Original subtitles

Hey,

Colin.

My name's Robert Galinsky. I'm the founder and principal of the New York

Reality TV School.

I started the school when a dog groomer asked me if I could train him for

reality television, and I thought, sure. One of my mantras in life is say yes to

everything, so I said yes.

He went to Hollywood.

And I realized then a light bulb went off in my head.

I got something to show the world, and that is teach people how to be more of

themselves in reality television as opposed to being somebody else.

Um, I want to learn how to bring my best acting side out. You know, I'm so used

to being Shannon all the time, 24 hours a day, and it's awesome, but it's like,

you know, I want to learn how to be someone else, at least temporarily while

I do that.

And maybe it'll give me some versatility to my personality, you know? I don't

know.

Everything you do today I'm going to coach, so get rid of I guess.

Don't guess. Well, I'm not really acting, I'm just more or less talking.

But this is reality.

We're not acting. True. Right?

Look at that. Look at that sign on the wall there.

That word actor is crossed out.

No acting. All real.

Reality television is very exploitive. I'm not telling anybody something they

don't know, but I feel like there's an opportunity to.

put people in position to take back their voices to not be as manipulated to

not be coerced and put into situations where they look like that car wreck and

train wreck where if there is a train wreck or a car wreck and they want to be

that that's cool that's fine as long as they know they're making that decision

and if they are then that's great because that train wreck actually is

coming from an authentic place, which means we'll be moved. We as viewers may

have a breakthrough with somebody on camera.

Right now, it's pretty much staged and manipulated, and that bothers me. It

bothers the hell out of me.

Just recently let it out, just recently released it. Are you signed?

I wouldn't call it signed, but I am distributed through Sony.

Exactly,

but it's one of those deals where they just do distribution.

They're not necessarily doing the marketing and the promoting, so I'm

still out of pocketing all of that.

Burning Man is a culture.

The currency is gifting. It's a gift economy.

It's also based upon ideas of radical self-reliance, so you're expected to

bring everything that you need. And you can't promote anything.

You can't go there and be like, hey, I'm promoting my album.

There's what's known as Billionaire's Row.

And there are people there that will run around on segues.

P. Diddy claims that it changed his life a couple years ago.

Will Smith was there last year.

Okay, if everybody can just grab a seat in this circle.

Leave your chair where it is.

Take your cell phone and put it in here.

Unless you already have it somewhere else, but if it's on you right now, just

put it in there. Good.

So welcome to the New York Reality TV School.

So today is going to be a mixture of things. Some workshop, some

experimenting.

We're going to talk about what it is to beat the reality TV machine,

as opposed to let the reality TV machine beat you.

All I care about is that when you walk out of this room, you're more powerful

than when you walked in. That's all I care about.

So know that everything I'm saying and doing, if it does get tough sometimes,

if it seems like it's

getting under your skin or it's making you feel uncomfortable it's coming from

the right place i want you to know it's not coming from i'm trying to create a

sensation i want you to be the sensation but it's coming from when you leave this

place i want you to be more powerful that's all i care about intros are huge

and that does take practice and i always emphasize that i'm not about faking it i

don't want anybody about faking it i want the authentic stuff so let's go

around this room once

Your name, where you're from.

Now, here. Sorry, sorry.

Another technique.

The camera usually has a red light when it's on. So if you're about to speak,

take it slow so that the camera can get on you.

My name is Tevin Christopher.

I was actually born in the Caribbean, a small Caribbean island, Grenada, in the

West Indies. I moved to Connecticut when I was 10 years old after a hurricane

destroyed our entire, like, basically our entire block. All the houses went

flying. Literally, the roof went...

My name is Shannon Seale.

I'm from Florida.

I went to college in Florida as well, moved to California, and now I live here

in New York.

The craziest thing I've ever done, I guess, is work for a male review team in

Las Vegas.

My name is Lachi.

I'm a legally blind singer-songwriter and performing musician.

The legally blind thing is super huge, super important.

We then, now we, you know...

Again, all political correctness aside, because there is none with these

producers, one of the producers is probably going, wow, we've got somebody

with a disability.

That's good for our XYZ demographic, right? Whether it's a broad disability

or not, I don't know the degree of what you're living. I don't even know. My

name is John Headley.

I was born at the Air Force Academy Hospital.

And as an Air Force brat, we moved around a lot.

And now I'm up here in New York. And one thing that I'm afraid to admit to most

people is that I'm currently living at a homeless shelter.

but near the Bronx, too.

Great. My name is Maria de Jesus Castellon, and I'm from ex-communist

country of Nicaragua.

One thing that I'm afraid to admit right now, currently, and I don't know why, is

that I live in a nunnery, and no boys are allowed to come in, so... My name is

Danny. I grew up downtown.

I was raised by parents who settled there because of counterculture

purposes.

Right. Good. You leave the room, somebody writes on the wall, whoa, we

got to get the counterculture kid.

All right, what do we have? We have the counterculture kid.

We've got the legally blind singer.

It sounds crass, but this is how they do it.

Right? We've got the communist.

Now she's a communist.

Right? Now she's a communist Latina.

You know?

And of course he's not, but he got the homeless guy.

The homeless guy by the zoo.

Yeah. And then we got Caribbean boy.

Caribbean? What are you talking about? He's from Granada. Caribbean boy.

Island boy.

Oh, we got Chippendale.

Oh, that's right.

Oh, wait. Don't forget. She's of color.

He's of color. Great.

We could get some interracial shit going on here.

They're going to say, do we want the island boy?

We've got an island boy. We could work him in there. We've got the communist

girl. Wow, we've got the communist girl and this counterculture kid. Those two

are really going to vibe sometimes, but then not, you know?

And we've got the singer. All right, we've got a singer, so that's great.

Maybe she can sing.

But think about it. When a writer has time, what does a writer do? A writer

writes pages and pages of your bio, of the character's bio, so that they can

start to write the story. And you guys have to give them that rich material so

they can write the story. All right?

I like reality TV in the face of scripted television and documentaries

because it involves a certain amount of improvisation. And so there is a lot of

improv in reality television. Yeah, we've got characters, we don't have a

script, we've got scenarios, we can play within some guidelines, and we could go

places. So it's the improv factor that I like most. It's also an opportunity to

serialize in a way where...

documentaries can't because documentaries take so long and some of

them need to take that much time but I guess I'm not patient enough to work

through that process with a documentary.

Reality television has been around long enough that it's evolved into a format

where people think they should be something that they're not. They try to

satisfy everybody else except themselves.

And I feel like what would improve it is if people went back to, hey, what do I

want to tell the world? What's my goal? What's my mission? How do I want to

affect people? How can I touch people's souls? If we get people on television

working with that ideal, then reality TV will be a lot better.

Start on the positive.

Energy is contagious.

What are you getting? What are you spreading? So what basically what I'm

saying starting the positive is It's not a couple people very beginning came in

here, and we're like well I'm sort of this and I'm kind of I guess don't give

me this sort of guest stuff boom And if that means you've got to stretch out and

get your body oxygenated a little bit So you can have that extra energy do that

thou shall say yes as often as possible and A friend who is in a workshop what

not a friend, but he's now a friend But if workshop attendees said once well

isn't reality TV conflict aren't supposed to walk around start fights all

the time And I was like, if you say yes as much as possible, possibility will

live around you.

Possibility might be the possibility of conflict.

Pits.

Groom your pits.

Groom your hairy pits.

Pits stands for personal issues to tease.

As a reality star, I always groom my pits.

my personal issues to tease that means to make them accessible those issues are

relationship issues family issues home life issues work related issues which

you all have sort of been doing right now so can you tell us one um all right

yeah personal issue i had in the past was dealing with

Like a friend I had like, you know growing up you got into heroin addiction

eventually like, you know teenagers experiment and stuff You're almost

you're a part of it too. Like nobody wants to was a part of it.

I Know part of it.

I like I I was not as bad as he was but he got worse

and Then at the funeral, you know nobody

Nobody wanted to, like... Nobody talks about, like, the guilt. So

the story you're telling is super powerful. It definitely affects you. I

can feel it coming from your body.

So in this case, what I would say is if you ever want to tell that story, if you

think that story's going to come up and you want to tell it, you do have to

decide, and not in front of us.

decide how clearly and how real and how specific am I going to tell this.

The more specific you are, the more dangerous it is for you because it is

personal. The more dangerous it is for you, the more rewarding it is for us.

Shannon, what is it that you really know would scare the hell out of you to say?

I guess is that I have girlfriends everywhere.

Literally. And they don't know about each other.

But at the same time, I don't want to justify it and say...

I'm not a bad person. I'm not leading people on.

I have lives in different places.

And I'm happy to be here right now. The fact is, I'm a very good guy, and I'm a

very nice guy, and I don't take advantage of people.

So I have people that have my back, at the very least. I have friends.

I have a girl in LA that meld me weed here. You know what I mean?

I have friends that have my back and that I know that it's more or less on

the female side, not even the male side because there's a lot of egos or

whatever. People just drift apart through time, but I have a cycle.

I have history. I want to say baggage because not all of it's bad.

Okay. Great.

Good. Own it.

So, Shannon, how are you feeling? I'm feeling amazing.

Beautiful day. New York City. Great. Great. So it is a beautiful day, and

you're going to take some of that beauty and your natural charisma and your

challenge.

is to get three phone numbers from three different girls that you see on the

street. Three women, three girls, whatever you want to call them.

Let's start that again.

So how are you feeling, Shannon? I feel great. Good. You up for a challenge?

Come here. I'm up for a challenge. You're up for a challenge? All right.

I'm up for a challenge. Here's your challenge.

Shannon, while we have the time, is there any type of woman that you prefer

more than... Do you have a type?

I mean, pretty girl is my type. Yep.

Yeah, we're just walking around.

Like, this is like some bang bus or something. Like, you know, like, hi,

excuse me.

I was really wondering if I could just have your number.

She has a boyfriend, sorry.

Does it help me to stand here as a decoy for you or no? Yeah, but people see the

camera. There's two girls right there laying on their tums.

My name is Shannon.

What's your name?

Krista.

How'd it go?

No, they saw the camera.

It's all about the camera now.

Woman sitting alone on bench to my right.

Behind me. Behind me.

hi excuse me how are you excuse me just pretend i'm not here you have 15 seconds

to get this done if you can't get it done we gotta move on we gotta move on

get it done i'll call you and i'll call you later

so how did

you feel you did out here in the park um to tell you the truth i could have

How I feel like I've done out here in the park, I could have done a lot

better. A lot better.

Do not circle.

Do not do what I just did. That's not the way to get women.

Most guys, if you're watching this, you know, there's millions of you out there.

You need to watch this. Do not. That is not the way you go about it, okay?

The thing is, is that girls have an immediate wall.

Because they have to. I mean, you can't blame them because there's so many

creeps out there. You know, I get it. Like, there's so many douchebags. This

is why women are turning lesbian.

Because there's so many douchebags out there in the world, right? I want to

give you my assessment.

You definitely made the eye contact that was important.

I saw your volume and your temperature go down. You know, great approach.

You got an early physical handshake which built a little bit of trust.

Yeah.

Cut.

Never say I'm an actor. I didn't pull you on this in your introduction.

Don't say, there it is.

Don't say I'm an actor when you go in to a reality TV audition.

You cannot say I'm an actor. Anybody know why you might not want to say that?

Because they don't want actors. They want everyday people that have an

everyday story and they want you to be yourself. You're not acting as if you're

someone else.

Great. In a reality situation, don't say it because then they immediately will

put a filter on you and go, oh.

Is he being authentic or is he acting right now?

Maximize thine any individual networking index.

Lachi walked in here holding her disc.

She didn't run up to me right away and go, hi, I'm here for the... She had it

there and had me... I was kind of inquisitive at first. I was like, oh,

that's neat. She's got... What is that? So if you have an EP or a demo, keep it

with you all the time.

Lachi, you like to sing.

I do like to sing. So I got a challenge for you. Oh, God. We're going to go to a

supermarket. Okay. You're going to walk in, and I'm going to make it easy on

you. You just come into the door. There will be four registers right in front of

you. You just stop right there at the first register, and you start singing a

song, okay?

I want you to succeed.

Then I think, John, you should go in first so you're shooting the

performance.

And then, Jared, I think almost you should come in behind her once she

starts.

It's okay. Once she starts, the world's going to turn into a different place for

them. I'll tell her, you cue her, right?

Thank you.

Keep it low for now, right? When am I supposed to go in?

Hey, how you doing?

Wait, wait.

One thing that I really like about reality TV is being able to see how

normal people do things or where you actually get to get out into the real

world and see things that you don't normally see.

One thing that I don't like about reality TV is the scripted nature of it.

For instance, I was offered to be on Pawn Stars once and I found out that

none of those people own any of that stuff.

They are given the item by the producer and they say, hey, make up a story.

And that's it. They don't actually own any of that stuff.

And there's a lot of those examples in reality TV where it's real people in

scripted situations.

So what I like about reality TV is that we get to see people that they wouldn't

normally cast like in movies that are, that they're real. So it gives

opportunities to, I would say, the common people.

This is leading us to where we're going in a few minutes, which is

confessionals, which is a huge part of reality television.

When they pull you aside, put you in front of a camera, and say, tell us what

you think about the communist.

You're...

You're walking that line of where's my dignity and where's not my dignity,

right? But that's where you walk. That's where you walk. All right, so... Because

you're being true to yourself at the same time. Yeah. And sometimes you just

don't want to say certain things. Like, I've told people more than I want people

to know. Yep. Yep.

Okay.

All right, so I really personally believe that I've learned a lot today at

this reality school.

I'm a broke teenager and we just...

spend all our money on drugs instead of food and have stupid problems and shit

like that. And I think that there's an audience for that.

So reality TV has been a springboard for a lot of successful

entertainers, chefs, writers, entrepreneurs,

businessmen, musicians.

I thought we were actually going to focus more on actually pitching shows.

I'm a bit of a rebel, and I was like, you know what? I'm going to do what I

hate. I'm going to see what I get out of this.

Maybe this way I won't be so nervous at my auditions. I had just moved to New

York. But, you know, it really, really helped.

And that would be a show that takes a blank canvas, someone like myself with

no tattoos, no piercings, and each season a new blank canvas would go from

blank. to covered over the course of probably about 30 or so episodes.

If they like you, they take you in, they accept you, and if they don't like you,

they spit you out. I mean, my thing is I'm hoping that I can come across as

well-liked, but at the same time, I don't really care about who's going to

like me. I'm just hoping that someone, at least out there, understands me and

can connect with that.

Do I think anybody in the class out of six people was strong enough to get

themselves onto a reality television show? I do.

I think...

Actually, to name them all, I would say all six. Every single student, every

single person who comes in through the door of the New York Reality TV School,

no matter where that door may be, every single student has the possibility of

becoming the next breakout star on reality television.

That's what I have learned today, and it's been very informative, and I'm

looking forward to using it possibly in the future.

reality shows and if not it's something informative that maybe I can use at some

point of life as well