Tiny House Hunting, TV Style

Filming an episode for HGTV’s Tiny House Hunters show last week was quite the experience! After a few weeks of planning and logistics like filling out their required application, sending the casting agent various photos and information as requested, recording a skype interview to be pitched to the higher powers, then being approved and passed on to the production coordinator for scheduling, the episode featuring me as the home buyer was made official: Episode 303, meaning the 3rd episode to be scheduled as part of their 3rd season. My friend Christian Martin was flown out from San Diego to tour houses with me – put up in a hotel nearby, rented a car for the week, and generally given an all-expenses-paid vacation from his teaching job. We were also both given a bit of cash for each day’s appearance as the “talent.”

“Purchase house” final tour filming (from the ever useful bathroom vantage – I’m tucked into the shower stall peering over their shoulders!)

What fascinated me was that our production team consisted of a Director from Chicago, a Cameraman from Denver, a Sound Engineer from West Virginia, and a local Production Assistant. All four of them drove separate cars and had their respective equipment and supplies to haul around. With the talent added in – Randy, my builder, Christian, my touring partner, and I – we made up a total of 7 people caravanning around the Western North Carolina region in 5-6 vehicles touring tiny houses and filming the required supporting background scenes.

The basic format of the show for those of you who haven’t seen it is this: you have a tiny house buyer accompanied by a spouse, friend, or family member who go around to see three different tiny house options. The touring partner helps the buyer hash out the various considerations that go into the decision to downsize into a tiny home, basically playing devil’s advocate as to whether they are ready to live in such a small space. A real estate agent or tiny house builder shows the buyer and partner around, pointing out all of the features of each house and disclosing the price, various upgrade options, moving costs, land rental, and any other information associated with the purchase of one of the homes.

What was supposed to be 5 9-hour days of filming quickly turned into 6 days, most of which were more like 10-12 hours long. This included anywhere from 20 minutes to 1.5 hours of driving each way to the day’s shooting location, a call time which was typically delayed to allow for the logistics of scene setup, lunch breaks that pushed the afternoon schedules into the 3 or 4 o’clock start time, and changeable weather and random background noises that regularly interrupted the smooth capture of necessary footage. For the most part, we arrived home after dark too drained to do much in the way of socializing. The plans I had to show my “touring partner” around at night often fell by the wayside, though we did get to hang out with the film crew a couple of times which was a lot of fun!

In order to produce 22 minutes of TV-worthy footage, the goal of the show is to clearly describe the specific wants and needs of the buyer, introduce the various limitations that living in a tiny house presents, create some uncertainty about whether any of the homes can fulfill the buyer’s wants and needs, and generally reveal the unusual, humorous, or otherwise unique characteristics inherent in tiny houses. For example, one of the houses I toured did not have a toilet installed, one had a toilet that was squeezed tightly between two walls, one didn’t have a living room area due to a sizable staircase that took up a huge portion of the main wall, one didn’t have a sink in the bathroom, one was basically a mobile home, and one weighed over 12,000 pounds so would always have to be professionally moved with a semi truck. Usually, one or more of the houses are way over the budget the buyer has stated is available. So thereby tension is created for the audience to wonder which home the buyer will go with and how they will “make it work.”

The filming schedule was basically this:

Day 1 – The buyer and touring partner are shown doing and chatting about typical things. In my case, Christian and I hadn’t seen each other in two years so they showed us “catching up” on our respective lives while walking down the path at a river park. Then, they showed us browsing tiny house listings on-line with me talking about what I liked and didn’t like in each example. Next, we browsed through a furniture store downtown to establish my aesthetic preferences and suss out possible items that might work in a small space. Then, after lunch, they captured some footage of my pre-tiny-house living situation, showing my friend Paul’s home as the place I had couch-surfed on and off for the last few months. In fact, Paul and his daughter were even included in a scene! Finally, they staged a formal interview to get my overall story and to hear how I had come to want a tiny house in the first place. The day encompassed not only multiple locations but also multiple wardrobe changes since the goal was to make it appear that each of these scenes had taken place on different days. I got pretty adept at changing my clothing, my foot wear, my hair style, and even my jewelry in the car on the way to the next location. All in all, was a pretty fun day!

Taking over Paul’s house for the “before” interview – setting up lights, camera, sound and a little seating area.

Day 2 – We toured the 1st tiny house option, in this case a new home by my builder Randy Jones of Incredible Tiny Homes that resembled the floor plan that mine was modeled after. First, we were directed to back our car out the driveway a bit and then pull forward onto the property again on camera to show our approach, shake hands with Randy (as if I hadn’t met him in person before), then start the tour of the house from the exterior, commenting on the overall rustic farmhouse style and how I preferred a more modern look with a flat roof. I noted how many windows there were and made a point of saying how important having a bright, airy place with lots of natural light was to me. We talked about heating and cooling systems, and the possibility of adding extra storage onto the back of the house (since I did that in real life.)

During the tour, the director would frequently feed us reminders and information about the house, such as “so, make sure to comment on how you want a fully-functioning kitchen and note that this one doesn’t have much cabinetry- no drawers, minimal countertop, and only room for a mini-fridge, etc.” Then as the camera was rolling, I’d make sure to touch the counters and say something to Christian and Randy like “I really want to be able to entertain and have the room to cook full meals. I don’t think I can deal with just a tiny mini fridge and no oven, and I definitely would want to have drawers in my kitchen which this one doesn’t have…” in order to set the stage for the fact that, in the end, Randy would custom build my home based on the features I wanted.

There was a lot of repetition of the scenes since the cameraman would first get a wide shot of all three of us talking and looking around the house, and then take the scene over again focusing on each of us in turn, whether we were listening or doing the talking. After doing essentially the same thing four times already, they would get close-ups of me doing whatever actions I had done during the scene, such as opening the oven and peering in, or standing in the shower stall contemplating the spaciousness, or sitting up in the sleeping loft to see if my head touched the ceiling. So eventually it really was acting that we were doing – pretending that we were seeing the house for the first time again, or that an idea had just occurred to us as to how to maximize the close quarters better. Having to repeat a particular expression or look of surprise or retell an originally spontaneous joke became a bit of a challenge. For example, at one point I was descending the ladder from the loft when Christian genuinely yelled out “Watch out! Watch your head!” and I ducked in response to realizing that the ceiling fan blades were spinning dangerously close by. The director loved that bit of excitement and had us repeat it for the different camera angles needed, at which point it became a task for us to recapture the surprise and spontaneity originally spurred by the situation.

Since this was the house that I ended up modeling mine after, they made sure to hit on all of the points about it that I ended up customizing in the end so that the story would make sense and be cohesive. We didn’t leave Morristown until 7:30pm, arriving back in Asheville around 9.

Day 3 – We toured tiny house option number 2, which was described as a “park model” at an official tiny house community in Flat Rock, North Carolina (a converted former RV park), which turned out to be a very dated-looking mobile home on the inside although rather brightly colored on the outside with nice landscaping surrounding it. The perks of this home were touted to be a) its spaciousness at a whopping 400 square feet as compared to the previous day’s 150 square foot home, b) its kitchen with full-sized appliances, and c) its location in a tiny house community, which offered amenities such as a club house, seasonal pool, utility hook-ups, and landscaping inclusive in a monthly community fee which would avoid the need for me to find land or some other place to “park” the house. The downsides were that the location was half an hour away from Asheville, and that the interior felt like a mobile home rather than a “normal” house. It really wasn’t all that tiny either.

As the week wore on, certain things that were supposed to be captured during a day’s shooting got pushed off to the following day which meant starting out the next day behind in order to make up that missing footage – interviews, exterior tours, or whatever other elements had been thwarted by weather, other delays, or the simple loss of natural daylight. As each day approached dusk, these powerful light panels (I think with about 100 LEDs each) were brought out and set up to mimic or make up for the waning daylight, but even those reached the end of their useful lives once the sun had gone completely beyond the horizon. So several times, we were told to bring the previous day’s outfits with us the next day and we’d start off that day with the previous day’s interviews, etc. before tackling the current day’s goals. There was really just too much to do and too many unknowns to plan for in any one day’s schedule.

Day 4 -We toured tiny house option number 3, a more modern/industrial looking 24-foot long trailer home owned by a woman in Swannanoa. As it turns out, she was parked on the back side of a piece of farm land owned by a couple and managed by their son, who rented space on the property to several other squatters as well, for lack of a better term to describe the situation. Each of these squatters had their own makeshift quarters- one an old garage, one a yurt, one a converted school bus, etc. There must have been half a dozen of them at least. As the manager described it, they rented land to these people in exchange partially for money and partially for help on the farm doing various maintenance, gardening, and construction jobs. A live-work arrangement I suppose you could call it. However, at least some of these “homes” did not have proper utility connections which left us wondering what was happening to all of the waste generated by the squatters. And the property backed up to the Swannanoa River, so not only was the sanitation questionable but the possibility of flooding to the area was fairly high. In fact, it was raining so hard the week that we filmed that the woman whose house we toured here was ready at a moment’s notice to tow her house elsewhere out of the flood plain. In many regards, an interesting situation to observe, seeing as I’m still looking for a permanent place to set my house up!

The 3rd tiny house location in Swannanoa turned out to be a hidden mini tiny house commune of sorts…hmmm…

Day 5 – Day 5 was supposed to consist of several elements: namely, the big “reveal” where I show the audience the house that I ended up with, go through all of the details of the customizations I had Randy make for me, and show the various ways that I tried to maximize my space and implement creative solutions for my needs. This final tour was the big item that got pushed into a 6th day of filming however, since Christian and I also shot a scene where we shopped at a local farm to pick out some foods that we prepared a meal with in my tiny house later. This was done to show us using the finished space in a practical way. They filmed a quick kitchen scene in which we chopped and cooked those items, and then they filmed Christian’s final interview, getting his thoughts about how the house turned out and what he thought of my decision.

Having run out of time by the end of that day, I had my final interview, which lasted about 45 minutes, the next day, as well as providing an in-depth tour of my house, during which I reviewed its pros and cons, described how living in it was going so far, and told the audience what improvements I was still working on – such as a better ladder scenario for my sleeping lofts, adding awnings over my windows, and finding land to park it on long-term. I found this day to be one of the most fun of course because it was my chance to show off all of the specific features that I’d requested in the house, and let viewers see it in the best light possible- beautifully furnished, organized and accessorized!

The production crew eats lunch in my tiny house on day 5.

   
Luckily, my cute little bathroom shelf got installed above the sink just in time, care of friend James Winters’ mad woodworking skills; Likewise, my flip-up cutting board/counter extension idea was partially implemented the morning before the tour. Thanks Jim!!

And…the money shot of my staged interior (aka the house was somewhat de-cluttered for TV!)

All in all, working with a veteran TV production crew was a really fun and enlightening experience, from picking up various industry jargon to learning a bit about the equipment used, and not in the least realizing just how much constant travel is involved in this type of national “reality” show- not just to various parts of the county, but also regionally within each episode. Getting used to being miked was an interesting experience as well- a tiny microphone on the end of a thin wire was taped to the inside of your shirt, run down your torso and around to your back where it was attached to a battery pack that clipped onto the waist of your pants, and that clearly transmitted every word you said regardless of how far you might be standing from the camera itself. It was easy to forget that your wire was active sometimes, but you had to remember that anything you muttered under your breathe, or thought you were saying to someone in confidence, would be picked up by the sound board whether it was being recorded or not. Luckily all of the crew were really cool folks and it became part of the routine to tease them or make sideways comments about the process while knowing that they were listening in.

In fact, I enjoyed the camaraderie so much that at the end I offered the team my help if they were ever to need it, and the next day their production company contacted me to be the Production Assistant (read gofer) on the next episode they were filming in the area just five days later! So today I stood in as part of the crew and got to work the episode from behind the camera, which I actually found a bit more rewarding than being in the spotlight! Not sure where this connection might lead, but it sure was nice to work, feel useful, learn some new things, and be outdoors and active on the set, not to mention getting the opportunity to see even more tiny homes and meet fellow tiny house owners!