"On The Lot" a crock of bull

K here.

It has come to my attention, late though I may be, that "On The Lot" isn't really what Steven Spielburg and Mark Burnett say it is.

I've been under the impression that the videos screened each week were done in one week, with materials, money and actors given to the directors from the show. After this one week, they sent the films back to The Lot, where they were screened for the first time in front of a live audience. Sounds about right, right?

WRONG.

According to Rich Copely during an interview with "Ghetta Room" Jason Epperson, the three minute shorts weren't made after the final cut widdled the contestants down to 18. In fact, they weren't even made at any time during the course of the show. From Epperson's own words, here's how it actually went down:

Rich: Tell us about the process of getting on the show in the first place.

Jason: It all started back at the very first of the year. My mother-in-law told me about this competition. I did the search for it and found some information about it.

The crazy thing is, like I told you before, the main thing I do is music videos down in Nashville for some pretty good-sized artists. That’s where I was making the money and feeding my family and paying for bills and all this stuff. I didn’t have a lot of time to do these short films.

So when I first heard about the competition, I took a chance and just put a music video in the competition. There was a music category. But I knew it was not specifically devoted to music video.

I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t want to say “What if?” down the road. So I put it in, because it actually best showcased my work, my talents.

Rich: Which video did you put in?

Jason: The band is called War Within, it’s my brother’s heavy metal band down in Nashville. The song was called Bombs Away.

You see music videos that have a story to them anyway? The beginning of the video is a classroom full of kids, and one kid’s a rebel and the whole classroom starts loving this kid and ripping the classroom apart. It was a fun video. I always heard the hardest thing to direct is kids and animals, and so I thought maybe this would be my best chance to get in, to show I could direct a big room of kids.

I got a phone call after that, to go through an interview process. I had to go down to Atlanta, did an interview, and then I had an assignment to come back home and do another short film in a week. And they pretty much told us that depending on who did the best on this project would get the chance to come out here and be part of the Top 50.

So I did this three-minute short film in a week, submitted it, and two weeks later, they gave me the phone call and said, “Do you want to come to L.A.?”

There you have it. Despite what Spielburg and Burnett have been telling us, this isn't really a "competition" at all. It's a showcase of previously made films with moderate to little funding and without "the best resources the industry has to offer".

What a load of bull. How hard was it to make a reality tv show about filmmaking? Apparantly too hard for Spielburg and Burnett. Honestly, I think they're out of touch, and trying to become relevant through this shady idea really isn't gaining them any new fans.