Kim Kardashian Fake Dubai Car Scene: How They Did It – VIDEOS
January 16, 2012 by Hollywoodite
Yes, Kim Kardashian faked the Dubai car ride with mother Kris Jenner on Kourtney & Kim Take New York season two episode seven, Kim Takes Dubai.
Watch this video as a reminder. Supposedly this entire car scene took place in Dubai, in October, before Kardashian filed for divorce from Kris Humphries. However, there were several clues that the scene had been staged afterward: the blacked out car windows, the dubbed audio at 00:30, the changes in vocal inflection/ intonation, and, most importantly, mother and daughter were caught by paparazzi right after they shot additional photography.
The Dubai trip was mid-October 2011. Kardashian filed for divorce October 31. The additional scene was filmed December 6, in Los Angeles. In fact, mother and daughter were caught by paparazzi outside a Los Angeles studio, right after shooting the car scene. In the photos, Kardashian wore the exact same outfit, a black jacket and white t-shirt, and still had the same hair and make-up. Jenner had the same hair and earrings and an assistant carried the purple dress in plain sight immediately behind.
Right after this aired Sunday January 8, two body-language experts rubbished the scene as a badly-acted fake with incongruous audio/visual cues. Dr. Lillian Glass said: “[This seems] completely phony, staged and emotionless for someone who is not happy about a marriage.” Body language expert and author Patti Wood added: “[Kim’s] words don’t match her body language or her [vocal inflection]. Kim’s body language is not normal with regard to what she is saying.”
In short, the scene wasn’t necessarily, literally scripted. E! denied those allegations, claiming: “The Kardashians have authentically lived their lives on camera.” However, it’s still fake. Paranormal Activity 1 didn’t have a script. Instead, actors had guided conversations where they were fed scenarios and discussion topics to fit a pre-written narrative. An example of a guided conversation on reality television would be E! producers feeding a scene to Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick for the wedding special.
Moreover, in lieu of the desired footage, reality producers can STILL just edit audio/ video to fabricate whatever remaining footage they need.
Time.com notes, in an archive piece on reality shows, 1) producers create “Frankenbites” of audio 2) they’ll edit video shot on different days, doing this kind of re-shoot if there’s still a plot hole, manipulating reaction shots or whatever’s needed to create the scene.
If you read Cracked.com this weekend, you’ll know a Frankenbite is a composite of spoken words and phrases from disparate conversations/ contexts, perhaps weeks apart; literally pasting words to make new sentences, thus fabricating dialogue. It’s routine to paste together multiple conversations that took place weeks apart. Producers can, and do, literally, make someone appear to have said anything. The clue, notes Cracked, any edits away from a person’s mouth and it’s probably a Frankenbite. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette elaborate in their book, Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, “Frankenbite describe[s]… the art of switching around… sound bites recorded at different times and patched together to create what appears to be a seamless narrative.”
A source tells New York Daily News, all reality shows are filmed like this. Additional photography (re-shoots), re-recording audio, etc.. “This is what is called a pickup scene [it’s] done all of the time,” the source told NYDN. “There was a hole in the [Duabi] storyline. [Filming the] a scripted scene [fixed the problem]. All reality shows are staged.”
An example, from the excellent Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe: Reality TV Editing, is below. It illustrates how reaction shots and dialogue from only hours apart can be edited together to create the desired narrative.
Humphries told the truth about the family using him, manipulating him, provoking him, smearing him, and staging scenes to make him look bad. Humphries even hinted as much, again, on Twitter (hinted, because he’s still bound by his confidentiality agreement). “I can’t wait for the truth to come out! People will be surprised or maybe they won’t. #FCC,” Humphries tweeted January 9.