This season, on The Real World 22: Cancun, the hotties who were offered a chance to stop being polite and start getting real on video were given cameras of their own — Sony-supplied Webbie HDs — because, in executive producer Jim Johnston’s words, “What better place than Cancun to take home movies?” Cast member Bronne, however, took the idea of home movies in a different direction.
Described on the official site as “the resident comic” whose “high energy, lack of filter, and willingness to do anything for a laugh make him the life of the party,” Bronne’s fun on the show came to an abrupt end when he was kicked out of the official hotel for throwing a fire extinguisher off a balcony. However, instead of being sent home, he was placed in another hotel so he could continue interacting with the cast, albeit on a limited basis.
Isolated from his friends and bored out of his mind, Bronne had to find something to do, and so spent one morning of his exile making a one-man zombie movie with his personal camera. This somehow escaped the attention of production company Bunim-Murray’s staff — despite the fact that footage was later found of Bronne showing off his cinematic efforts to the other cast members — until they started going through the cast’s Webbie memory cards in post-production. But once they discovered the film, they immediately knew exactly what to do with it — put it on the web for MTV’s extremely online audience to see in full.
Chronicles of a Survivor was edited together by a Real World staffer in one day, who added some music, sound and visual effects — but because the film was shot sequentially in single takes, it didn’t require much work. Rather than attempt to be genuinely scary, Bronne instead plays Chronicles as satire, but still shows an innate knowledge of film tricks that make the short surprisingly effective and polished. Bronne, according to Johnston, has no background in film but is obsessed with zombie movies and comics, and it’s that fanboy drive which makes this entertaining.
Cancun is far from the first nonfiction program to give its subjects their own cameras, but this is probably the most creative use to which they’ve been put. And Johnston, with whom I spoke via phone, seemed genuinely happy that they had a place to feature it, thanks to the Real World Dailies site, which Bunim-Murray put up mainly to prove how little manipulation and editing occurs on the show. “We really are making a documentary here. If someone walks through a door and we miss it, we miss it — it’s why our editing is so challenging,” he said.
Uploaded last night, Chronicles has received approximately 4,300 views on MTV’s standard player, but those numbers don’t reflect total views, as the big publicity push has been built around MTV’s experimental new player that allows for viewer comments, Twitter updates and Facebook integration (something MTV’s been playing with a lot recently.) Johnston couldn’t confirm whether future casts would in the future receive cameras, but he did say, “We should be giving the roommates cameras more often.”
“These days, we’re all going to have our own 5-minute movie,” he added. “We’ll have to rewrite Andy Warhol.”
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