Here’s a story that’s doing the rounds today – English teacher currently living in Spain gets a pilot through BBC Entertainment’s Future Formats initiative, called Cloned.
The show doesn’t do much for me on the description – can you spot which is the real celeb from the CGI clones by (I don’t know) watching them carefully or something. It’s all a big puff piece for their initiative (it’s frankly not that exciting, it’s getting a pilot which Danny Cohen might have a look at). So why are we being told all this now, hmm?
Meanwhile, here is photo from the set of Guess the Star pilot which filmed recently. Christine Bleakley is involved in some form.
Will Guess the Star be like that Italian show involving “talents” for yes/no questions about the identity of the celebrity?
No, it seems more like the mystery celebrity round from What’s My Line?
Back to Cloned.
Seriously, will this ever see the light of day (or screen)? The premise is that you have to work out who is the real figure and who is the CGI character?
Sorry, but with the best will in the world – CGI humans can only fool people if a serious amount of high budget rendering can take place to make it look totally realistic (and that ain’t on with the budget BBC Ents will get to make a non-broadcast pilot), so unless there is some serious post-prod work to downgrade the quality of the real person to make it less obvious which is which – this simply will not work.
What next? A show featuring weak challenges, and a robotic hare moving around the place? Oh wait…
My instinctive reaction to “Cloned” was that it’s a potentially good idea that’s ahead of its time. There’s going to be a fairly narrow window where that format can work based on where the technology is, and I rather suspect that it will open in a few years, but not now. As Marty points out, you have to consider the budgetary side of things too.
Sounds awful.
The reason you’re hearing about a non-TX pilot in pre-production stage (which you never would normally) is to create PR for the work of the Future Formats initiative in a “look, we aren’t a big waste of money after all” kind of way.
Another reason (which I’ve no idea if it applies here) that some TV broadcasters/production companies pre-announce things like this is to say “Look, if you’ve got an idea on paper like this, don’t bother because we’re a lot further down the line than you.”
Of course, the downside is that it sometimes encourages people to make a me-too product which might even beat you to screen first.
How ironic THAT would be!