[hauntedghost]

i have been watching the travel chanal and the have some tv shows about haunted houses and they show case them on there. what do you guys think of them when they came to your place?? OR when you watch them what do you think of it??


as for me it's cool!!!

[Jim Warfield]

"Never trust those gypsies!" (She was born around 1880)
I have had some lessons from tv people that reinforce this warning.
You sign their contract, they promise to do certain things, then once they have the film, they are down the road and never look back, their e-mails gets changed along with their phone numbers before you can clean up the mess they left behind.
Their impressive promise to at least identify your place during the broadcast fades and if you looked Real close and didn't blink there was a glimpse of my sign saying "Ravens Grin over the host's shoulder as he walked up to my door.
Other than that I was only identified once as "some guy named Jim has this strange house in Illinois."
Surprise,surprise, this brought me no new business at all!
This was a 7 hour investment of my time along with alot of cleaning up afterwards, which they said they were going to do, along with being treated like an incompetant 2 yr. old totally unable to do or say anything correctly for their cameraman (the head guy) even though I was repeating his suggested lines back to his waiting camera.
Running the whole gamit of inflections and pronounciations and various speeds of delivery and accents resulted in a ton of "takes" and about two words from my lips in the finished product.
Yes, you Can have a bad experience doing this sort of thing!
How many of you would feel comfortable knowing someplace such an idiot has 5 1/2 hours of film of your place? And will be making of it what they will?
Owning a camera or even a big, expensive camera , doesnot give the right to copy all of one's ideas and use those ideas.
We now limit photography severely here because of such overzealous types of people.
Any contract is only as "Good" as the two people signing it.-Ancient advice from an old lawyer.

[hauntedghost]

Jim,

I feel sorry for you bubby!!

we had a tv crew came out too and they spent at least half the night at the haunt i work at. but we did not see any of the stuff on tv they filmed but they showed other haunted houses in our city. what gives???? you know...

[Jim Warfield]

You need a big, good camera and experience, skill, mastery of lighting.

[monsterwax]

TV people are used to getting what they want and never seeing the ones who gave it ever again. Everyone wants to be on TV (as the poll suggests) so why would the producers feel they needed to go out of their way to be nice? Yes, you can be really really screwed. I always warn people not to allow film students to shoot films in their homes, because there will be a mess and damage and no effort to repair anything... and I say this having gone through film school myself. I WANT to help the student, but they are too self absorbed to focus on the needs of anyone else. I'm not the only one here with a TV background, but I doubt anyone will suggest otherwise. That industry (and especially the Hollywood/film industry) is not known for considerate people.

That being said, if you want free advertising, it can still be very useful for your haunt. However, I would suggest saying "no" to certain things. You don't have to allow them to film everything, or show them everything, and remember, they MIGHT be shooting this film to create a "how to" DVD where they are basically selling your ideas and not giving you any credit (or cut) at all. You just don't know.

Remember, the more footage you allow them to take, the more options you're providing them to use what you don't want them to show. You can say, "I only have X amount of time and I can only allow certain things to be filmed, so if you follow me we can get this knocked out quickly and we'll both get what we need." In other words, YOU decide what is shown instead of them. If you leave it open ended, you basically become their servant instead of the other way around.

I've watched several of these shows on TV and I'm always amazed (and disappointed) at how little they identify the haunts they are at. There's usually just one mention of where they are, and that's it. By the time you're excited about what you see and want to go there, you can't remember who or where it is.

It's a lot like being a girl and going to a frat party with a stranger and getting drunk. You're probably going to be taken advantage of, so don't be surprised when you wake up alone and never hear from him again. On the other hand, you might figure some attention is better than NO attention.

In a perfect world, you would shoot the footage yourself and provide it to them to use. That way you have control of what they have. (However, that is more difficult to do with TV, especially if they want the reporter in the footage.) Still, I try to do that with newspapers by providing my own pictures. When I allow their photographers to prowl around inside, they always end up getting photos of things that make it look bad, or give away the illusions. By controlling the photos, I can edit or retouch those problems. It's also why we don't allow ANY customer photos inside. We want the advertising, but we don't want BAD advertising, even if it is free.