Big Brother - CBS Entertainment
Big Brother is a CBS reality based TV show where contestants live in a "house" set on the CBS lot and try to be the last one remaining for a shot at half a million in prize money. Power and immunity in the house is determined by competitions that take place in the outdoor backyard.
Initial development of a competition concept begins with the competitions department. Once "comps" has come up with a game they think has merit, it is then brought to the art department for further evaluation. It's our job to start the initial design process to vet out ideas that might be too expensive, complicated, or dangerous for us to pull off.
Once an idea has gone far enough to avoid a quick death, the art directors build the entire competition within a full scale, 3D model of the backyard using the program SketchUp. Meanwhile, the competitions department will continue to work through the complexities of how the game is played. This process always involves a lot of back and forth collaboration and compromise between comps and the art department. Many times the art directors determine it just isn't possible to deliver on some required elements of the competition and it's not uncommon to get days into a design only to find the game has to be dramatically changed, or even scrapped altogether. In the realities of the show's schedule, we typically only get about a two week window (if we're lucky) to design and build a competition, so any little delay or setback, means losing precious time we just can't afford to lose.
Once a competition has made it all the way to game day, the real fun begins. While a large, complex game may get two days of build time, most of these games have to be installed, played and torn down in just one day. A typical one day build will have us loading in around 6AM and building the set at a feverous pace until it is ready to shoot, usually around mid day. Because of the construction of the Big Brother backyard, temperatures within the yard walls typically run 10º to 20º hotter than those outside the yard walls. That means that on a typical 100º So. Cal summer day, the construction crew can be working in temperatures reaching 120º. We've seen our 125º thermometer pegged hard on more than one occasion. The entire crew battles heat stroke, dehydration, and physical exhaustion on a daily basis.
Once the game has been installed in the yard, the art department and competition department will have some time to run through the game and test it to make sure it works and the contestants will be safe. Because of our crazy deadlines, this game day run though may actually be the first time some of the elements have been fully tested. It's not uncommon for some element not to work, in which case everyone scrambles to come up with a solution and correct the problem in time for the game to be played.
From one way windows around the backyard and from TV monitors in our trailer we are able to watch the game play out. It's always a nervous time for all involved and complex mechanical rigs that require houseguest to interact with moving elements, or hang from cables are especially nerve wrecking. This is where all our years of experience and expertise pays off. There is simply no room for error when people's live's are at stake. A successful game means that everything went went as planned, we had a clear winner and no one got hurt.
After game play, the houseguest are locked back into the house and the crew dismantles that day's set. On many occasions the next art director will start immediately loading in the next days game. It's also not unusual for us to have days with two or three full competitions in one day.
Big Brother is a very unusual show in that the show puts on three one hour episodes each week. A typical season will have us designing and building 40+ competitions with one competition shot live each week. With a season that has us working four months straight and putting in 70+ hours a week, it's is definitely not for the feint of heart. While it can be quite grueling at times, the show does offer us art directors the freedom to let our imaginations run wild and push our abilities to their limits on a daily basis. And there is a lot of satisfaction in knowing youv'e pulled off the damn near impossible, game after game.
No mention of the show would be complete without special recognition to the following people for their hard work and dedication which has allowed the show to continue to be the top rated show in it's time slots year after year.
* Heath Luman and all the competition producers * Narbeh Nazarian * Linn Gelert * Anael Bonsorte * Meredith Greenburg * Gabriella Schnierle * Wendy Templeton and the scenic crew * Construction Coordinator Tommy Azevedo and the Black Sheep Squadron * Propmaster, decorator and greensman extrodinaire Jon West and all the Lost Boys* And of course, all our amazing production support crew who help keep us all sane and out of trouble!
 Here's the Big Brother backyard in it's everyday state for use by the show's houseguest. |  Here, the crew is preparing to load in a game called Pond Darts. Covers are installed over the pool and hot tub and plastic is laid over the entire yard to protect it from game elements like sand and water. |  Here is the very same backyard when the Pond Darts game is ready for play. A game like this will take over a week to design, a crew of 20 + craftsman about 3 to 4 days to build and paint and just a day and a half to install, shoot and tear down. |
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 For this game, the entire yard is once again completely transformed. The UFO set was installed on a platform to create a slide ramp that dumps players into the mud and goo hazards. Nothing says fun like being covered in mud and corn syrup and then digging around in hay on a nice hot 110º summer day. |  Our sets often involve physical effects which have to be engineered and constructed. In this case, the waterfall flowing from under the beaver dam could be cranked up to blast contestants down the slide. The sculpted beaver had a wagging tail and a mechanical arm to wipe at his flowing tears. |  Here is the beaver character being sculpted by our construction coordinator, Tommy Azevedo. Styrofoam is the medium of choice for sculptures in our industry. It carves very fast with the right tools, but all those beads make one hell of a mess! Tommy used to be a Disney Imagineer and is one of the best in the business. |
 Another example of a large physical effects rig. Contestants slid on trollies, mounted on rails and hung from a large overhead truss rig. The rig would then pick up the houseguest and tilt back and forth slamming them into walls at each end which were made up of 2ft. thick stunt pads covered with painted canvas murals. There was also a waterfall in the center to douse contestants. The "river" in the center which had high volume water pumps to recirculate the waterfall during game play. |  Complete yard transformation complete with 12' high fire breathing tiki statue. |  Season 9 opener set. Players had to sit on spinning mushroom tops for a last person remaining endurance game. |
 What could be more fun than houseguest in swimsuits and horse costumes slipping and sliding around a steeple chase course covered in plastic and Crisco. |  Sometime games irequire electronics engineering to pull off. In this game, each lane had a controller that was programed so that each contestant had to spin 15 complete revolutions on a suspended handle in order to drop the wall barricade in front of the pins flush with the bowling lane. Once the barricade was down, the dizzy contestants had 15 seconds to knock down as many pins as possible before pneumatic actuators pop the barricade back up, resetting the program. |  A big Brother version of Skee Ball with contestants rolling a ball up the ramp and trying to rack up points. |
 This game involved contestants studying each set and then having to answer a series of question about how many elements were in each horror movie set. For example, the players were asked "how many scorpions were in the Mummy set?" |  For this game, we created a large curling game board set in a Christmas themed winter wonderland. As cool as it looks, it was about 110º in the backyard on the day we shot this and players had to wear sunscreen and sunglasses to keep from being burned from the glare. |  Contestants dressed as tortilla chips having to jump into the pools of "dip" to retrieve puzzle pieces. Yep, people actually get paid to come up with this stuff! |
 The 20' justice scale was attached to an overhead truss structure. Winch motors allowed us to raise or lower each contestant according to how many questions they got right, or wrong. Safety was a major concern having the houseguest this high in the air standing on a swinging platform. |  This is the SketchUp file I created for an Outback Steakhouse promotional spot. SketchUp is a computer modeling program that allows us to design the entire set full scale in 3D within the computer. It took two weeks and three separate designs to come up with one that Outback approved. |  Here's the design brought to life for the promotional spot. Outback was just thrilled with how it turned out. |
 Small game show set for live question and answer game. Live shows involve coming up with games that have to play out in very set amounts of time. For example, we may be asked to come up with something that determines a winner in 45 - 60 seconds. Much testing has to be done to ensure the game times out just right during the live shows. |  In this game, our construction coordinator, hand fabricated the 20' square rope spiderweb that was attached to a large motorized truss structure. Contestants hung from the underside of the web for hours while it was raised up and down and tilted side to side. As the game went on, contestants were sprayed with slime from the catwalks above the set. One of the funner parts of our jobs. |