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Is America Unearthed a Documentary Series or a Reality Show?

2/11/2013

25 Comments

 
I’ve had a bit of fun with America Unearthed’s $7,200 wardrobe budget for its pilot episode, mostly because series star Scott Wolter had a very minimal wardrobe. I do want to clarify, though, that the majority of this budget likely did not go to Wolter’s clothes but rather to the costumes used for the historical reenactments featured very briefly at the opening of each hour. I chose to have a bit of fun with the number mostly because the show calls great attention to its expensive production values, including dramatic cinematography and elaborate computer graphics packages.

But on a much more serious note, in comments on an earlier blog post, a television producer expressed concern that I had implied that America Unearthed and Committee Films, the company behind the show, were engaged in “nefarious” activity in accepting public financing in the form of production rebates.

I want to be on record as saying that Committee Films’ budget is not evil, nor nefarious, nor even unusual by television standards. As I said in my first posting on the issue, nothing in their request is illegal, nor is Minnesota Film and Television doing anything but following their policies, which do not discriminate based on content, except for porn.

Their expenses are relevant only because they requested that taxpayers reimburse them for some of the money spent. But even there, my concern is less for the taxpayers’ well-being than for the irony of asking for government money for the purpose of accusing the government of suppressing their work. Specifically, Committee Films asked for government money to reimburse them for episode one, which featured Wolter accusing the United States government of trying to stop production on the show by closing access to a Native American mound site in Georgia.

The actual money that goes into television production is largely kept an industry secret, and almost nothing is officially known about most programs’ budgets. The reason that I posted the program’s budget documents is twofold: First, the documents are public record, and taxpayers have a right to know how their money is spent. More importantly, I feel that it’s important to see the big money that goes into making programs like this to understand the heavy financial incentive the producers and stars of such shows have for telling untruths for profit. There is big money involved at every level, from the network to the producers to the talent, and many people are making cash hand over fist telling the public things that are demonstrably untrue.

And that’s where I did find a bit of nefariousness in America Unearthed and its financial documents. The producers asserted that the show began production of the pilot on June 26, 2012, after the scenes explicitly stated to have been shot for later episodes on June 20, 2012 (the summer solstice) were already complete. I don’t really care how or whether this affects their reimbursement, but it gets to an important point: The show is fundamentally dishonest in its presentation of the events it purports to depict and this is troubling for a show that claims to be presenting “truth.”

America Unearthed plays fast and loose with the order of events depicted: 

  • It shoots multiple takes of scenes for dramatic effect. In S01E08, the show mistakenly included two different takes of Wolter swearing while delivering a dramatic statement about a conspiracy against him, each in slightly different wording but with the same intensity. Many documentaries do retakes, but typically this is for direct-to-camera host presentations, not the actual events it claims to truthfully depict. I won’t lie and say that it’s never done, but it is ethically questionable to pass off staged retakes as spontaneous events.
  • It shoots new material, sometimes months after the fact, and inserts it into scenes shot earlier to heighten the drama. In S01E07, shots of a Minnesota airport shot in November 2012 (by the date shown on Wolter’s computer) were inserted following an interview in North Carolina shot in the early summer of 2012 (confirmed by the participants). Wolter pretends that November shots immediately followed those of the summer and speaks as though he had just finished the interview moments earlier. The show presents this scene as though he was still in North Carolina (complete with summer clothing, in November!). There is no defense for this. It’s just lying.
  • It stages phone calls and emails, scripting the interactions and paying little attention to the continuity errors that result. In the scene mentioned above, Wolter is participating in a staged phone call with his wife, who tells him about “today’s” news, dated May 2012, in an email dated November 2012. In S01E02, Wolter participates in staged phone calls and text messages with an unseen correspondent in an area that many have reported receives no cell service. Again, the stagecraft here is not in keeping with the ethical obligation of nonfiction filmmakers to depict events truthfully.
  • It depicts Wolter’s trips across America and to the British Isles out of sequence to heighten their dramatic effect. Wolter does not fly back and forth to Britain every week. Shoots were obviously planned to minimize travel time and were then edited into a presentation sequence. Every show does this (see Destination Truth, for example, which clearly does not fly back and forth to L.A. twice a week) but few try to pass it off as representing reality in an objective sense.

As I said, most nonfiction series are guilty of some of these sins from time to time, but very few documentaries are as blatantly manipulative as America Unearthed. And I think the reason for that is that America Unearthed isn’t the documentary series it claims to be. It’s a reality show, like Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The program’s manipulation of events and the timeline is exactly like the heavy-handed editing and blatant falsification of reality television, appropriate for an entertainment program, but not one that claims to be a truthful documentary.

America Unearthed is not really the story of the sites it explores but rather is increasingly a reality show about its hero, Scott Wolter, and his noble fight against a vast, dark academic-government conspiracy out to stop him from uncovering the “truth.” The producers clearly see the show as a conspiracy thriller, a globetrotting reality procedural in which each episode’s “investigation” is a piece in a master narrative, a weekly installment hung upon an overarching story of the anti-Wolter conspiracy that is meant to keep viewers coming back week after week. The increasingly frequent callbacks to earlier episodes confirm this intention to serialize the narrative. In its crude way, it is something of a masterstroke, investing a disconnected, episodic series with a serial narrative.

But it doesn’t change the truth that America Unearthed is a reality show, not a documentary series, and facts are shortchanged in service to storytelling with little use for honesty or truth. The small but significant lies done in service of entertainment call into question the honesty of the entire enterprise: “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much” (Luke 16:10). 

25 Comments
Lynn Brant
2/11/2013 05:58:59 am

I've been thinking the same thing. It has the feel of a reality show - that feeling of being led by the nose through a labyrinth of contrived mystery and tension, then left with no real sense of closure.

America Unearthed is getting viewers, but none of them are the serious and scientific investigators of historic anomalies worthy of study, like Scott claims to be. Rather, they are the same vacant eyeballs who watch to see who gets voted off. This show would have been better if they had started with ten legends, and every week let Scott contrive to debunk one and throw it off the island.

Reply
John J. McKay link
2/11/2013 04:10:23 pm

I love your idea for a reality show. Unfortunately, the elimination format you described id better for Jason than for Wolter or any of the other alternative history people. The way they work is to start with a couple of unlikely theories and add a few more each week, regardless of whether they contradict each other or not.

Reply
Mary Andersen
2/11/2013 12:24:09 pm

If you hate the show so much, why do you keep watching? I think you are trying to make a name for yourself by criticizing this show. It's a TV show, not a doctoral thesis. It's interesting and entertaining and the show's host is totally hot. What more do you want on a Friday night?

Reply
Jason Colavito link
2/11/2013 12:39:11 pm

Truth might be nice. I do expect documentaries to be true.

I keep watching it out of professional obligation and my belief that since so many people are looking for information about the show's claims, someone needs to give it to them. If you check my blog archives, you'll see that I have reviewed Ancient Aliens the same way, and I have also reviewed episodes of Fact or Faked, Desitnation Truth, and other paranormal/conspiracy programs.

Reply
Lynn Brant
2/11/2013 01:05:26 pm

I like to think of it as - you watch it so the rest of us don't have to!

Will Ritson
5/4/2013 06:01:07 pm

Truth.... huh. And yet you still use "best selling author" to describe yourself on your blog. Funny. One person made that comment on another blog post, I am just reminding you.... because while you hammer the show for misleading the public, you will still mislead about your actual book selling prowess.

I must be a best selling flower salesman, after those couple of Mother's Day weekends that I worked in college, and I outsold the other gas station flower tents set up in the parking lot. Wonder if I can get some mileage out of that one....

Christopher Randolph
2/11/2013 03:46:48 pm

One could easily ask why you read and reply to this blog if you in turn hate it so much. By the logic of Wolter's defenders on this site, you must be chiming in because you're jealous of the blog and want to make a name for yourself.

I can't speak to Jason's relative hotness, but maybe we could get the Minnesota taxpayer to fund a makeover.

Reply
John
2/12/2013 05:24:04 am

Can you cite specific examples(show#, website) where either H2 or Wolter states this show is a documentary?
I'm not supporting the guy but I get the sense that he(and H2) are way too smooth to try to pass himself off as some sort of expert/documentarian. That would be a mistake. Instead they let the suckers err audience make that inference

Reply
Jason Colavito link
2/12/2013 05:28:29 am

The program classifies itself as "History", not "Reality" or "Entertainment," so there is a presumption of truth. Documentaries aren't strictly defined (nor is the reality genre). You're even more cynical than I if you think that we should simply assume that programs that claim to present truth are fake.

Reply
Josh M
2/12/2013 07:24:52 am

I, like a few other contributors, work in the film industry. While I can appreciate a good scathing review, I do think you've taken this a bit too far. You asked in another post if you were obsessed and I think the evidence points to "absolutely yes". Viewers who don't like a show, simply stop watching, or write bad reviews and let it go, but you've put out post after post after post about this show. I respectfully recommend getting some distance from this and moving on. It's not worth your time.

You're obviously an exceptionally smart and well read guy. But you're kind of guilty of what you're claiming about the show - you're taking fragments of facts and using them to support a conclusion you've already come to without really "knowing" the material. Most of what you imply is based on some fundamental misunderstandings of how a TV show works.

The same conclusion you came to about the budget for wardrobe actually applies to every aspect of a TV show. People who don't work in the industry simply can't understand how much work goes into a production.

There is no way they filmed this show in order, but no show does. Multiple trips to England? More like one trip for the entire season maybe where they shot material for every show. Multiple takes? Of course. The same is true for every reality show I've ever worked on. This is how it is done and has always been done. These episodes are no doubt scripted to most efficiently draw a viewer in and deliver information concisely. I just can't believe that any episode could be done in any other way because I know what TV production entails.

My point is, now that you've finally come to the "right" conclusion - that this is, like all other "reality shows", staged - I feel like implications about the production company doing something wrong (which you DO imply repeatedly) are just out of line. This is not the exception to the rule, it is the rule. All the things you say are correct, just misinformed. Given a more informed perspective, I can tell you there is nothing odd about any of the things you pointed out. The only odd thing is how much you're focused on it. It makes me thing there is something YOU aren't telling US. True or not, the constant implication that H2 or some production company are examples of "Luke 16:10", or whatever is silly given the context.

Film is about manipulation of the truth and apparently, so are blogs. All show, even fiction, "claim" they are truth - we enjoy them because we suspend our disbelief and are able to understand that what we're watching, all of it, is just entertainment.

Let it go Jason. You're capable of a lot more I'm sure.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
2/12/2013 07:44:40 am

The Onion's A.V. Club puts out episode-by-episode reviews of TV series, including several that the critics acitvely dislike. Should they "let it go"? I review each episode of series like America Unearthed and Ancient Aliens (yes, check the blog: I write about it weekly, too) because these programs are actively misinforming the public and nobody else is bothering to call them on it.

Heaven knows that it's not my first choice for a "fun" activity, but if you saw the number of people searching for information about each episode in the 48 hours after it airs, you'd realize, too, how important it is to discuss these issues.

I think it's a sad day when we as a culture simply assume that it's OK to lie to people about the past because we are simply too lazy to care or expect so little of our fellow citizens.

America Unearthed claims to be more than entertainment and must therefore be held to the standard it sets for itself; the show claims to "prove" that there is a "hidden truth" academia and government are hiding. I am doing nothing more than holding it to the standards it claims to impose on others.

You're right that America Unearthed isn't NOVA; but NOVA wouldn't blatantly lie about easily verified facts.

Lastly, this show is only on for 13 weeks. There is a built-in end date to my discussion of it.

Reply
Jim
2/12/2013 04:13:15 pm

Your built-in end date will be short lived; only a fool would wager against it receiving a season two green light. I think the only uncertainty is whether it will remain on H2 or get bumped up to the History Channel... although SyFy would be a better fit.

Jason Colavito link
2/12/2013 09:37:00 pm

It already did, but it will be a few months before the next season airs.

Sean P
2/12/2013 02:01:27 pm

In all creations meant for public consumption the producers of such knowingly open themselves up to critique. Television programs are not absolved of this. Each program sets the standard by which it will be judged and in this case its creators have set the standard too high. It is true that this show should not be taken seriously. The shows claims are ridiculous and easily disprovable, its host is unstable and his methodology can’t pass even as rudimentary. That being said it is being taken seriously and at face value by a number of people because it is being presented as both “hard science” and “history” neither of which is true. At the same time the shows host actively maligns people in multiple academic fields, who have spent years if not decades seeking new knowledge, as being obtuse at best or, most often, greedy conspirators hell-bent on keeping “the truth” from the public. This is simply petty, spiteful and vindictive and the host should be ashamed.
To Mr. Josh M.
The common thread from your post to the producers, funders, and creator of this show is that you seem to be completely unconcerned with the lack of substantive material involved on this program and more concerned with how it’s being made. Perhaps to you it’s just business, just entertainment, but for every person who takes this kind of drivel as fact it’s a setback of years of hard work to those of us with a genuine concern for knowledge and education.

Reply
Lynn Brant
2/12/2013 08:26:00 am

Why should a series of assertions from History.com not have a series of rebuttals? Josh M. is asking Jason, and I presume the rest of us, to overlook the emperor's nakedness. I don't think so.

And as for the show not being presented as a documentary, the following is from History.com: (note "proves" and "cover up")


In AMERICA UNEARTHED, forensic geologist Scott Wolter, a real-life Indiana Jones, will reveal that the history we all learned in school may not always be the whole story. Across the country, ancient symbols, religious relics and unexplained artifacts suggest that civilizations from around the world have left their mark for us to find today. Wolter not only digs through the surprising burial ground that is America for arcaheological secrets, but he also uncovers compelling evidence that pre-dates the official "discovery" of the New World and turns a lot of what we think we know about American history on its head. America Unearthed proves there is a lot we don't know about our past, and that people have gone to great lengths to cover up these mysteries.

Reply
Jim
2/12/2013 04:40:19 pm

I wonder if George Lucas and Steven Spielberg get any royalties or kick-backs whenever an alt 'historian'/'archeologist' claims to be a "real-life Indiana Jones". Also, wouldn't you need to be an archeologist, associate dean, and college professor with a PhD in order to make that claim? After all, Indy did much more than run around the world battling Nazis and stealing priceless artifacts in order to remove them from their country of origin so that they could be displayed in American museums (the artifacts, that is - I don't believe he ever brought Nazis to a museum for exhibition).

I think from now on I will refer to myself as "a real-life Marcus Brody".

Reply
Christopher Randolph
2/12/2013 03:46:47 pm

Unfortunately when pointing out that a show that claims academia is hiding something is loaded with BS, you're tapping into a primal anti-intellectualism and paranoia America soaks in.

Maybe 1 in 4 Americans has a college education. Maybe 1 in 5 has spent time on a college campus. (A recent study had a staggering 88% of US veterans dropping out of classes in their first year... the first couple of "classes" at the University of Phoenix for all students / "students" aren't subjects at all, but basically pep talks not to drop out. People have to pay for that and they get credits for it.)

Maybe 1 or 2 in 100 Americans has attended an elite school, which these days simply means a school where classes require more than 45 minutes or an hour of reading per class PER WEEK. College has been absurdly dumbed down for most students. Even then most struggle. Making things worse, colleges hire temp professors whose jobs partially hinge on student assessments. Instructors who ask for "too much" reading lose their jobs. People have spent more time watching Harry Potter at Hogwarts than they have at community college; many therefore assume Harvard is pretty much Hogwarts.

Add it all up and you have a society in which many people are genuinely screwed over by people in elite institutions, but have no idea at all how those institutions operate. Toss in the internet and 600 cable channels and you have a paranoid idiotic echo chamber in which an opinion is not as good as a fact but BETTER THAN A FACT just so long as the opinion is that someone in the Gubment is in cahoots with the Ivory Tower Eggheads to suppress The Real Truth.

We see this over and over and over again, from AU and AA to the 9/11 Truthers and a variety of homeschoolers etc, The less formal training someone has in a field the more likely they are assessed to be telling The Truth. The Truth is that some snooty non-regular Joe is concealing Da Vinci Code realities from the public. The kicker is that these "codes" and this "science" and "proof" of The Conspiracy against The Truth have to be laid out in such simplistic terms that an audience of dunderheads can follow it. It's like being taught science and history by Johnnie Cochran.

Against this backdrop, Wolter's nonsense is red raw meat. The fact that he has limited formal education and works with concrete is going to earn him more points with people than any six archeology PhDs.

What I mean to say in all of this is that Jason's site is evoking some visceral responses from people based in his inadvertent discrediting of portions of their belief system. An actual academic approach to serious questions is outright threatening to most Americans, who might have to admit that they have weak reading comprehension and math skills, and that the eggheads at school were and are genuinely better at some things than they are. Scary monsters.

Reply
TheTruthRevealed
2/15/2013 07:47:50 am

Jason states: "if you saw the number of people searching for information about each episode in the 48 hours after it airs, you'd realize, too, how important it is to discuss these issues"

Aha, now I understand why Jason is so obsessed with this show: it gets a huge amount of google search traffic after each episode. This also explains why Jason writes his posts during the show so that he can post them as quickly as possible to take advantage of this traffic. You see, if he publishes his articles quickly his blog will receive much of this traffic. So he wants us to believe his motives are purely altruistic but in reality he's a leach hoping to ride the coattails of this tv show and siphon off some of its audience. From a blogging perspective, not a bad strategy. But like the show he critiques, he's pretending he has much loftier objectives. I think Jason saw a huge traffic surge after his first couple of reviews and so is continuing to do what works, i.e., what brings in traffic to his blog. As long as these articles bring traffic to his blog, he'll keep writing them just like History Channel will keep buying new episodes as long as an audience will watch. Ultimately there's very little difference in the motives of both parties.

Reply
Jason Colavito link
2/15/2013 08:14:54 am

Seriously? You think I hide the fact that I write to serve the audience, or that I design the material on my site to meet the audience's expectations and needs? Check my blog archive. You'll see I frequently explain exactly why I write, what pulls in traffic, and how I use that to serve what I hope are beneficial purposes. I try to be perfectly transparent about what I do.

Giving audiences what they want helps bring in traffic, and I hope that bringing in that traffic will expose people to my ideas and also to posts about other topics that reflect my interests (such as Greek mythology, horror fiction, etc.). I've never hidden the fact that I use SEO techniques to maximize that strategy.

I don't race to post reviews, you know. I generally post them about 15 hours after air time. If I really wanted to catch traffic I'd try to post within an hour after air time, but I have an actual job and need to sleep at night.

Reply
TheTruthRevealed link
2/15/2013 08:36:59 am

In the name of full transparency, why not post your Amazon sales data for your books? You claim to be a "best selling" author. This claim comes with an asterisk and if one bothers to read the asterisk it notes, "* Amazon.com ranking of top 10 best-selling archaeology new releases, December 2012."

But the reality is Amazon ranking and what one would consider "best seller" status are two completely different things. If your book sold 10 copies on Amazon in the archaeology category and the next highest seller in this category only sold 8 copies Amazon would call you a "best seller" in the archaeology category. But any normal person seeing the terms "best seller" assumes hundreds of thousands if not millions of copies have beens sold. They wouldn't consider a book that only sold 10 copies to be a "best seller." So Jason, why don't you tell us all how many copies your book have sold so we can determine for ourselves whether your claim to be a "best selling" author is legitimate or nothing more than the same type of overstatement you've accused Mr. Wolter of. And please, post screen shots of your Amazon Author Central BookScan sales data for your "best seller" book so we can verify your claims. In the name of "transparency", of course.

Jason Colavito link
2/15/2013 08:42:50 am

I responded to this when you posted it on another blog entry of mine. It's just marketing puffery, and I've always been quite plain about that. As I've said many times, my blog readership outdraws my book sales many times over and has become the tail that wags the dog. Heaven help me for citing Wikipedia, but it notes that "bestseller" is a term of puffery and refers to relative not absolute sales, referring only to the "highest-selling titles in the category over the stated period," which I even included in the footnote I gave to the claim. If I were hiding something, I wouldn't bother telling you the sales period or the category!

Like I said, it's just marketing puffery.

Christopher Randolph
2/15/2013 09:22:07 am

Wow, speak of the devil! The Truth Revealed indeed!

Jason, this person isn't here to add anything to the comments forum of your blog. This person doesn't have a real point, this is just classic internet ad hominem trolling from the proudly uneducated. You'd do well to delete the comments from people who have no desire to discuss the issue at hand, and have their butts handed them. Responding only validates them.

Reply
L Bean
2/15/2013 11:02:07 am

Somebody sounds a little butthurt. So who are you really?

Reply
Lynn Brant
2/15/2013 01:08:38 pm

Three things seem clear to me:

1. There are people who want to watch cryptoarcheology thrillers
2. There are people who want to see them debunked
3. TheTruthRevealed is a Wolter surrogate

Reply
TheCrimson
2/24/2014 04:19:57 pm

So looking at all of this. You never said how many books you ever sold to get that best-selling book. How many did you truly sell?

Reply

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