30 Reality TV Camera Operators Come Clean About The Things They See Behind The Scenes

"60% of what you're seeing on screen is faked, scripted, manipulated, staged, or heavily edited to present a story line."

Stephanie

• Published in Film & TV
• March 26, 2022

By now, we are all vastly aware that reality TV shows are not quite as real as they're made out to be. Yep, that's right; our favorite reality shows are mostly a lot of smoke and mirrors coupled with some epic editing.

According to celebrity and pop culture connoisseur Mike, most of what we see on our screens is made up. "60% of what you're seeing on screen is faked, scripted, manipulated, staged, or heavily edited to present a storyline," he said.

Of course, that doesn't make us any less obsessed with them! And, when it comes to the world of reality television, who else would have more behind-the-scenes gossip than the humble camera people?

The answer is, of course, nobody. So, we thought it would be fun to scour Reddit for some of the best, most crazy stories as told by camera operators themselves.

Cameramen and women know what goes on when the cameras stop rolling and the stars think no one is watching. In fact, some of the insights and secrets kept by the film crew are even more interesting than the productions themselves.

We've got them all covered, from unhygienic Teen Mom's to cheeky animals to filthy finds on Hoarders. Keep scrolling to read 30 stories from reality TV camera operators.

1. "His freak out ruined the shoot."

"[Host] Colby once freaked out at a female assistant, who coughed during a shoot. The audio guys were trying to tell him [it] happened when no one was talking, so it [was] no issue to edit out.

So it turned on him because his freak out actually was what ruined the shoot. He turned and said, 'Even if I am wrong, I am still right. You are fired. NO ONE GIVE HER A RIDE BACK OR OUT OF HERE!'

She laughed at him and said, 'Good idea to freak out at someone over a cough, considering I am the one who texts your girlfriends back for you. Oh, and I have my own car.'

She came back a half-hour later to give him his phone, which she factory reset."

2. "As a cameraman, there are many things I witness but fail to capture on video."

"The most amazing thing I witnessed looking through the camera viewfinder but didn't manage to capture was a female Gorilla feeding. She stopped to catch a butterfly in her hand and held it up briefly to her eye to see what it was.

She then almost seemed to raise her eyebrows in recognition before releasing it and watching it fly away. As a cameraman, there are many things I witness but fail to capture on video. If you [are] impressed by what you see on TV, there is way more out there to see and witness!"

3. "The filthiest person I've met."

"Every [Teen Mom] shoot, I would want to call CPS. Filthy houses (dog poop on the floor, bloody tampons sitting in a corner for months, weeks old food everywhere, etc.).

One of the worst is Leah, the filthiest person I've met. When feeding her twins, she would spill a bunch of cheese puffs on the nasty carpet, and the girls would crawl around and suck up the cheese puffs, no hands involved."

4. "They sat me in a chair, and with my sound man filming it, one of the girls did her 'private routine' for me."

"I was a cameraman for a series about strip clubs in the local area (Birmingham, UK). We filmed for about 8 weeks, spending most of our time behind the scenes, talking with the girls, getting a bit of insight into why they were strippers (for the most part, they were earning money for college, etc.).

It was just about the least sexy thing I could imagine, not my cup of tea. Couldn’t get my head around why men would want to spend money (and sooo much money, at that) when all you could do is look, no touching, no happy finishes. After the first hour of filming, I was immune from any idea that I’d find it sexy. Not like I was spending every day walking around with a semi.

Got to know the girls well. They were universally nice people, doing a job. And even the attractive ones – once you know a bit about them and why they were getting their tits out – it was as far from being a turn-on as I could imagine.

On the last day of filming, in the brightly-lit changing rooms at the back of Legs 11, our (female) producer asked if I had ever had a “private dance” – no, I hadn’t, and no, I didn’t want one.

“Oh, we can’t have that! Who’s going to give [me] a dance? He’s never had one!”

They sat me in a chair, and with my sound man filming it, one of the girls did her “private routine” for me. Well, on me. Lots of gyrating, rubbing herself on my legs, then pulling her pants aside and getting an inch away from my nose.

Christ.

It was all in good humor, but it was f*ckin’ weird. Uncomfortable. I mean, where do you look? And everyone was watching me. I knew this girl, I’d filmed interviews with her and her kids; she wasn’t my type (sooo not my type), but she was a sweet person, and now she’s putting on the sultry looks, sticking her nethers in my face. And I had an audience – a dozen other girls, mostly naked, my producer, my sound man, our production assistant, all standing around watching and laughing.

I didn’t know where to look.

In hindsight, I think I did a good job of playing along; acting the right sort of jocular/cringy/ha ha ha, isn’t this uncomfortable thing, but in reality, it just all felt a bit f*cked up. And the room was so f*ckin’ bright.

Not exactly nightmare stuff, but occasionally it does freak me out to remember that somewhere, sitting on a shelf in the TV station’s archives, there’s a DigiBeta tape of my “private dance.” Eech."

5. "That case was tragic and stayed with me for quite some time."

"I followed some homicide detectives with Las Vegas Metro on a missing persons case that turned into an unsolved homicide. That case was tragic and stayed with me for quite some time. Something people forget is that we, as well as the officers, are also human and are affected at the end of the day."

6. "It was heartbreaking."

"I was freelancing between film jobs by shooting segments for Inside Edition. On the way to an interview, the producer, who wrote his interview questions in the car on the way over, kept talking about how he had to make this woman cry. “They love it upstairs when you can make them cry,” he said. “It’s the gold ring.”

So we go to this woman’s house, get the gear inside, set up the interview, and start rolling. It turns out this woman saw her husband and son killed in front of her when the motorcycle they were riding on was hit by a drunk driver. The segment was about drunk drivers who had killed people and gotten away scot-free. This guy ran to Canada, and he still lived there ten years later.

The producer asked a lot of tear-jerkingly emotional questions and finally got her to cry. It was heartbreaking. As we drove away, he all but high-fived himself. He was so happy.

On Strange Universe, the producer wanted my sound person to drive the van through a funeral procession so we could shoot it from up close, out the side door. We said no. Where do they get these people?"

7. "It was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen."

"I was a camera op for Shipping Wars on A&E, My 600 Lb. Life for TLC, North Woods Law for Animal Planet, High Profits for CNN, and others.

Probably the worst was on My 600 Lb. Life. One family was moving out of their apartment, and we were shooting the move. They were very, very unsanitary. Instead of cleaning up their dog sh*t in the small 2 bedroom apartment, they would put plants on top of it. We had to use a mentholatum oil on our upper lips to withstand the stench.

The grandma was sleeping on a bed in of the bedrooms. When they went to remove the bed and flipped it over, thousands of bugs scattered out of the bed all over the room. The 80-something-year-old woman was sleeping on a bed that was infested with roaches and god knows what other bugs. It was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen."

8. Ick!

"[The worst was] pulling out old appliances like grills and fridges, seeing old, rotted raw chicken and mice that died in the hardened grease sludge underneath."

9. "Never bring your girlfriend to a Girls Gone Wild event."

"I've been shooting girls where their boyfriend was outside, banging on the door, and yelling at her when she got off. Then demanded we delete the footage. All I could do is laugh.

Rule #1, never bring your girlfriend to a Girls Gone Wild event. Ironically enough, I've had boyfriends encourage their girlfriends to do it.

I've even let them stand behind me while I shoot them in the room, then give them free DVDs and swag for being a great sport. One guy saw his girlfriend do things even HE'S never seen before."

10. "I have played Wii with drug dealers and had a great time."

"I have grown close to many subjects while working with them. They are human, some are great people that are a pleasure to hang out with addiction and all, and some are not. I have played Wii with drug dealers and had a great time. I just hope they are able to find their way."

11. “F her in the P.”

"I’m a former one-band-band reporter. I shot, wrote, and edited my stories. No fancy van or crew.

I can’t count how many non-live stand-ups or interviews on the street were ruined by the “F#$% her in the Pussy” non-sense.

Some examples, not all mine.

Apartment building fire with multiple families on the street crying? Someone drives by and yells, “F her in the P.”

Interviewing the neighbor of a woman who police believe is being held at gunpoint by her drunk husband. Another driver swings by “F her in the P.”

Another reporter I worked with: Candlelight vigil and someone runs into his camera shot and yells, “F her in the P.”

It stopped being funny years ago. Now you are just being rude."

12. "Not sure if that made the final cut."

"We had an episode of Hoarders where a long-dead cat was discovered, and another where an obese man said he’d like to clear the walkway to his front door so that EMT could get to him in case he had a heart attack or his wife tried to stab him. He said both things not nonchalantly as though they were ordinary and totally normal events that happen to him routinely. His wife was a total jerk.

There was also the man with an enormous scrotum who used it as a table when eating. Not sure if that made the final cut."

13. "I got to hit him with the boom."

"Part of a camera crew filming a documentary in a business. A female employee had pranked a male employee’s car. He became violent when he confronted her, so we had to restrain him. I got to hit him with the boom (mic), which was rather satisfying as nobody really liked him."

14. "It'll forever be burned into my mind's eye."

"One that we didn't ever get on camera, but here's the scene:

It's after 2am, and the club we were at that night has pretty much cleared out. This night was a 'foam party,' meaning that after a certain hour, the dance floor was filled with an ever replenishing supply of 'foam.' The kids dance in it, grind in it, do god knows what in it. But, by the end of the night, the foam is reduced to a milky, filthy pool of warm water, maybe six or eight inches deep.

We're packing our gear when I look up and see some sad, clearly intoxicated girl on her hands and knees in the foam, desperately searching for her wallet she had lost on the dance floor.

It just seemed to sum up so much of what the whole experience was like, that it'll forever be burned into my mind's eye."

15. "He showed us his dolls and medicine."

"I used to shoot and edit short docs for NGOs that did water well work overseas. Burkina Faso was the most remote location out of all the trips I had taken. We stayed in a small dirt village a few hours from the capital, then drove another 2 hours every morning to get to our locations.

Anyway, we met this witch doctor who brought us to his small mud house. We asked if we could film b-roll inside, but he was being super hostile and wanted something valuable in return. We argued back and forth for a bit through our translator but had no luck. Then the witch doctor told us he would approach the spirits and ask them if it was ok for us to come in. He went inside his shrine and started shaking this bead shaker and talking to someone. We could hear both voices, completely different sounding, and at times talking over each other. This went on for a few minutes. Then he came out and asked us to drink this potion if we wanted to go in. Our guide suggested we don't, but we had come this far, so we each took little sips. He met with the spirits one more time, then finally let us in.

It was a dark mudroom, no bigger than the size of a queen bed, with a single beam of light coming through. He showed us his dolls and medicine. Also, razor blades that he would use to make cuts on children's bellies and stuff medicine into (saw some gnarly scars that trip too). But the whole time, I was looking for a voice box or recorder to explain the phoniness of the "spirits" but found nothing. Kind of gave me the creeps."

16. "A trophy wife was sucking this well-known local attorney's d*ck under the table."

"Former camera operator/ AV tech for live events here.

It was an annual banquet. Everyone had to be in a bowtie, including me, which usually I get away wearing black polo and khakis at anything, but not this time. I was basically filming the speakers, awards ceremony, auction, etc. As I was packing up, people who remained there were the high-end socialites of the city I was in, and they were f*cking wasted. One table, in particular, I kept hearing, "Nooo OH NO..COME ON Jay," and a trophy wife was sucking this well-known local attorney's d*ck under the table in front of everyone. It wasn't the first interesting incident. Seen a republican congressman make out with another dude at a country club. It was his actual boyfriend, but to the public, he was still in the closet.

What's amazing is how the scandalous drama among socialites never make local or national news more often."

17. "Most people want to tell their story."

"Yes, people make threats sometimes... But not any more than they would any other TV news camera. In fact, I've had citizens yell at me to get "that news camera out of here!" When I told them we were the "COPS" show, they said, "Come on in!" That was at the scene of a drive-by shooting, and as I said before... Most people want to tell their story."

18. "I will never forget the smell."

"[The worst was] rotting pig carcasses. We shot a story in Northern Indiana on bug entomology that involved several pigs in different levels of decay. The worst had been kept in a trash bin for several weeks. It was a liquid mush. I will never forget the smell."

19. "It was very scary."

"My husband was doing a documentary for college, and we were filming next to a museum, and a guy told us: "Are you cops? Stop filming us! This is a drug-dealing place". We thought he was joking. Turns out, it was the truth.

They surrounded us and were very violent. Thankfully, my husband kept calm, explained that it was something for college, and he'd delete the scene. I was pregnant, and then one of them realized that it was impossible for us to be cops, so he calmed the others and told us, "Leave!". We ran out of there. It was very scary."

20. "That hurts."

"Fights can be awkward, but most of the time, I just hope that they don't escalate to the point where I have to put the camera down. The hardest one for me was when the subject was going after her mom, and the mom started calling out for me to help her. That hurts."

21. "Saw a contestant having sh*t themself after a challenge."

"[Saw] a contestant having sh*t themself after a challenge. [...] A look of dread for sure. A quick dip in the ocean is all the freshening up they got. Had to wear the same sh*t-stained, salt-water-rinsed shorts for another couple of weeks as well!"

22. "Snorting pills on the sidewalk through a tampon was a bit crazy."

"The one that pops in my mind is filming some 'land boating' at a meth compound in the deep South. Snorting pills on the sidewalk through a tampon was a bit crazy. Going waist deep in an alligator-filled swamp to follow a crack addict also enters my mind."

23. "None of the donations were being given to them."

"Went to PH like 6 months after typhoon Haiyan to document a medical team. The island we went to was still completely f*cked, nothing was being done, and none of the donations were being given to them. The med team was super pissed off at the situation."

24. "There are definitely moments that I have felt unsafe."

"There are definitely moments that I have felt unsafe. When I first started working on the show, I was more fearless than today, I think. I have kids now, and that changes your perspective a bit. We do have security occasionally if we know that the people or situations that we find ourselves in are going to be particularly dangerous. We just make them out to be production assistants, not to draw any attention to them."

25. "Our cabin was on fire!"

"Another cameraman and myself were staying at Stan's fish camp in one of his cabins. It was the summer, so the mosquitos were terrible... Like, carry you away terrible. We didn't end up putting the mosquito pick completely out before bed - like we thought we did. It smoldered under the cabin for a few hours, and we awoke to the crackle of fire and a five-foot flame in the doorway of the cabin. Our cabin was on fire! The only way out was to jump into/over the flame. It was scary."

26. "The smell of hardcore disinfectant and overwhelming body odor."

"I worked on a documentary about Riker's Island, which is a very large jail just off the north part of Queens, NYC. The whole thing was surreal, but the worst part was the maternity ward, where incarcerated mothers had a few hours a day to see their kids in a large acrylic cell.

We had incredible access to everything - one of the executive producers was the niece of Rose Singer, whom the nursery is named after, and she became a member of the Board of Corrections of NYC shortly after.

Other things that stand out:

Unannounced 'TEAMS' meetings at 0600 where the main governing body of the island grilled the heads of each jail about incidents and things like the amount of toilet paper their jail used that month.

The smell of hardcore disinfectant and overwhelming body odor.

The food was a lot of starchy pasta and soda.

Extraction was the term used when officers went in as a team and removed an inmate by surprise force to find contraband.

The officers patrolled the island on mountain bikes. They had water teams of boats, jet-skis, and divers. LaGuardia is only about a hundred feet away at one point, so there are escape attempts, but the divers are there to rescue prisoners. There's a dangerous tidal pool called Hell Gate there.

You enter by a bridge. The producers made sandwiches in a cooler for everyone."

27. "I never lived it down."

"So back in the late 80's, I worked for a local television station in Paducah, Kentucky. We were hosting the (whatever-whatever) annual Children's Miracle Network, live. I was running the remote or "bunny-cam," as we sometimes called it. I would go around the studio audience and get bumper shots or reaction shots or whatever the director yelled in my headset to get.

About mid-way through the evening, during one of those exhausting montage vignettes showing kids in need of help, I took a rest off to the side of the audience. Little did I know that my cam was giving the control room an impromptu up-skirt of a not-at-all unattractive woman. It could have easily been the elderly lady in the seat behind her if I was sitting on the next step up.

Nothing went live, thankfully (although they might have seen a spike in donations if it had.) They let it go on, I guess, until I asked what they were all giggling and talking about.

Once they told me, my face went to thirteen shades of red as I slowly backed right on out of there before anyone had suspicions.

I passed the remote cam to someone else to take over, and I jumped on one of the fixed studio cams, never to look back. I never lived it down."

28. "We were filming swingers banging every night."

"I've seen many fights on camera. Worst injuries are usually just black eyes, though. Hair pulling is big too. Lots of lost weaves on the floors, haha.

As for boobies, yes. Sometimes they pop out or [are] even shown off. I mean, when I worked on Playboy's Swing, I saw everything. I mean, we were filming swingers banging every night, haha."

29. "They put diapers on him.

"I once did camera work on a series accompanying people who work at night. One episode was at a hospital ER. People had brought in a guy who was completely drunk. I cannot remember whether he took his clothes off himself or they undressed him. However, to prevent him from making a mess, they put diapers on him. He escaped the room he was kept in and ran around the hospital wearing nothing but that diaper and ranting on and on about his conspiracy theories. The footage wasn't used."

30. "Very classy."

"On one show, our crew was setting up all morning for a big party scene. Once ready, we waited hours for a special guest to arrive so we could get things started. When she finally got to set, she wasn't even ready to shoot, needing hair and makeup done. Our director said, "We are ready when you're ready," and she took it the wrong way. She didn't want us to be rushing her, haha. Anyways, she and the director really got into it. She was rude, and then he started yelling, "We have over 100 people here who have families to get home to." Eventually, she walked out. We waited another 40 minutes, and she came back and gave us an abbreviated performance. Very classy."

At the end of the day, reality TV shows rest on a spectrum. Some are heavily scripted, and others are as close to reality as possible.

"Any reality shows about families or dating and 'finding love' are the most staged," said Mike. "Examples would be all versions of the Kardashians, The Bachelor, and Love Island.

"The least staged reality shows are those featuring medical afflictions such as Hoarders or Botched," he explained. Let us know your thoughts on reality TV in the comment section below.

Stephanie