By Evan Yang

Lights, camera, action! Well, almost. This quarter, the Department of Communication is offering a course on reality TV under COM 495: Special Topics. Part-time lecturer Florangela Davila and Matt Chan, founder and owner of Seattle-based Screaming Flea Productions, both teach the class of 26 students. Chan and Davila’s goal is simple: to teach their students how to successfully write and pitch an idea for a reality TV show.

The idea for the class began brewing a year and a half ago, when David Domke approached Davila with the idea of teaching a reality TV course alongside two other experts. Davila accepted, and local TV entrepreneur Matt Chan ended up being one of the guest speakers for the course.

After that rendition of COM 495, Domke tapped Davila and Chan to teach Reality TV this winter. “It seemed like a good idea and I couldn’t say no,” recalls Davila. “And I had met Matt, and liked Matt and liked TV, so it seemed like it would work.” Domke, Davila, and Chan weren’t the only ones who thought the class would be a good idea. “Students signed up right away. There was a wait list,” says Davila.

One student’s opinion aligns with the demand. “I think the class is great so far and it’s a unique class to offer,” remarked Wanita Wong. “Matt Chan, the President of Screaming Flea, really contributes the ‘meat’ of the course to us from working in TV for so long. He is very straight-forward and is not afraid to shoot our ideas down if they are bad—similar to how executives are in real life—but he does it in a way where he offers great constructive criticism.”

As Wong noted, the class isn’t all fun and games just because it’s about television. Reality TV is a workshop class where students research potential reality show ideas, as well as brainstorm the necessary formats and materials to make them marketable. Students do assignments every week that help them understand the ingredients to a good reality TV show, such as format breakdowns, writing log lines, and writing network profiles. Everything they study will culminate into their final project, in which teams of five will create written show treatment and deliver an oral pitch to “potential clients.”

While teaching students how to come up with the next big reality show hit isn’t easy, there are some perks to the process. For one, the class doesn’t use a textbook, which surely appeals to the students. The teachers, however, find other aspects of the class to be just as attractive. “I like it because it’s unlike any other class that I’ve ever taught. I’ve never had to pitch something like this to network executives,” says Davila.

Chan enjoys teaching the class because “the students ask good questions.” He also admits that instructing others makes him better at what he does for a living. “Until you have to teach something, you can’t quantify what you do every day as a professional in the industry. In order for me to teach, I really have to know what I know.”

Chan’s reputation is largely why his teaching bears so much clout. He was featured in the top 50 of The Hollywood Reporter’s Reality Power List in 2011, and his show Hoarders won a Primetime Emmy last year. “[Screaming Flea Productions] is one of the top non-fiction production companies in the country,” says Chan. “I create an idea on a piece of paper, and I turn it into money.”

For all of his successes, Chan is a very humble man and teaching reality TV is just one of the ways he likes to give back. “Ideas are the currency of this industry. If I teach this class and I get them to think in terms of how to think about coming up with show ideas, I’ve accomplished my mission because those people will then be valuable to the television industry.”
It’s a good thing he’s teaching students how to come up with creative show ideas. Like one of his students said, “Reality TV is more complicated than having a camera and following people around.”