Meet Michele Nasraway who started as a logger in the mailroom and is now the Executive Producer of the show. Plus, hear from the writers Mike Palleschi and Erik Lohla, a grand prize winner, and more!
Meet Michele Nasraway who started as a logger in the mailroom and is now the Executive Producer of the show. Plus, hear from the writers Mike Palleschi and Erik Lohla, a grand prize winner, and more!
AFV ep 2 TRANSCRIPT
Manny Maura: I mean there's some videos that are just unexplainable. We had this video of a couple and there's this young lady that's walking toward the camera and she looks at the camera and she says, "we've been married one week and we're still in love" as she's saying this, there's like, looks like the tail of a horse that comes onto the screen in front of her face and all of a sudden there's this horse fart that lasts 33 seconds. The camera zooms out so you can see the horse and you can see the steam coming out of him. Sorry to get this graphic, but when I think of this clip to this moment, I mean I have a tear in my eye right now. You just cannot help but to laugh in wonder. This is like a magic moment.
Brittany High: Yeah. What a way to start the show. Am I right? You're listening to America, This Is You, and I'm your host Brittany High. We're looking back at the last 30 years of making America's Funniest Home Videos. This is episode two of our five part series, so if you just started listening, you may definitely, yes, want to go back and listen to episode one first. Today we'll hear from the executive producer of the show, Michele Nasraway as well as AFV writers, Mike Palleshi and Eric Lohla. These folks are imperative to making the show. You ready?
Michele Nasraway: I'm Michelle Nasraway and I'm one of the executive producers on the show.
Brittany High: Michelle has been with AFV for nearly 30 years. She started as a logger in the mail room.
Michele Nasraway: I saw a promo, lots of promos actually for the pilot and this was in November of 1989 and I just thought it was the funniest thing ever. The promos that I saw. I remember talking to my boyfriend about it on the phone and we got to watch this show. It looks so funny and um, I definitely was in front of the television set for the pilot and just loved it that it was so great.
Brittany High: So she was a fan of the show and as luck would have it…
Michele Nasraway: And I happened to be looking for work at the time and I went to the UCLA career placement center and there was just a little posting saying AF - Well, it wasn't called AFV at the time. It was America's Funniest Home Videos, was looking for loggers to work in the mail room and essentially open the mail and I was so excited and applied, got an interview immediately, was hired the next day and I started working on the show that would be nearly 30 years ago.
Brittany High: That's right. Michelle was with AFV before it was AFV and it turns out being a logger wasn't exactly glamorous.
Michele Nasraway: So the loggers were people. We sat essentially in the mail room, we took the…the physical VHS tapes out of the mail bags, slit them open, and we logged the information as to who sent it in physically, just hand writing everything. We were not working with computers at the time, so we would write that information down on a sheet, the format that it came in, and then it would get passed on to the screening department and the screeners would actually screen the content. So…
Brittany High: Every part of the process of making AFV was more complicated before computers. We'll get into that a little later. But first I need you to hear this super awkward story from when Michelle first started on the show.
Michele Nasraway: I actually was in an apartment family.
Brittany High: The apartment family is how the show used to open. It would be a mock family sitting in front of the TV, getting ready to watch America's Funniest Home Videos. Remember that?
Michele Nasraway: Horrifying moment for me. The producer suggested to me, hey, we want you to be the concept this week is that there's going to be two teenagers necking on the couch. And then AFV comes on and they suddenly stop necking and they're paying attention to the show and we want you and Peter Van Pelt, who was my office mate at the time and a friend of mine, we'd like you to be the teenagers. Great! This is so exciting! And I remember telling my boyfriend that this would be happening and wow, he was not happy about it. And I said, we're not really going to be necking. I mean, this is television. There's like television trickery and so we got to the stage that day and they did my hair and makeup and I was totally excited, a little nervous. And Peter and I went up there and sat on that couch and I remember my boss and coworkers were down there. They were giggling and they were, I mean the stage was actually like upstairs, so they were kind of hiding and watching this and really excited. I didn't understand why. And then the director called action and I was just mortified. I did not, I mean it was like time stopped and I could feel the heat coming off my face, not because of the kiss, because I was so embarrassed and I just think I just sat there like a wood block. So that was a learning experience.
Brittany High: In spite of this horrifying episode, Michelle went on to have many different jobs at AFV.
Michele Nasraway: After starting as a logger, uh, I moved to the clearance department where I helped obtain the rights for all the videos in the show. And from there I became an assistant to the producers. I did a variety of things and then I, they gave me the opportunity to do the music montages which I did. I did that for a year. I also was the person who basically had the relationship with the international licensees, so Australia's Funniest Home Video Show. They would produce their own version of the show with their own local content, with their own host, and then we would share content with them and they with us, I would screen all that content and determine what would be appropriate to integrate into our show. After I did that, I was promoted to coordinating producer and that's when the show went off the air for a little bit. So when the show was brought back to the schedule and the other producers had moved on, I was promoted to producer.
Brittany High: Michelle kept moving up the ranks until she was running the show.
Michele Nasraway: Eventually my title's changed a little bit as my responsibilities grew and, and now, you know, VIN granted me the title of executive producer.
Brittany High: To stay with one show so long, you really have to believe in what it stands for.
Michele Nasraway: I love the spirit of the show. I love the brand. I love that I get to partake in making people laugh and brightening people's days and helping people spend time as a family. You know, those are memories that they're always going to have for the rest of their lives. And we hear really nice things such as people who were down at a point in their life and AFV really made their day a little brighter. We've heard about patients in hospitals who would watch the show and laugh and it's really very touching to know that we were involved in people's lives in that way.
Brittany High: And that feeling of closeness with the show isn't just about the show itself, it extends to the people who work on AFV as well.
Michele Nasraway: You know, we've been working here for 30 years and people have been here for so long. We've seen a lot of people grow up on the show and start as you know, right out of college, met their spouses, got married, have kids. I mean, that's really great. And not many people in any job, let alone a television show, get to see that happen.
Brittany High: So you submitted your video to AFV. Then what happens?
Michele Nasraway: Currently, every single submission that gets uploaded to afv.com is screened by a team of screeners who are all sitting in one room watching the submissions and they watch every moment of every frame unless they're told very specifically go to this cue point, this is what you're looking for. And then the screener will give the video a rating; a five or better, and those videos then make their way to the writing team. The writers screen every single one of those and they will build an element reel, which is basically just the clips. Then the producers will get together and they'll screen that element reel and clips will come in and out based on our, our reactions to those videos. The clips that do not make it through the first pass are still held in the library and then they are re-screened at a later date by a different screener because it's all about someone's perception of, of what's funny. And someone may be in a bad mood that day, so we want to give everything a second chance. We have actually found clips that have gone on to be finalists in that process. So everything is, is viewed at least twice.
Brittany High: That's a lot of home videos. So many that it made me curious before everything was on computers, where exactly were we keeping them? All those VHS tapes had to be taking up a lot of space somewhere.
Michele Nasraway: So in the early days of the show, I had mentioned we got all these physical submissions. Each one got an actual number, like on a piece of tape and we would put it on the video and then that video would be screened. If it was something that was going to make the show, then we would actually dub the funny part off onto a master professional tape. And the physical video would either be returned to the submitter or it would go into a vault. Eventually there was just not enough room to hold all this, all that storage. So at a certain point, after keeping those videos, each VHS or, or physical tape for a certain amount of years, we would then erase them and destroy them. But the master tapes of where you know the actual funny part lived, we still have in a vault and we keep duplicates of that material in a storage facility in another state so that nothing would ever be lost. So we should there be any catastrophe.
Brittany High: Let's talk to someone who watches all those videos. Here's AFV's head writer Mike Palleschi.
Mike Palleschi: Well yeah we used to screen things on VHS and like if we wanted to build a bit like versus we went to the database, got the category that we want and made a list. We had to take it to the back to the guy to put it on a thing and it would take, it would take days cause he'd have to do it. Then you'd look at any, check off the things you want. Now it's all on our computer, which is so much better.
Brittany High: But just because it's easier to access AFV's vast library of home videos, doesn't mean there's less work. Writers use old and new clips and the archive is always growing.
Mike Palleschi: It's easier to do stuff then you have more stuff to do and work kind of expands. And also we use less old clips now than we ever have. Like we don't need to pad the show with old clips. It's only if we're doing a bit like versus where you know you have a category and you may want to go back to find that really weird clip that fits in there or we do Throw Back 30 or Throw Back - we used to call it Throwback Thursday, but on a Sunday, you know, we'd, cause it is good to throw a couple of old things for nostalgia or like my son's 15 he still watches the show. There's plenty of clips from back in the day that he never saw.
Brittany High: Sometimes the sheer volume of content they have at their disposal is overwhelming.
Mike Palleschi: There's too many. That's the thing. It's like paradox of choice, you know? It's just like 20 years of clips. I don't even know where to go anymore, you know? I mean I used to say, Oh, chimps sniffin’ his bud is the funniest thing now. It's like, I don't even know.
Brittany High: At the start of every season of AFV, there's a whole new influx of home videos to choose from and the writers including Mike have to sort through it. Figuring out what the audience will find funny isn't always easy.
Mike Palleschi: So that first week is just so frazzling and it sounds like, well how could that be? Oh, you’re just watching TV? But like by the end of the day you just don't know what's funny anymore. And we're looking at, I'm looking at it, is this funny? I don't know. Cause you have to think not what do I like, what do you like? But what is the audience going to like and what is Vin going to like? If Vin's seen it a million times, it’s, it's going to sink the show for him. So we got to say, well is Vis going to be happy with this? And then is the audience going to be happy so every once in a while there's a clip that it doesn't do anything for me, but I know the audience is going to like it or vice versa. I love this clip but I know the audience is not going to get it.
Brittany High: Here's another one of our writers, Eric Lola, on how he sees the writing process.
Erik Lohla: Further window, the videos down after the screeners see them. So we help, you know, that's I guess the producing aspect, that's where the producing part comes in where we just compile the, the videos in a different packages. But then we write the jokes over each video. We write all of Al's banter when he's on stage to introduce them, try and find new ways to introduce dogs. Just trying to keep it fresh, as fresh as you can because there's certain things that we do every week, but we try to say it in a way that hasn't been done and do jokes over similar clips that haven't been done.
Brittany High: Mike and Eric have worked together for 13 seasons
Erik Lohla: We get along. We've been friends for a long time and we sort of know each other's sense of humor and we try to, and I think we know the audience pretty well by this point as well as what VIN and Michelle and Rich like. So…
Brittany High: When Eric mentions Rich, he's talking about Richard Conner. He's the one who makes the musical montages we'll hear more about in episode three, but the packages that Eric is talking about are how the clips or videos are grouped together. Part of the writer's job is to organize the clips in ways that make sense to viewers. Here's Mike explaining one of his favorite packages.
Mike Palleschi: Yeah. Versus was, it's special to me because I came up with it my first year and I remember we had, we used to put stuff on the board, like when we have cards of all the clips, we put them up on the board and categories and then we had a category called Hits. Now packages are always good when you have someone getting hit or falling down, so we had a section just for that. We do it a little differently now, but that's the point. We had the Hits on the board and VIN was really sick of trampolines and pinatas and that's all we had left in the hits section and the show, whatever episode that was was particularly soft and we needed some hits. And Todd, who was the head writer at the time said no trampolines, no pinatas. And I said, how about trampolines versus pinatas? And we, his eyes lit up and we'd be like, oh, that'll work. And we did it, we called it like a sporting event. And then we had at the end, you know, next week they take on whatever weird category we could come up with and we realize this is something we could do again and again and again. And they started getting sillier and sillier. We realize, you know, categories like trampoline and pinata, so basic, but then it started getting more and more obscure and then it became kind of funny that, how did we have so many of those, like we have three or four clips of someone with a civil war cannon shooting a snowman. And it's like, how many do you think we would have of that? And no, we had enough to make a category. We had one last year of people trying the dance from dirty dancing and falling. And it's like we have tons of those. It's like, I don't know why people are still doing that in this day and age.
Erik Lohla: I came up with one called Second Guy Bites It, where there's a video and someone tries something a little risky or you know, maybe not the brightest idea, and then he does it. He, you know, he achieves it, but then his buddy tries it and falls flat on his face. And so we just, if we can get five or six of those in a row, it's there. It's a, it's a pretty, it's a pretty funny way to, to group things together. I also like, I like doing commercial parodies of products when we can use actual videos and make it look like it's some, some ridiculous product that we're selling. Like we're doing or were about to do a sketch called a Splorch, which is a slippery porch that people would, there's no reason they would buy it in real life, but it's a way to make people fall on your porch so you can get a good ring video camera, a video of it. So that's something we're doing now. So, you know, silly, ridiculous things like that are my preference. But it's, there's limited…
Brittany High: But not every package they've come up with has been a success.
Mike Palleschi: Yes. So my biggest failure was a bit called Bergeron Hit Me In The Junk, and the idea was we'd have, and we shot a couple with people in the office where you, you wince as if Tom Bergeron just hit you in your privates. And then we had Tom on a green screen doing a bunch of poses where he's swinging a baseball bat or a shovel or something and we'd edit him in so he looks like he's hitting you in your privates, and we aired it and some people liked it and some people didn't. We had a lot of, a lot of people complain that it wasn't family friendly stuff. And that was a moment where I realized, yeah, I kind of forgot the audience like so we did it once and we never did it again.
Brittany High: Once they have a few good packages, Mike and Eric create an element real to share with Vin.
Mike Palleschi: Put together, we call it the element real. It's just the clips before. The jokes are on it before we shoot it and we take it down to VIN and he has to approve it. So we better make sure that show is good for VIN. Cause like I say, if he, his feeling is if I'm bored, America's going to be bored. So we always try to find something new and different and if we go in with the same stuff, he's going to get bored. And my goal as the head writer is get that screening past VIN. Cause if he doesn't like the show and we gotta redo it. I don't care that I got to work late, but I don't want my script people to have to work late. My editors working late, my second producer working late. So it's just this, this bad log jam if he doesn't approve the show. So it was good. Theres a little panic right before we show it to him. It's like a, I don't know about this, it cut this one, cut this one, so we're cutting stuff last minute.
Brittany High: Luckily Mike and Eric were usually able to make Vin laugh and I have proof. Here's Lisa Black Executive Vice President, Content Revenue and Business Development. And my boss. Hi Lisa! She used to sit across the hall from Vin when she first started working at AFV.
Lisa Black: What I was surprised by is my office when I first started was across from Vin's. And in the, in the early days a lot of my job was more business development and I would be on calls and I'd have my door open and we'd hear like this roaring laughter coming from VINs office. And I didn't really realize that the writers would come down and they would screen all the clips with VIN and they would just be howling like for an hour. So I would constantly have to close my door because I'd get all these questions from as I was trying to go over deals or on the phone with lawyers as to why, what is going on in that office. So that, that was sort of like the most surprising thing but also like the best surprise ever.
Brittany High: After Vin has his say on what's funny and what isn’t, that power gets transferred to the studio audience. At the end of the show, each audience member gets to vote for what they think was the funniest video and the creator of the winning video takes home $10,000. AFV wouldn't be the show it is today without its infamous cash prize, but what makes a winner a winner? Michelle explains:
Michele Nasraway: So the criteria for a winning video is the same as it has been from day one and that it is, it has to be the funniest or the most unique video in that episode. I actually think that what people think is funny is not that different today than than what it was in yesteryear. We find that generally the most winningest clips have to do with kids. People just love kids. Animals are very popular. It's generally not the mishaps or the physical comedy that people vote for. It's the adorable kids, the funny kids, the practical jokes sometimes.
Brittany High: To win AFV, your clip has to be more than just funny. It also has to be fresh and different. Here's writer Mike Palleschi again.
Mike Palleschi: That's the thing. The thing that's gonna win is something that VIN hasn't seen before. You know, there could be something really funny, but if we've seen it a hundred times, it's just, it's not going to get nominated. People were outraged. It was a clip last year of a squirrel on a, you know, the bird feeders that they're weighted. So if a squirrel land on the bird feeder, it's spins it around. It was a funny clip. People were outraged. How was that not a nominee? Well, cause we've had a hundred of them. So I was like after that, after the outrage I did, it was a Salute To. So it was, we salute squirrels on bird feeders. So we had 30 of them back to back to back to back. Cause they're funny. But again, it's not going to win because we've seen it before and if Vin is tired of it, it’s not going to be nominated. So now it's like if you could be the first of a, of a new genre, that's the best chance.
Brittany High: If a video meets these guidelines, then there's a chance it could take home the title of winner and you'll go home with a lot more than glory. Michelle explains the prizes a funny home video could win you.
Michele Nasraway: Well for the pilot episode, I believe there was a $5,000 prize for the winning video. Then in the first season we did, we are still consistent with those prizes in terms of the cash, the 10,000 for first, 3,000 for second, 2,000 for third. We’ve awarded over $16 million in cash in the 30 seasons of the show. And we've given away many, many great vacations to families and that's something we're really proud of.
Brittany High: What Michelle is getting at here is what's really at the heart of AFV. From the people that work here to the people who watch it, we make AFV to bring people together.
Michele Nasraway: You know, there are a lot of memorable moments, but one of the things that I think about often is I remember that we had a, we had a special contest. It was many years ago. I don't remember what the, what the contest was about, but I know the prize was a vacation to Puerto Rico. I was arranging travel for the prize winter at the time. And it was kind of complicated. He had younger kids and we had to work around their schooling. And it was just a little complicated. And I think, you know, I was younger and I might've been a little frustrated with the, with the circumstances, and he very kindly said to me, you know, this is a very incredible opportunity. I don't have the money to, I don't have the money to treat my kids to….sorry.
Brittany High: Michelle gets emotional recalling this experience.
Michele Nasraway: So he very sweetly said to me that you know, this is a very wonderful opportunity. I don't have the money to ever treat my kids to a vacation like this. So I'm really appreciative of it and I want to make sure that it's just, just right. And it really touched me. I mean I realized how lucky I was and how, how great it was that I was able to be a part of arranging that for the family.
Brittany High: Let's talk to the Shumpert family. They won the grand prize back in 2013. Here's their story.
Schumpert Family: Hi, this is the Shumpert family. Our video was a candid moment between my daughter, Savannah, who was about four years old at the time, and her dad. It was captured in the kitchen of her grandmother's house. Her grandmother still had a landline telephone at the time, which was fairly unusual, and Savannah had never really seen one. She was having some trouble with her phone, so she asked my husband to call it from his cell phone and she picked up the phone. She said hello, and she said, who is this? And he just off the cuff, said Santa Claus. And we kept thinking at any moment she's going to look over, you know, and realize that it's her dad talking to her on the other phone, but she never did. So she immediately launches into this long list of what she wants for Christmas.
[AFV CLIP Savannah: Okay, I'll call you back before Christmas. Be a good girl…He’s going to call me back before Christmas…I will be a good girl Santa Clause…Ok. Bye Bye…Bye Bye…Who were you talking to? Santa Clause!!! No Way! Really?] [Shrieking]
Schumpert Family: Being on AFV changed our lives in the most amazing, fabulous ways. People ask us all the time, you know, what did you do when you suddenly got such a large sum of money? And it's exciting to sit around and think about what you would do when you're suddenly handed a large sum of money. And we did some of that. We were talking about opening our own veterinary practice and that was something that we had wanted to do for quite some time and our winnings from AFV made it possible for us to do that. And we had fun too. Occasionally we have people ask about the experience of being on the show. Our experience was absolutely wonderful. I'd like to say a quick thank you to everyone associated with AFV. My family being on this show and winning 10,000 and a hundred thousand dollar prizes was a complete full circle life experience for me because I remember watching in my parents' house the very first few episodes of AFV when they originally aired.
Schumpert Family: I remember watching the episode with the standard poodle in the Congo line. I remember when that video won the prize. I remember the video of the guy going over the fence and losing his pants and the bird dive bombing the cat. And if you had told me then that I would grow up and have kids and we would go on the show and we would not only be a $10,000 prize winner, but a hundred thousand dollar prize winner, there's no way I could have even imagined that. So for it to really happen was just the most amazing, exciting thing. And I want to thank everybody that made that experience possible for our family.
Brittany High: Next week we'll be getting into the sound of AFV, from musical montage is to voiceovers to the iconic theme song you can't help but sing along to, you know, the one. Its the funniest things you do. America, America, This Is You!
[AFV THEME SONG PLAYS]
Brittany High: America,This is you! Is brought to you by AFV in partnership with SiriusXM. This episode was produced by me and my best pal, Rob Schulte, and mastered by the great Jim Bilodeau and audio engineered by Andrew Gruss. Additional help was provided by Michael [Fische], Sarah Esocoff, Sharon Arnett, and Kelsey Albright. Thank you to AFV's, HBIC, that's head boss in charge, Of course, Michele Nasraway, behind the scenes funny guys, that's the official title, Mike Palleschi and Eric Lohla, my actual boss, and Ricky Bobby's mom Lisa Black. You took time to answer all of my questions. Thank you so much. You didn't have to do that, but you did.