The house reality show - Jersey Shore
- Andrew and Melissa Curtis
- Mar 12, 2023
- 14 min read
This is the show that most of us have seen by now. Put a bunch of people into a house, don’t give them access to much, and watch them exist. In the 1960s this would be for science and we’d all benefit from it somehow. Today it’s for fun and we still benefit from it. That’s some good eats!
So when I got the call in 2009 to go to work on a house reality show in Seaside Heights New Jersey, I had no idea what it was or what I was going to be doing. The call is just that - a call to go to work and do things - with or without fine details. Once I get there I get to find out more about the show and what we’re supposed to be doing.
This particular show was going to be about kids living in a “shore house” and was originally called "Guidos". The world knows it as Jersey Shore. Mind you, at this point in my career I’d already shot an academy of tools in a house, real exorcisms, dating shows, poker tournaments, self-help gurus, Dr. Drew, Dr. Phil, rehab, surgeries, female model boxing, BBQ shows, music videos, straight-to-DVD movies, pilots, and even some scripted classics like Crossing Jordan and Touched By An Angel.
So, kids partying in a shore house? No problem!
I found out I’d be on the night shift and I’d be filming them until they went to sleep. Great. To do this right meant that each bedroom would have at least two pelco (aka robo or spy) cameras and that the hallways were covered, plus the living room, kitchen, back deck, the deck above the shore store, and front walkway as well. That's a lot of coverage. Basically, there should be as few dark corners or areas to hide in as possible. The one place I did not have access to was the bathrooms.
Overall the house had over 20 cameras to choose from. The moments between big cameras and pelco cameras are what help make the "story" happen. Story being the only important thing when it comes to shooting unscripted shows because building backward is a task.
When you sit in as a pelco camera operator, you’re offered up a lot of opportunities to pick and choose what you watch, see, and hear. I tend to look for moments with people that other cameras aren’t watching. Not to say that when the shouldered-up cameras are around that I just turn off everything, there’s always a wide needed for every scene.
Late nights were typically very late as most clubs closed at 4 am. This would mean it was time for me to learn a new skill: sleeping during the daytime! My personal trick for this was to wear something over my eyes. It could be a handkerchief, or an actual sleep mask (which I have adopted now) but having it feel dark was key. And if it’s possible, getting into bed before the sun came up also helped out a lot, mentally.
Getting into my hotel room at the Sea Gem was easy enough.
If my Season 1 room description were written up by a local real estate agent it would read like this:
Cozy room with strong bones, needs some TLC. Don’t walk, run before it’s off the market! Owner for over 76 years is finally moving away and this is your chance to own this “clean”, well lived in, time capsule! Could use a few simple updates. Close to Dunkins and ocean.
That's fairly accurate. If you’d like to look at some other, actual reviews, you can try these:
Some highlights might include things like: “Run Away, hostile employees”, and “just don’t stay here”.
When I see used soap in the shower, and TP rolls with only four squares left by the toilet, I don’t despair, I just realize that my space has been broken in! The strength of the floorboards must be good because that tub hasn't collapsed through the floor. Also, it turns out that when the frame of your box spring is shattered, you can lay down and sink to sleep with the mattress holding you in a nice tight hug. Take that, weighted blankets!
One thing I'd come to naturally on every season there was buying a blanket from a vendor on the boardwalk so I could enjoy my nights (days) in my room. Note: Never use the bedspreads they have for you in any hotel/motel if you can help it.
The real trick for me was flipping my regular daytime hours into nighttime hours. You look rather silly ordering coffee at four in the afternoon, but I was going to brave it just like I was going to brave sipping whiskey at 7 am. As night shifts continued to be a large part of my career, so would standing up to the judgment from others of how and when I used my time off.
Room aside, there was work to get done, and I only had 14 days to do it. My stint on JS Season 1 was a short one. There would be morning spots found to help that drive to have an after-work life, and I would spend many mornings enjoying them for years to come. In Seaside Heights that morning spot was Riggers, and it did what it needed to do when we needed it to do it.
As several of us walked there, I imagined the local towns folk shutting their windows like in an old western movie, then bracing themselves several hours later for that same group to be parading back to their hotel while screaming Bon Jovi songs at the top of their lungs.
The only time I felt bad was watching sulking retirees leave Riggers once we’d arrived as we took over the jukebox. Their morning place, once quiet and peaceful while CNN creaked over Irish coffee and a newspaper, had now become infected with the wretched nightlife we'd all been trying to get back. They'd have to miser off, back to their homes to watch tv, awkwardly trying to explain to a spouse, or child, why the coffee in their mug reeked of Smirnoff.
Work hard, play hard is a saying I recall in moments like that. Also, every man for himself. That combination has a way of letting most manners fly out the door. I'm not proud of it, but I was also too blind to see the effects of my actions.
That being said, I like being home. I’d go so far as to say that I’m more of a homebody type, and with that, I try to make my home (in this case a seedy motel room), as homey to me as possible. I have failed and succeeded at this many times over.
I find that changing the room’s decor is the fastest way to add that homey flair. To do this I suggest magazines and tape. You can liven up any stale hotel/motel type environment with a couple of clippings from any magazine. I like to go for the J14 because it already has a selection of posters in it. Don't be shocked when you go to the store and find out that J14 is promoting the shiny new whoever's that Disney and Nickelodeon are peddling. Your concern is to cover up drab hotel walls with something flashy, and that rag nails it every time!
If you wanna get edgy about it, I’d say grab the Cosmopolitan and do all the surveys you can, then post them on the walls. This will give you a sense of drive and a way to make yourself a better “insert-whatever-the-quiz-was-about”. Also, don’t be afraid to go into the local head shop, they’ve got glow-in-the-dark tapestries and flags, and sometimes even fun lights! The room will always be a challenge for me and I’m game to change it up as I see fit.
Once I get to set (which was a mile away and a little hard to find at first) I find out who the cast is (new unknowns) and what I’ll be doing. I’m basically there to film the cast as they come back from the clubs. Being the first season of this show with non-famous talent, there wasn’t too much security for us at the beginning. This, of course, would change drastically as soon as the world wanted to see everything we were doing with these kids.
My initial opinion on Seaside was that the shore was alright. It’s got a nice boardwalk and games and rides everywhere. If you wanted to, you could be on a coaster before work, take in some put-put golf and play some Tron. Then finally grab a deep-fried Oreo and some pizza and make it to your seat at work in time to film for the rest of the night. Not at all bad. Eight-year-old me is bouncing up and down at the sound of this.
A town that small knows who the regulars are versus who's there working for the summer like us, and can spot the Bennys a mile away. This sometimes meant we on the crew spent a good amount of time running from local cops and doing unsavory things (like eating bacon wrapped hot dogs), but it was still us in a town in its infancy of pop culture phenomena. Later it would be full on Barbeques, many pool hours, and plenty of summertime activities. Even the police would start being on our side and would give us rides back home if we needed them.
Even though this town would be my home several summers over, there was only one time when a small group of us crew went and enjoyed the rides together. It was also only once when I got in the water there, and still only one time in all the years I went there that I ate one of the infamous cheesesteaks stuffed with cheese balls.
If you’d ever like to hold the Devil's hand and taste mortal sin, I can’t suggest them enough. But be warned, it’s a delightful start, an okay middle, and a graphic, teary end. That is if you remember eating it at all. All Carnival food seems to have been invented by a person whose denial of heart disease echoes the commitment of flat earthers.
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People often wonder if the show was scripted. It was not.
Whew... glad that’s out of the way! I’ve worked on a few scripted shows and they have sides (small sections of a script) and everything! This show did not have anything like that. Now, what it did have was a story department and producers who know how to get people talking, but that’s about as close to “scripted” as it gets. The power of suggestion is really what it boils down to.
Think of pink elephants - there. You’ve been suggested to.
There’s also a collection of other questions I've been asked about the cast like: do they take STD tests, what drugs were they on, who’s the nicest, who’s the meanest, and so on.
There are many times on set when we as the crew will sometimes talk about wonderful and horrible encounters with talent. It’s always a good time, getting together like a little sewing circle, spilling that kind of information. And all the above questions are great questions! I wish I knew all the answers, but I’m afraid I’m too far removed from the cast to know most of them.
On this show, the cast was told to only speak to producers. They did not speak to the sound department or the camera ops or the camera assistants or the PAs. Producers were the ones who dealt with the cast. Period.
This I’m okay with.
So work….
The control room in Seaside Heights was tiny, blue, and probably sold t-shirts or “tobacco" pipes before we settled into it. I say tiny because if there were more than two people in there, you’d immediately feel walls closing in around you, heat rising quickly and you’d be ready to pass out from lack of oxygen. It was safe to say you’d be rubbing elbows for the duration of the shoot in that room.
For my job I only needed to see the doors to track their movements through the house so I knew if they were going in or out. The general setup for me was usually two controllers and four record decks that were linked to four routers. On top of those were four eight-inch monitors I used in real-time to see what was going to record. Above that was a 50-inch monitor showing me every camera in the house. Routers let me choose which cameras were recording at any given moment.
The trick to being good at this position really isn't about being good at controlling cameras, the trick is about being able to know which camera number comes next up on the router, so you don’t have to think about chasing someone in and out of bedrooms.
An example might go like this (and mind you, I’m making up the mapping of the house at this point since I don’t remember anymore) - let's say Ronnie is coming home early and heading to the upper deck above the store to smoke, and then he’s coming back to the kitchen to eat, then shower and finally go up to his room.
(Small inhale)
Uh-hum….
So typically first I will get a text from a producer that says something like “cast coming home”, so I have to jump into action.
I start with camera 13 because it’s out front and sees the sidewalks leading to all the clubs. This angle shoots into the neighborhoods and walkways required to get back to the shore house. From this POV I catch Ronnie and follow him all the way to the front door until he enters the house, then it’s camera 9 in the living room. It’s a good view as he hits the kitchen, then I punch in camera 10. But that was useless because now he’s cruising to the deck, so I punch in camera 16. This camera has a great view of the back deck off the house and can follow up the stairs the entire walk, which is perfect because he’s not staying on the deck, he’s headed up to the overlook on the boardwalk. Now, I can follow on camera 16 if I’d like, but I need better eyes, so I have to punch in camera 5 because that gets me his face. He walks all the way to the edge of the balcony overlooking the boardwalk. That’s camera 27 now, a late add because again, we need eyes on these folks. He stands and smokes for a while. One deck is burning through disc space and I’m rolling a second deck with camera 16 that’s shooting his back. It’s still just safety for when he turns around and I can follow and survey.
He finishes smoking, camera 16 is already engaged and camera 27 is now dead to me. Instead of leaving 27 burning, I’ll punch up camera 10 to catch him entering the kitchen. Camera 16 follows and the kitchen cam is already burning. He goes into the kitchen but doesn’t stay, so I chase with 10. Now camera 16 is dead, so I switch to camera 9 for the living room and he goes down the hall into his room. Now I switch 16 to 6, and 9 becomes 7. Two cameras, one room, one person. This is good coverage as there’s always a wide shot to back up on.
And so on, and so forth as Ronnie heads to shower …
13..
9…
10..
6…
7…
And now JWow enters, looking for Ron, knocking on his shower door. I record camera 6 on a separate deck, nothing too crazy, she just wants to know why he left early. But I roll two cameras until he exits the shower and they have a brief chat, to make sure I get enough coverage. If their conversation goes long, I take time to get singles, slow pull to two shots, then back to singles and swap the coverage, depending on who’s telling the best part of the story. If it's dull, not-for-air nonsense I’ll pull a two-shot and shut down one record. If it happens to be a really good conversation, I'll wish for a third camera I don't have, but still hope someone shouldered up will arrive soon to help make this a cuttable scene that makes air.
Work details were, of course, overshadowed quickly when we were shown the restroom we were all supposed to use. All of us, as in the entire crew of over 100 people. Right beside the shoebox control room was a pizza parlor. The people that worked there were kind enough to share their one, single toilet with us for every season we shot there. Mind you, the pizza shop employees and customers were also all using that same toilet.
The upside being the pizza shop owner was a voracious smoker and did it exclusively in that bathroom for some reason. This would ensure that the smell coming from that space was tainted with the hanging clouds of Camel Blue and the slight scent of garlic leaking from the shop.
But not to worry because it felt cozy!
Living on the road means losing access to certain things, and adjusting to others. One of those adjustments came in the small
can known as Folgers. No offense to those who enjoy it, but it’s just not for me. I’m no Starbucks snob either. I just know myself and if I have to sacrifice, I can, but if I don’t have to, then I will make plans and forge ahead. For these kinds of road gigs, I always pack a French press and buy my own coffee. It's usually Peet’s brand Major Dickinson blend. I think it was in the stage show Speed The Plow where someone says “I just ran out of the shit that makes me give a fuck”. Based on the hours and the way we lived on the road, there would be no time to run out of things and no one could stop giving fucks. So my one lil "spoil me" was taking care of my own morning (late afternoon) coffee. It did become a little tradition that once I arrived at work, I'd get into the French Press with our night tech and the director. It's the little things.
To be honest, all the seasons shooting Jersey Shore (and the spinoffs) started blending into each other. As the years went on, the crew all started getting into the town more, and it became a very fun spot for us as a traveling circus.
It was a particular joy, as the years stacked up, to follow the crew people who had days off while you worked. To come back to solve the mystery of what they had been up to. By the time I was off, this meant a small group of us had an entire day on their own (or an entire night) and would no doubt be shoving each other fully clothed into the pool at the Sea Garden.
Many a cell phone died in those waters and many people were making special runs to Tom’s River to replace them.
There’d often be food cooking or other hijinks to watch.
But just as we would tap each other out at work, it was the same for days off. The continuous 24-hour clock never stopped filming until the last moment when the cast moved out. After that we’d wrap the house, pulling all our cables, cameras, tape, lights, microphones, and people out of there.
One or two more dinners together and finally, the glorious flights home.
Having been away for so many years, I know that Seaside Heights looks different now than when I saw it last.
The last time I was there it was raining and the sun was long gone. Plus, it was off-season, so there wasn’t anyone around. The only shop open was The Shore Store, and its LED sign was the only light on the boardwalk.
My buddy Lou (the guy that hired me in the first place) and I took photos of The Shore Store for old time's sake. That was December 2019.
Hurricane Sandy messed up that town a few years back, so instead of standing on the familiar boardwalk staring at the water, it was large sand hills to protect the seaside from future hurricanes.
The relationship between the Jersey Shore crew and that town felt like living with an alcoholic whose drunk persona gets their own name. Seaside Heights, in the fair weather days, was a simple man, Nick we can call him. Nick didn’t mind picking up after you and liked to lift you up when you were kicked down. Drunken Seaside was a fickle asshole who enjoyed the despair in people's lives. We’ll call him Toniii. Yes, it’s spelled with three i’s because Toniii is extra and only gives a fuck about Toniii. I’ve been kept up nights knowing full well that Toniii talks in the third person and only knows the lyrics to Iron Maiden songs. Toniii hates babies and kittens and having people near him. He’d make fun of anyone for no reason at all, just the sheer joy of shitting on someone's day. Toniii is also partial to kicking people down stairwells and spitting on children’s ice cream cones.
More often, however, we chilled with Nick. Good guy Nick. Reliable, sturdy, and friendly enough. So much so that when I think back on all the times I’ve had filming this show, it’s usually Nick that pops up. Toniii is no doubt on some street corner muttering angry little nothings to his shoulder…
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