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This is probably the section you've been looking for. While the previous page contained all kinds of somewhat irrelevant information, such as when each contestant's parents and siblings were born (what does that even have to do with the competition?), here you'll find information about RLBFB's behind the scenes.
Real-Life BFB |
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Main info • Production info
Yearly overview • Show timelines (Timeline of RLBFDI • RLBFDIA • RLIDFB • RLBFB before and after the split • RLTPOT • Extra scouting) • General timelines (pre- and post-1950) Differences from Pencil 2.O • Aesthetics • Methodology (Names • Nationalities • Heights • Ages • Colours • Accessories • Team portraits) • Beyond the 64 TL;DR: Info • Timeline of the final project (part 1 • part 2 • part 3) |
Season 1: RLBFDI[]
Preparation[]
Source: "Origins of BFDI" by Jacknjellify
See "Before BFDI" for more information. Just kidding! RLBFB admittedly started very differently than the YouTube-based series did (no matter what canon it's in), and it also started much earlier.
Jacknjellify,[1] known as a large collection of people these days, were only a rather progressive-minded duo by the time the fifties became the sixties. Alerted to the rapid post-war decolonization movements in Africa, starting with Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco (1956), Ghana (1957), Guinea (1958) and Cameroon (1960), Jnj packed their American bags and headed to Kenya. It was one of the more promising locations in the struggle for self-determination—the Mau Mau Rebellion left a legacy of fighting for freedom from British colonial rule—and the two anonymous ones quickly made their way there. In this colony, they decided to give themselves a legacy and put Kenya on the map of international telecommunications.
The first casting calls for a new series from abroad were sent in early 1960. No information was given about what genre it was or where it came from, but based on what people saw and heard on the television/radio, many assumed that it was going to be a children's series, similar to the then-popular Rocky & Bullwinkle or The Flintstones (only dumber). As such, many of the applicants were picked from a pool of letters from young children, the Baby Boomers, if you will.
The first prospective contestant to be accented into what would become RLBFDI was not a fledgling urchin, but a Chicago teenager named Frederic Collins, whose name was placed at the top of a long list of potential cast members on 2 May 1960. He didn't exactly have an interesting backstory—remember: this was before he became a father at sixteen—but his application was the first the producers saw that wasn't written by a parent. The other teenager accepted was a high school drop-out from Canada, but living in New York, named Maja Zanaroff. The two were originally meant to be the older compères for the audience, explaining what the accepted children Thérèse Cohl (five-year-old girl from Luxembourg), Spongy Karjalainen (one-year-old boy from Michigan) and Woody Gutta (one-year-old boy from New Zealand) were doing.
Jacknjellify must have gone through heaps of applications before they found one from someone of a mature age. By June, they eventually came to finding three: a 19-year-old girl from Turkey, Kathy Jinko, and two people whom Maja personally recommended, Penelope Carvalho (her good friend and Kenyan correspondent) and Joe Graffeo (her boyfriend/stepbrother).
The summer of 1960 was spent trying to find more people for the embryonic show. Eventually Jnj decided to include more children in this growing cast. There was an adventurous three-year-old boy from Zanzibar (Rocky Mohamed) and a six-year-old kamaʻāina girl from Hilo (Iris Tsukuda). However, they found that they tended to choose older people, especially if they had interesting stories: Columbus Lincoln was descended from the 16th U.S. president and believed himself to be superior in every way, while Ady Deeb was proud to mention that he killed the man who had shot his younger brother in a gang fight. And then, of course, there were the actual older people in the casting pool: on the one hand were the middle-agers, barely represented in the media (the Iowa City school administrator Eugenia Ball and her subordinate Thomas) and on the other end were people like Flora Harvey, 62 years young, and Simon Burger, who had to be practically tamed of his animal nature from living in a cave for almost a thousand years.
By the end of the year, casting seemed complete.
But in ealy 1961 there was a change in genre: Jacknjellify changed their plans from a simple children's comedy to a competition show, which was unheard of at the time.[2] There was just only one problem: the show was completely uneven. There was no way to have sixteen actors—now contestants—in a series where team building was a priority.[3] The addition of four contestants was necessary, so the showrunners asked the contestants if they wanted to add a few more people themselves. So in August 1961, the last contestants in this new show were Nathalia Carvalho, Penelope's little sister, G.P. Graffeo, Joe's little brother (still in Canada), Lela Pearson, the West Indian mother of her and Frederic's future child, and Phuong Nguyen, Columbus' so-called "wife", whom he had only seen in a newspaper picture about the escalating Vietnam conflict.
Production[]
Once all the contestants were sought, they were sent to Kenya before filming was to begin on Monday, 6 November 1961. But not at their current age. Thus we are introduced to the idea of age-averaging: the ages of the contestants were averaged with the median age of all of them so that it wouldn't be so awkward for a three-year-old to interact with someone in her sixties, for example.[4] The age-averaging process usually started the day before filming and lasted exactly 24 hours.
From that point on, they were able to interact with each other with the same personalities they had at their original ages and take it easy until filming and the discussion of administrative matters began.
Unlike those of other seasons, episodes of RLBFDI were released internationally on the first of every month. They were distributed to the nearest weekend in the respective countries. For example, American viewers wouldn't see the first episode until 5 January, during the "Friday night death slot". This was changed to Saturday evenings once a number of voters had accumulated.
Of course, the work on the episodes happened much earlier, almost always in the month before the expected release date. The episode production schedule was notable for being extremely rigid, although things were often finished much earlier in this season, probably due to the relatively small number of votes compared to those in other seasons.
Here is the episode production schedule for each month, to which the crew has stuck very well.
- Recruitment of extras (after late 1962; referred to as "R.C. scouting"): — For more information, click here for the EXTRA SCOUTING page.
- Administrative phase: The phase in which administrative matters were discussed between the host(s) and the relaxing contestants, such as name changes (among other things). Also the time that the vote-counters were most active; they had to manually count the votes arriving to the country by post. This period started at the same time as the recess period the month before. In most episodes, the discussion of administrative matters began on the day an episode was released and ended when no more votes were allowed to be sent through the post, usually ten days after an episode was released.
- Filming phase: The phase in which the bulk of an episode was filmed. In late 1961, invisible and intangible cameras had been planted throughout the world and outer space, in case contestants appeared doing something interesting. Most of the time they did.
- The pre-credits scenes were shot first, usually immediately after the end of the administrative phase. Helpfully, these scenes took place before Cake at Stake, as not all votes would have been counted at that point. The main reason for this was that late votes from countries where the episodes were shown delayed would still be coming in, waiting to be counted.
- Once the final votes were counted (usually from distant countries like those in the Pacific), the Cake at Stake ceremony and challenge were filmed. This often took only one day, but there are some cases where the challenges (RLBFDI 11, 18 etc.) took longer, with the time shifts well documented even by outside observers. Nevertheless, the filming phase ends relatively quickly (three days, excluding holidays and three-day weekends).[5]
- Editing phase: The most important phase, in which all the filmed sections are edited together into a (roughly) seven to ten minute episode to be exported to televisions all around the world.[6] This, of course, will take the most time, as the crew have to choose the parts that are most worth showing, taking into account the exciting ones. A form of editing software from the early 1960s is used, the quality and complexity of which is more comparable to contemporary films to television shows.
- The editing phase starts on the same day as the filming phase ends, as everything is shot one after the other—it would be dire if anything got lost in the timeline.
- This process is carried out by robots, who let neither holiday nor weekend stop them from their endless work—their current speed is one minute of an episode per day, including editing, voice enhancement and application of stock music (surely lightning speed to the pre-Flash computers of the early 1960s). The efficiency of these automatons should not be doubted, for the final product they deliver is of the same quality as if it had been made by humans.
- Recess phase: The phase in which all the people of RLBFDI take a break (hosts, editors, showrunners and cast members alike) although it must be remembered that the cast have been relaxed and off camera since the editing phrase began, with some exceptions. In a way, the recess period at the end of a month can spill over to the next, at least until the administrative phase comes.
- In this timeline, the recess phase and the administrative phase will be listed together (as "Rec. ad. phase"), but remember that discussion of administrative matters begins as soon as an episode is released to prepare for the next one.
- Meanwhile, the release date (arguably the most important one for casual viewers) will be shown as a subset of the "Rec. ad. phase"
- In this timeline, the recess phase and the administrative phase will be listed together (as "Rec. ad. phase"), but remember that discussion of administrative matters begins as soon as an episode is released to prepare for the next one.
Wrap-up[]
- Production of RLBFDI ended on 11 December 1963 for the contestants, and on 24 December 1963 for the editors.
- On Friday, 13 December 1963, the contestants were allowed to return to their home countries. However, as the series ended on a rather bleak note, technically not all contestants had been repatriated by the time RLBFDI 25 was broadcast on New Year's Day 1964.
Season 2: RLBFDIA[]
Production and preparation[]
For the most part, the episode creation process did not change from RLBFDI to RLBFDIA. One difference was that this season was marked by a number of unsightly delays that resulted in episodes sometimes being released months later than expected.[7] This wasn't usually a problem, although it did lead to a number of strange episode arcs that would have been unthinkable in the prior season. RLBFDIA 5, for example, was a five-part episode that took almost all of 1965 to finish. This also caused the showrunners to reconsider the now limited powers of the automatic editors, which couldn't always keep up with the rapidly changing trends of mid-1960s television. However, their suspicions would not be confirmed until RLIDFB...
The contestants all returned in the first week of June 1964 for filming of the second season amidst the cultural winds of change of the middle of the 1960s.
Wrap-up despite cancellation[]
- RLBFDIA was cancelled on 12 August 1965, as the entire budget for the show had been spent and there were no savings left.[8]
- The contestants learned of the cancellation on the same day and were immediately sent back to their home countries. But a few things happened the day they were instructed to repatriate themselves:
- Lela and Woody were recovered. The former "willingly" stayed in Turkey.
- They were all instructed to return together at some point in the future, but until then they were allowed to lead normal civilian lives. In some cases, they were treated like celebrities for giving their countries a good name. In others, they were ostracized.
- The former members of FreeSmart (the team has been disbanded, but not the alliance) decide to stick together in Turkey, recording video diaries on Super 8mm film.
- The contestants learned of the cancellation on the same day and were immediately sent back to their home countries. But a few things happened the day they were instructed to repatriate themselves:
- RLBFDIA 6 was expected to be released on 1 September 1965. No episode officially came out, but some clips were made available to the public (albeit in vinyl record form) on 23 August 1968.
Season 3: RLIDFB[]
Preparation[]
With the "colour wave" sweeping the Western world from the mid-1960s onwards, starting in the United States in '65, Britain in '67 and Japan and Northern Europe in '68, it only made sense that the newest season of RLBFDI, RLIDFB, would be shot in colour. While agreeing to this, the showrunners insisted on using their old editors instead of updating to newer, more efficient material. Let's see how that turned out...
As for all the RLBFDIA contestants, they were called to be part the show again three years later. They agreed on that, as well as on the continuation of their stories from late 1965, as they congregated for a fourth time in July 1968.[9] But instead of meeting in Nairobi, as they had done for the first two seasons, they were sent to an abandoned part of Istanbul, Turkey, to start filming the new season.
Also, Phuong's hair became white.
Wrap-up despite a hiatus[]
- By the time of RLIDFB 1's release, the automatic editors were in a total state of disrepair. Although the aesthetic quality of the series had improved greatly over the years,[10] the sixties had finally taken their toll on the old computers, which broke down on 12 September 1968.
- With no computer editors to do the work and no human editors to quickly hire before the episode's deadline, there was no choice put to shelve RLIDFB. Thus, the release date was changed from 1 October to 1 December 1968, to no date at all (as of May 1973).
- Although filming for RLIDFB 2 certainly happened (with one contestant even returning from the TLC), it was not until 25 September 1968 that the contestants learned that this break would be surprisingly long.
- On Friday, 27 September 1968, all the contestants, free and TLC-imprisoned, were once again allowed to return to their home countries.
Season 4: RLBFB[]
Preparation[]
In the summer of 1969, Jacknjellify updated their automated editors so that two minutes of an episode could be edited in a day. Certainly this was more efficient, but at a price: it led to a significantly lower camera quality. Perhaps this was because colour television seemed to be of a less clear quality than black and white television, which was the most common format for sets worldwide before the late 1960s.
All the contestants from RLBFDIA/RLBFDI gathered together in September 1969 to be part of this new series (except one, Alelsatan, and including four newcomers: the creators of one of the first RLBFDI tribute videos in 1964, Violette, Lill and Stefan, and a well-known celebrity, Lothar). They arrived not in Nairobi, but in an undisclosed rural part of Kenya, to start filming RLBFB during the first week of October 1969. Much of the time before this was spent letting all the contestants get to know each other.
Until the beginning of 1970, RLBFB was on a slightly lower level than the prior seasons. But this can only be said about the film quality itself, as RLBFB's writing, character development and even choice in music were off the charts from the start. This was possible even with 64 contestants, many of whom had never had a major speaking rôle in RLBFDI.
Hiatus[]
- RLBFB 13 and 14 were meant to be released at the same time. They were separated because it was felt that the final product was too long.
- Filming could not take place in the expected month and the show was declared "almost cancelled" on 15 July. Two days later, on 17 July 1970, almost all of the contestants were released (albeit temporarily) and allowed to return home.[11][12]
- It was eventually revealed that the reason for the 1970–1971 hiatus was so that the crew could work on something else related to RLBFDI, the Official Character Guide,[13] which was a booklet that was released to a select group of people on 29 August of that year. The show wasn't cancelled after all!
- Filming could not take place in the expected month and the show was declared "almost cancelled" on 15 July. Two days later, on 17 July 1970, almost all of the contestants were released (albeit temporarily) and allowed to return home.[11][12]
- All contestants had to return to Kenya before 18 June 1971, the start of the weekend before filming for RLBFB 13 and 14 could finally begin.
The split[]
The split of RLBFB to a reinvented form of it and RLTPOT was one of the most controversial things to have come out of this series. It had essentially divided the contestants into groups of two who were never to interact with each other again. As of 20 December 1971, forty contestants who had joined Two continued to live in Kenya, while the RLBFB participants and eliminated ones who remained with Four were suddenly transported to a very sparsely-populated part of northern Afghanistan to continue the rest of the series. For the final half of the season, all RLTPOT participants who appeared in an episode were now credited as guest stars, second in the participation hierarchy to the RLBFB contestants themselves.
This has also led to a bifurcation of schedules: by doubling the number of automated editors, it became possible to work on two shows simultaneously. These series were united by the pivotal sixteenth episode.
Wrap-up[]
- Production of RLBFDI ended on 19 March 1973 for the contestants, and on 8 April 1973 for the editors.
- The contestants were allowed to return to their home countries as soon as the conflict of the episode was resolved, i.e., during the episode. Some of them had even parted ways minutes before the show ended.
- Although they were actually able to go home, many of them stayed in Kenya and even settled there for their post-show careers. Many of their futures remain unknown until we next see them.
Season 5: RLTPOT[]
Production[]
See above. Note that scenes set in the EXIT are also included in this season, even though they were shot several months before. This creates a one-day delay between the end of filming and the start of editing, as one day is dedicated exclusively to acquiring the EXIT scenes from the archives.
Reminder: This is a continuation of RLBFB 16, just with the contestants who joined Two's show.
Notes[]
- ↑ Here, "Jacknjellify" refers to the extinct production company of the 1960s, not the current YouTube royalty. We still don't know their actual identities.
- ↑ We can't say that these days, as they're everywhere. But imagine what it was like in the 1960s when this show came out.
- ↑ ... even though sixteen is a perfect square and divisible by two, four and eight.
- ↑ Yeah, the RLBFB ones were included retroactively.
- ↑ Until the later episodes of RLBFB, I went by the holidays on the Kenyan calendar. Helpfully, both Christian and Muslim holidays are included, which works almost perfectly with the religious diversity of RLBFDIA contestants… but unfortunately, Jewish holidays aren't celebrated there.
- ↑ With as many advertisements between scenes as they wish! Looking at you, 1960s version of YouTube.
- ↑ For this reason, you may find that some "rec/ad phases" are referred to as "long hiatuses". But in reality they are no different from regular recess periods in that the contestants have much freer access to media of various kinds.
- ↑ BFB 29: Announcer said so, so it must be true.
- ↑ Miraculously, nobody refused.
- ↑ Not just in this sense.
- ↑ Notable exceptions included Sana, who had already gone on an unauthorized retreat, the eliminated contestants, who were stuck inside Four, and the dead ones: Bethel, Blaine, Kathy and Khaled.
- ↑ Oh gosh, they're too dead to be in the yearbook photos. RIP
- ↑ Not to be confused with the RLBFB yearbook!
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