MIPFormats Panel Profiles Lip Sync Battle, 60 Days In

CANNES: World Screen’s Anna Carugati moderated a MIPFormats session profiling two hit formats that originated in the U.S.: A+E Networks’s 60 Days In and Viacom International Media Networks’s Lip Sync Battle.

The session, New Creative Boom in the U.S., discussed what’s driving the success of these two shows that were commissioned by U.S. broadcasters and are now being rolled out as formats worldwide. First up was the new A&E hit 60 Days In, with A+E Networks’s Hayley Babcock, head of formats, international programming and production; Brad Holcman, senior director, nonfiction and alternative programming; and Ellen Lovejoy, VP of international content sales. In the show, seven individuals volunteer to spend 60 days undercover at Clark County Jail in order to shed a light on corruption at the facility. The series, produced by Lucky 8 TV, was renewed for a second season ahead of the season one premiere.

Discussing the genesis of the show, Holcman noted that producers Lucky 8 had heard of a “sheriff wanting to have undercover cops live as inmates to find out what was going on at a corrupt jail. We partnered together to create this program.”

Holcman said that to accomplish the show, the sheriff needed “a vast array of people. He wanted to look at the criminology and what the life cycle of an inmate is. So we, along with the sheriff, looked at archetypes. We have Barbra, a 25-year-old stay-at-home mother; we have Zac, who wants to be in law enforcement; we have Maryum, Muhammad Ali’s daughter and a social worker who wants to know how to better [prisoners’ lives].”

Key to the success of the show has been the audiences’ ability to follow the personal journeys of these participants. “Whether you’re a fan of [shows about incarceration] or not, it’s these seven individuals that you follow,” Holcman said. “Every one of their lives is forever changed. Imagine you’re in a world you’ve never seen before and you’re spending 60 days inside it. It’s incredible. That’s why you watch.”

“This is completely and totally real,” said Babcock. “It is not scripted. Nobody in that jail knew that they weren’t inmates, except for the sheriff, the sheriff’s right-hand person and the production people. None of the other inmates nor officers of the jail knew. That is one of the core points of the format. It is about finding people who have personal motivations to go in and put themselves in this situation. Not just because they want to be on television. That would never work. They have to have a real, personal reason. It’s not a show about jail reform—you get that as extra added value. What you’re getting are these incredible personal journeys that are totally voyeuristic and completely real.”

Inmates and officers were told that a show was being filmed about people who are in jail for the first time.

Lovejoy said there’s been strong interest in the show, with a U.K. deal clinched already.

Carugati asked the panelists how the concept can be adapted to other markets, especially in a criminal justice system that is different from the one in the U.S.

Babcock noted, “The issue is not, do you have the exact incarceration system and stories that A&E found in the U.S. You need to find a system within your community that has been in the news for having problems. You want a neutral party, like a newspaper, to have recognized that there is a system with a problem. And there needs to be someone in the system who wants to create change. We would work with you, the licensee, to do the proper research within your community to find the right places to approach.”

Babcock also talked about the advice A+E Networks can provide its production partners on managing logistics such as the cameras installed in the jail. “The jail used in the U.S. did have many cameras in place, however the quality of those cameras was not television quality. So part of the production budget was upgrading those cameras. We also added more cameras in better places, lowered them a little bit so the point of view you got from the camera was better for television. We can help you do that. We had 300 cameras [in the U.S.]—that’s not an absolute necessity. It’s going to be dictated by the building you’re shooting in. But that is some of the know-how and information we can bring to the table and help you scale this.”

Holcman talked about the role of the producers during the production process. “This format requires a lot of preproduction because once you drop them in there’s very little we can do. And then it’s the magic of post. So prep and post is where this goes down. Once [the participants are] there, we let the world happen. We are documenting their everyday lives.”

Babcock added, “As our partners, you would have the ability to take U.S. season one to any law-enforcement institution you wanted to work with to show them that it did work.”

Broadcasters also have A&E’s ratings as proof of the concept’s success.

Carugati asked how scaleable the format is. Babcock said it is, to a certain extent. “There are certain points of safety and coverage that you can’t go below. You want to be able to capture what is happening. But in any institution you can certainly reduce the area you wish to cover. You might just want to put people into a couple of manageable groups that are only in certain areas of the jail so you need fewer cameras. This is a fixed-rig show, so there’s a baseline you cannot go below.”

Conversations are also under way to adapt the format to locations other than jails.

The second half of the panel was devoted to a very different format: Lip Sync Battle. The show, which was first commissioned by Spike in the U.S., has traveled widely courtesy of Viacom International Media Networks (VIMN). On hand to talk about the concept were Caroline Beaton, VIMN’s senior VP of international program sales, and Malcolm Gerrie, chief executive of Whizz Kid Entertainment and executive producer of the British version, which airs on Channel 5.

“It’s had 130 million YouTube hits now for its various clips online,” said Beaton of the show, which started as a segment on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Inherent to the show’s success has been the fact that the celebrities featured “are lip-syncing against type,” Beaton said. “We’re trying to deliberately cast people where there’s a huge comedic element.”

On making Lip Sync Battle for the U.K., Gerrie said the first challenge was talent. “We struggled to get [big] names at the beginning. [We knew we were] not going to get Beyonce, we’re not going to get Anne Hathaway, so we thought, let’s go down the comedy route. The response was fantastic. In two days we booked four of the biggest comedians. This was on a channel that had no tradition of doing prime-time light entertainment.”

Beaton said she and her team knew that the show would work internationally right at the outset. “You don’t get promotion like you get from the number of hits there have been [on the YouTube clips]. Anne Hathaway doing ‘Wrecking Ball’ had 20 million YouTube hits. We’ve had clips that did upwards of 30 million YouTube hits. You can’t buy that kind of publicity. By the time we came down to Cannes a year ago, we had people trying to sign up all the major territories that week.”

On the show’s adaptability, Beaton noted that broadcasters don’t have to stick with the half-hour format—the first international version, in Chile, had 90-minute episodes. “Many territories are trying to run it as an hour rather than a half hour.”

The key, Beaton noted, is not messing with the “look and feel of the show, the branding. We’ve got a very comprehensive production bible so you can recreate that instantly recognizable look.”

As for casting, there can be variations—in Poland, for example, it’s more social-media personalities than film or TV stars—but it’s key that producers look at “the most interesting and dynamic cliff drop for an audience between what the celebrity would normally do and what they’re willing to do for Lip Sync Battle. That’s where the drama is. That’s what makes it go viral.”

Gerrie stressed that one of the key selling points of the format is that celebrities only need to take a day, or even half a day, to be on the show. “It’s a small commitment…. We do a lot of talent-based shows in the U.K. and usually you’re asking for a commitment of two or three weeks from a piece of talent. This is a day or less. That’s a huge bonus.”

The format has been sold to 30 territories, Beaton said. It’s in production or on air in nine, with more being announced soon. “Everyone knows that signing a format agreement is the easy bit. Making it work on air is the challenge. We’ve shown we can make it work on air from one corner of the globe to the next.”

Beaton says that VIMN has the resources “to create something that does as much as it can to take out the risk for the third-party buyer and/or producer. We’re trying to take the sting out of all the lessons we’ve learned on the original. We also tap into the originators. We work with Casey Patterson [exec producer on the U.S. version]. The originators in the U.S. are very happy to get involved in terms of offering consultancy. We’re not trying to be heavy handed and police what people are doing, but we are trying to support and enable the very best local versions to be created.”