"No one hit record." Why Big Brother 2020 was forced to re-record its very first eviction.

You know the feeling when you go to a lot of effort to film a video, only to realise afterwards you didn’t hit record?

Someone in the Big Brother Australia 2020 production team is feeling that HARD right now after it’s been revealed the first eviction episode was accidentally not recorded.

According to industry expert and TV Blackbox editor Rob McKnight, one of the first evictions on Channel 7’s reboot of the reality TV series was forced to be re-recorded when someone forgot to hit record.

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So, how did this happen? As we speak, Channel Seven and production company Endemol Shine Australia are pre-recording Big Brother 2020 in Sydney, meaning the entire series will finish shooting before the first episode airs sometime after the Olympics, TV Blackbox reports.

This is different to the original Big Brother format beloved by audiences in the 2000s, which was shot in the now-abandoned Big Brother mansion next to Dreamworld on the Gold Coast and involved lots of audience participation with public “watching”, and live voting and evictions.

Pre-recording the show means the production team are able to edit episodes together in a certain way, as is done on other reality TV shows like The Bachelor, MasterChef and Australian Survivor. But it also presents opportunities for mistakes to be made.

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According to McKnight, “The major mistake happened when a known identity was evicted from the house. Events were supposed to be recorded on an EVS, an industry tool used for recording multiple sources at once – basically it’s like a digital video recorder.”

When “no one hit record on the digital recorder”, producers made the “unprecedented decision” to re-shoot the eviction, meaning the evicted housemate was placed back into the house and evicted again.

*Cue over-the-top facial expressions and hand gestures in an effort to act surprised and devastated at the same time.

As for who this poor eliminated contestant is, McKnight told News.com.au it’s “a former Big Brother housemate.. it’s someone we all know”.

This news comes after Big Brother host Sonia Kruger confirmed this week that contestants had been notified of the current state of the outside world amid the global coronavirus pandemic. Kind of a big deal, considering the world is a very different place to the one they left behind when they entered the Big Brother house at the end of February.

 

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Crossing to @sunriseon7 for the latest on how we’re keeping the @bigbrotherau housemates updated regarding the COVID-19 situation. #channel7

A post shared by soniakruger (@soniakruger) on Mar 18, 2020 at 1:49pm PDT

Appearing on Sunrise, Kruger said contestants were told about COVID-19 by the show’s Executive Producer through speakers in the diary room.

“They were shocked, as most people would be learning the news about a worldwide pandemic,” she said. “They were quite concerned about the football codes maybe not going ahead!”

Although we have no confirmation on when this season will air or who the contestants are, Channel Seven are saying it will hit our TV screens very soon. We cannot wait, but here’s hoping there’s no more filming errors. At the very least, for the sanity of the show’s contestants and producers.

Feature image: Nine.

Will you be watching Big Brother Australia 2020? Tell us your thoughts on the new format in the comments below.