was really keen to get on the show because I loved it and I still love it, and I was warning to see, you know, how much of it is the edit, how much of it is the manipulation, how much of it is frankin grabs.
You know. I had the same questions as.
Everybody would, and I was interested when I was like when I realized, ah, sometimes everything is just a practical reason and a really reasonable explanation for a lot of it, and that's what then started to get me worked up
when people would always blame the edit. I'm like, no, most of the time, Like, for example, okay that the groom that dropped his bride was the scene yesterday, Ryan, there was a scene yesterday where they're meditating and they've got a voiceover of him, like spec replaying the instance of him dropping her on the.
Ground and oh my god, I can't believe I dropped her.
And it's comedy, right, there's no way that that actually that he that they can prove that he was actually thinking that when he meditated, But is it such a long bow to draw that he was still thinking about that, because the day before he was saying, I don't put that to air.
I can't believe I dropped my bride. I can't believe it.
And so there's always a bit of creative you know, a creative license when it comes to these scenes, but it's often based in what really the sentiment and what really has been happening.
Because I suppose at the end of the day, as we've already said that, we may watch this thing in the show is about finding love for these people, but it's not. The show is an entertainment show created to entertain viewers. If someone finds lovers a byproduct of that, great.
But that that's entertainment as well.
Though Yeah, well I don't know what The show originally started as.
Married at First Sight is a Swedish format, I believe, and it was originally like pitched as like almost a documentary, and then the Swedish one was boring, and then there was a couple of UK series and they only have two or three couples. They weren't the dinner parties and it was just kind of fly on the wall and it was boring. It started with the wedding but boring, and then the first few seasons of the Australia one boring.
And then they brought Tara McWilliams as executive producer and she came from like Master Chef on one of the other dramatized shows, and she flipped everything. She Her first season was the one with there was some twins from Perth nick and I don't remember the names, and then there was a chick called Cheryl. I believe. There was drama with her and there was a farmer who ran away or something, but she essentially flipped what the show is.
She kept like the overall concept of strangers marry, but she sensationalized it and made it bigger and better, and that worked so well that every other franchise around the world is now copying the Australian format.
Yeah, so it's almost like it got spring of fired. Have you watched that Springer documentary?
Oh?
No, you got to watch it. It's so good. It's that exact story. Jerry Springer is a show used to be so.
Bland and boring and it was just tanking in the ratings, and then this executive producer came along and he was a tabloid journalist and he was like, nah, we need to flip it.
On its head.
We want stories like this, and it just that's when it started to become bonkers.
But that's when it started to rape well.
And you can get angry at Maths for displaying all this behavior, but also we need to be angry at ourselves as an audience, because we vote with our eyeballs, we vote with.
Our remotes, and we're still watching it. But so who's the villain.
It's kind of like a representation of the world as a as a whole, because every year, our perceptions of like what's normal are acceptable in society goes to a new extreme. Like I was in high school maybe fifteen years ago, and I remember back then, if like a celebrity is topless, picked eleaked, it would be outraged. Remember Paris Hilton had a sex step. Outrage shocking, disgusting, slut shaming.
Can't believe that would ever happen. And then gradually more people started, like only fans became a thing and it was like, oh my god, someone is selling pictures of their boobs and the media were outraged. And now we've got Bonnie Blue OnlyFans star I fucked a thousand people today. I'm like, okay, I know what's the next extreme? And just to go into the only fans world. I don't know if you know these people, but Bonnie Blue is like the current kind of one taking fans. Oh yeah, yeah.
She did the thousand people in a day, But then two months before that, the UK version of her, Lily Phillips, she slept with one hundred people in a day and made a documentary about it and everyone was like disgusting, how can she? So then Bonnie comes out does a thousand and you know what, Lily, You know what Lily did The day after Bonnie Slept with a thousand what
she was scrolling on Twitter? She posted a selfie style video walking through London at five Hey guys, just on a come walk, just like left the guy's house and she had semen dripping down her face while walking down the street. And I was like, what is happened into the world, and like she posted it as in like this was the most normal thing ever.
Oh yeah.
The the thousand people in a day thing really just is so bizarre to me. The whole that whole thing is bizarre.
But then I think Maths is gonna like how do they keep getting more extreme? And obviously we know most of these participants and upon only fans, which I've got no problem with, like who cares? But then like, at what point are they going to bring that into the show? And then I know at the minute they're trying to keep it somewhat family friendly because they want like family friendly advertisers like wool Worfs and Cols and you know, those ones who maybe don't want to be aligned with
adult content. But for Maths to keep evolving and reflecting society, it's almost like I wouldn't be surprised next year, if there's a storyline where a bride's caught filming porn with six different men while a husband's at the gym, like you know, because and she's like, well, I'm a creator, he knew that. You know, that's my job.
You should be a maths producer.
If they do that exact storyline next year, I want royalties, But I don't know. We're getting sidetracked, I think. Before I wrap this, I just want to say so the general perception from the public is maps producers are evil, the horrible people. How did they sleep at night? How did you sleep at night?
Sleep so well?
And like the colleagues you work with, just normal everyday people with a job. They're not like even monsters.
No, I don't think so, We're just normal people. Were you know.
I have worked on lots of different shows. I have a journalism background. I've worked on Neighbors, Home and Away, the Projects, Sunrise Master Chef.
Your job is as a journalist.
As a producer, it's always clarify a story, amplifier story and make it andentertaining.
That's always your job.
That is just the lens through which any media professional will always bring to whatever show they work on you do the same. Yeah, you know what's interesting and what's not.
But what's what I find interested in? That is so my background was I got into the industry randomly because I just liked celebrity culture. And then I would skip school with my mum's little shit digital camera and I
became britain youngest paparazzi. And then yeah, I did, like I put a book out recently, and not to go into that, but I spoke about the couple of years I did doing that, and I quit that because I felt I crossed the line morally and I did a set of pictures that still kind of haunt me to this day, which I don't agree with. And I reflected on that and thought this is not for me. But then I was offered a job as a tableau journalist.
It was great. I was suddenly I was fucking sent to hang out with Ariana Grande in a hotel room. I was off to a Karashian party, and I thought this is great. But then as I got more senior in that role, went from a magazine to a newspaper, I'm like, look at me, my career is flying. And then suddenly I was like, oh wait, I don't agree with this story. I don't feel good about this one.
And it's like I constantly have this battle of Okay, maybe I don't agree with all of the views of this corporation I work for, but is it just a job? And then I suppose with maths producers, people are like, oh my god, you work in TV. It's the dream. But what people don't realize is maybe it's sixty five percent of the dream. But then these first five percent where you're like, a, do I agree with doing that?
Do I feel comfortable? But then I suppose look at anyone in any job, even say you work in Starbucks, I'm I'm sure if you go to the very top of how Starbucks operates as a company, or any company, you're probably like, morally, you'll find things you don't agree.
Yeah, at the end of the day, anyone who's working within a capitalist system, for a corporation, there's gonna be things which are unethical because that is the definition of capitalism, that's the definition of business in so many ways. And if you're just a human trying to exist in a capital society, there are going to be things which go against our.
Out of integrity.
I suppose, I guess when it comes to a career, though, I believe happiness is found through acting with integrity. So that is something that I have focused on more and to be honest, that is what the podcast is about, and that is my way of kind of living within more integrity. But I can't speak for everybody that's ever produce any every show. There's thousands and thousands and thousands of people that have worked on these shows, and I am not a representation of everybody, and this is just
my story and my version of things. It doesn't even mean it's fact, you know.
And for anyone listening to this podcast as we wrap now, I think they should. Actually I'm going to link your podcast that Shelby's maybe in the description, and like, if you're intrigued by the reality of the industry and what happens behind the scenes, definitely go and listen. I'm obsessed with it. It's actually fascinating to me. It's refreshing, and I've never heard anyone kind of do what you and Jody a doing and speak from that side of things.
M thank you and I we're big fans of you, which is why with Jordy gave me information to.
Speak to you.
Thank you, Johnny, and thank you so much for your time today. This has actually been a great chat. And it's funny because I said I'm never going to do long episodes, but i just haven't really wanted to wrap this because I found it so fascinating.
Ah me too, Thank you, Josh.
Well speak to you on the internet.
Yeah, have a great day. Thank you. I don't know what you guys think, but to me, that whole interview was actually fascinating, Like I'm so intrigued by all of this stuff and just the process behind a show of
this scale, how it actually comes together. And I'm hoping to get another former producer, one who did a few more seasons and worked in like a different department, so then if that goes ahead, I can ask them some of the questions you guys have been submitting because Alex couldn't really have answered a lot of them because that wasn't really in her department. So I'm maybe trying to get, you know, someone from each the apartment so we can
cover every element of how this show is made. But yeah, I'm just working on that in a minute, but for now, thank you for listening and see you soon.