Showing posts with label Jane Kennedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jane Kennedy. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

M-Net on why it renewed My Kitchen Rules SA for a 2nd season in 2018: 'The decision was an easy one, one we made very early on in the series actually'.


M-Net (DStv 101) has renewed the amateur home cooking competition show My Kitchen Rules South Africa for a second season and says the decision to renew it for another go in 2018 "was an easy one".

Auditions for the second season of My Kitchen Rules SA produced by Endemol Shine SA will start in January 2018.

TVwithThinus asked M-Net why the pay-TV broadcaster decided to renew the show.

"As you know it's not a format that has been done as a local show in South Africa before or that Endemol Shine SA had done before, so it was a risk even though we knew the Australian version was on M-Net," says Kaye-Ann Williams, M-Net's head of local content.

"When we initially decided to do this format as a M-Net team, we decided that it was something that was authentically South African and that we could make it that."

"The brief was to cast people who are authentically themselves, and every couple in MKRSA were exactly that."

"The decision to renew the format was an easy one. It's a decision that we made very early on in the series actually. I think it was episode 4 or 5 that was on-air and then we made the decision," says Kaye-Ann Williams.

"It was because M-Net as a brand want our subscribers and South Africans to feel that they are being represented authentically and that's what I feel My Kitchen Rules SA affords to our viewers".

"Hopefully the second season will be on-air by winter next year."

Kaye-Ann Williams expressed thanks to the Endemol Shine Africa "dream team".

"You guys are creative, you guys are collaborative; you are an absolute dream team and I appreciate every hour that you've put into this, every minute that you've spent away from your families, all the travelling, all the time in edit, all the lovely collaboration and feedback sessions and working together and venting to each other, we absolutely adore you. I honestly feel that you got the heart of the show right".

The finale of the My Kitchen Rules South Africa first season also dazzled and surprised when several celebrity chefs showed up in the last episode as judges.

South Africa's first Michelin Star chef Jan Hendrik flew from Nice, France, with chef Margot Janse whose stint at Le Quartier Francais in Franschhoek that earned the restaurant 8th place in the World’s Top 50 Restaurants who also appeared.

Also making appearances were the Cape Malay cuisine chef Cass Abrahams and the Carte Blanche investigative journalist Devi Sankaree-Govender.

TVwithThinus asked executive producer Anton Burggraaf about the casting coup and what it took to get these 4 high-profile people together, diary- and logistics wise for the filming of the finale.

"M-Net and us discussed who we thought could be on the show for the finale and add value and we explored all options."

"This is a monster of a show and shouldn't be under-estimated. I've done Survivor SA, Fear Factor SA - a lot of shows. But this particular show requires an extraordinary amount of work because as you can see from the instant restaurants, people are inviting 4 other couples into their homes."

"But what you don't realise is there are 75 people running around in somebody's dining room. It's mad. It's really, really a crazy show. And then of course it changes gears in studio, where you have to rely on a whole lot more mettle actually," said Anton Burggraaf.

Co-presenter and co-judge David Higgs says "there were tears, there were emotions, there was laughter. And I think the audience felt it and that's why My Kitchen Rules SA did so well."

M-Net held a special media screening of the My Kitchen Rules SA first season finale on Sunday 10 December at the MultiChoice City headquarters in Randburg, Johannesburg where at the end of the episode the Bloemfontein couple Jamandi (31) and Machiel Bekker were announced as the winners with the top score.

Several TV producers, M-Net executives, on-air talent, stars, and media covering television, showed up to watch the 90-minute episode together, followed by a press conference afterwards in the MultiChoice City cinema venue.

MKRSA co-presenter and co-judge J'Something, Carte Blanche presenter Devi Sankaree Govender and Jan du Plessis, director of M-Net channels

Actor and model Arnu De Villiers and entrepreneur Marnus Broodryk appearing on kykNET's Winslyn

Radio presenter and Survivor South Africa: Panama winner Vanessa Marawa, MKRSA co-presenter and co-judge David Higgs and MKRSA series director Jane Kennedy

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

INTERVIEW. Gogglebox South Africa series director, Jane Kennedy, on the Sony Channel show: 'It touches our humanity in a way I find quite inspiring'.


Watching people watching television, on your television, is what Gogglebox South Africa on the Sony Channel (DStv 127) on Thursdays at 21:00 is all about.

I spoke to Jane Kennedy, the series director of Gogglebox South Africa, a veteran TV producer and expert in unscripted television, who shared some fascinating insights about the show and Sony Pictures Television's very first local South African TV production.

"Gogglebox South Africa touches our humanity in a way that I find quite inspiring and quite magical," she told me, as she reveals what the families see when they watch their TV screens, how South Africans differ, and what TV show the families watched in a pilot episode that didn't work.


How is this show different from other reality shows you've worked on before?
Jane Kennedy: In many ways this is the most real reality show I've worked on, in a way. It's not a game show, so there's no prizes, no elimination.
It's reality on a more authentic level. It's just real people being real.


How much do you have to coax the couch potatoes to react and verbalise and be expressive non-verbally, or did you choose people who are naturally more outgoing and reactive?
Jane Kennedy: We definitely were looking for people who were opinionated - people who watch television and who have opinions. So there's very little coaxing that happens.
Occasionally we might give people some background information about a film or a series, just so that they don't sit on their couch trying to figure out what's going on.


How much do you film for an episode? Obviously you keep the cameras rolling for longer than what viewers see?
Jane Kennedy: We start filming on a Thursday night, cameras start rolling on four families. We have 14 [families] and we film 4 different families for 5 nights of the week. So in essence we can film 20 families over 5 nights. And we have 14 families in the mix.

So we visit some families more than once over the 5 day period and that can be because kids have homework and have to go to bed, or because we have a story we only started showing halfway through the weekend. It's like this unbelievable jigsaw puzzle.

We put 8 to 9 "stories" into one episode. And each one has a beginning, middle and an end. So it's a whole series of beginnings and ends and yet you have to keep the audience interested. So that dance is really a fantastic thing and how you knit them together and stitch them together.


If you look at some of the other series already done you've get such a wide range of emotions from people - from outright surprise to real sadness. Do you have a favourite emotional response that you want to elicit or enjoy getting from people as a producer?
Jane Kennedy: We aim to try and get a whole range of responses and emotions - from the laugh-out-loud funny,to the shock outrage to the really emotive, tearful stuff.

It's also a work in progress, because the production itself is so intense, it's so fast and so furious. We have 6 days to put a show together. So we experiment. And we think this piece of material is going to work really well.

NCIS for instance, that we tested when we filmed the pilot. It's one of the biggest rated shows on DStv - everyone loves it.

But actually, you know, it's so, the arch of the show is so simple, that unless there's something outrageous in it, it doesn't really get a lot of responses from the families. It's very interesting. Because you think something will work and you show it and it doesn't work and we find something else.


Does it impact the social dynamic and what you get as a producer in terms of where you make what family member sit?
Jane Kennedy: It depends from family to family.

When we went in to set up the infrastructure, the first thing we did was to ask a household how they like to watch television. In some cases we moved them around, but it's more a practical thing, for instance this guy is much taller than his partner and its better if a tall person sits on the far side of the couch.


We see people watching television. We don't see what they see, what do they see when they look at their screens? Are there actual crew there or robo-cameras, and one or two cameras?
Jane Kennedy: They're in their lounge, watching their TV set.

There's no people in the room; we have 2 remote cameras - one is on a wide shot of the family which we never change, and the other one is a close-up camera that is operated remotely and tries to catch the best close-up reactions of family members. That in itself is an art.

You've got maybe four or five people in a family and you don't know who is going to give you a response when. Often it's not the one you expected it to be - so that is quite a dance as well.


Has it already been a struggle - you've worked on so much unscripted television where you don't know what you're going to get - where you end up with a lot of good pieces of TV and you have to make difficult choices on what to show and what to leave out?
Jane Kennedy: Absolutely, absolutely.

The other thing is also you don't want to show the same families all the time, you want to get variation. But there's some families that's so incredibly funny, or there responses are so priceless that you just have to include them.


Have you picked up on, or is there a difference between how young people watch TV now, and how older people watch?
Jane Kennedy: We have young people and we have older people watching.

Our youngest family member is 11 - in fact two 11-year olds in two different families, a boy and a girl. And our oldest family is ... "old". How diplomatic is that?

And for me one of the things that's so magical about Gogglebox SA and this format and why I'm personally so invested in it, is because at the end of the day we all respond in pretty much the same way.

We're all horrified by the same things, we all generally are amused by the same things - from the 7-year olds to the 70-somethings. It's kind of like, it touches our humanity in a way that I find quite inspiring and quite magical.

It makes me feel that we are going to be okay as South Africans in this country that's full of so many different kinds of people, and even more than okay - we are going to fall in love with each other again.

Even though people come from all different walks of life and different areas - you wouldn't be sitting on their couch watching television with them - but they're going to watch something and you're going to feel "oh my gosh, that's exactly how I feel about that".


You said it's very universal when people watch TV and their reactions. But I was wondering in terms of their non-verbal, physical behaviour, are there things you've picked up where we as South Africans are different?
Jane Kennedy: What surprised me in a way - although I suspected it and I was correct in my suspicion - we're very loud as South Africans! Ha ha. We don't hold back, actually.

We're not that kind of British, sort of understated kind of people. We fall off our chairs, we shout out loud, we are passionate people and that is what comes across through Gogglebox South Africa for sure.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

'A perfect recipe': Celebrity MasterChef South Africa press panel talks ego's, philanthrophic food reality TV and the chance of a 4th season.


Following the reveal that comedian Chris Forrest won Celebrity MasterChef South Africa, M-Net held a panel press conference to conclude the celebrity edition of the reality show during a media screening and press event at Montecasino.

The panel consisted of Harriet Gavshon (executive producer), Gideon Khobane (M-Net channel director), Chris Forrest, Patricia Lewis, Donald Clarke (executive producer), and Jane Kennedy (series director).

 TV with Thinus asked how this season managed to find the right blend between reality food TV, celebrities and a strong philanthropic element without having one or the other overshadow the others.

"One thing we want to do was make all the cooks credible, so everyone we got involved were credible cooks," said Donald Clarke from Lucky Bean Media and executive producer of Celebrity MasterChef South Africa.

"For celebrities, they have their careers and their everyday lives, so we wanted to add an extra element that they could play for and that they could really care about."

"The one thing you could see from the show was that Chris Forrest and Patricia Lewis and the others really cared on the show and winning on the show because it didn't just mean that they were able to high-five each other but that they're able to take things further than that and give something to a charity that they believe in."

"The other great thing was that celebrities were able to pick their charities, so they really felt strongly about the causes they were involved in, and I think it was really a lovely edition," said Donald Clarke.

TV with Thinus also asked about ego's - the contestants - and whether the extroverted celebrities displayed bigger ego's behind-the-scenes of Celebrity MasterChef South Africa than ordinary contestants during the previous three seasons of MasterChef South Africa.

"Actually, no," said Harriet Gavshon, Quizzical Pictures director and executive producer of Celebrity MasterChef South Africa. "There were no ego's," she said to laughter from the panel and the press in attendance.

"Once they got in to the kitchen, the celebrities were kind of removed of all of their usual defences, and they were like putty," said Harriet Gavshon.

"I think Pete [Goffe-Wood] and Benny [Masekwameng] ... they had massive ego's that were huge," joked Donald Clarke about the MasterChef South Africa judges. "Such divas," chimed in Ingrid Engelbrecht, M-Net publicist, jokingly.

Asked about the contestants, Jane Kennedy, series director, said all good food reality television starts "with a really good recipe".

"And a really good recipe means that you need a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. And that more than than anything else is what got us to the fantastic 10 people that we landed on having with us on the show."

"Patricia ... how could you resist Patricia? And Chris and Tol Ass Mo as two comedians on the show I think really, really added enormous value to the mix. But not one person could have been replaced with anyone else. It was a perfect recipe," said Jane Kennedy.


With Celebrity MasterChef South Africa "trending" as shared television weekly on social media - as did the finale, as viewers engage with the show on a second screen while they watch, TV with Thinus asked M-Net how important the social media element has become for the pay-TV broadcaster's shows.

How much weight does social media carry now in determining whether a show gets renewed or is deemed a success, and does M-Net now deliberately go for shows that can carry a multimedia, integrated social media and true cross-platform audience engagement?

"Everybody knows that when people watch television, they're watching TV with their phones," said Gideon Khobane, M-Net channel director.

"Some people now watch a whole show on social media, they don't watch it on television. So its obvious that the future is the integration of all the different platforms - television and social media, whether its Facebook and Instagram or Twitter," said Gideon Khobane.

"Obviously Twitter allows itself to tell the story instantly of what's happening. Social media for us ... there's no local M-Net production that doesn't have a social media component. We've now also got a fully-fledged digital team and an M-Net app that looks after all digital aspects of all shows from Big Brother Mzansi to Carte Blanche or MasterChef South Africa."

TV with Thinus also asked M-Net about the possible renewal of MasterChef South Africa for a 4th season on M-Net.

"About a renewal of the series, I don't have an answer about that yet," said Gideon Khobane. "Related to [the renewal or not of] MasterChef South Africa, an announcement will be made in due course".

Finally TV with Thinus asked the panel and the producers whether this season was more difficult from an editing point of view, seeing that celebrities actively seek out the limelight, talk a lot, with the show evening kicking off with kids as well in the first episode, and whether it was henceforth more difficult to edit the content down.

"The great thing about celebrities is they are all personalities and performers and narrate a lot. The problem is that you've got a show where everyone is speaking constantly - so it's about trying to figure out where you can find moments where you can pick people out which is a challenge," said Donald Clarke.

"We never battle to find what you call a sound byte," said Donald Clarke.

"It was a lot of fun editing them. It really was. In the office ... there was constantly laughter coming from every edit suite," said Jane Kennedy, "and you rushed there to see what piece they were cutting. It was a whole lot of fun."


ALSO READ: Comedian Chris Forrest wins Celebrity MasterChef South Africa on M-Net.