Crime and Punishment - the ultimate reality show

By FIONA RAE

I like Law and Order," a lawyer friend once told me. "There's the law," he said. "And there's the order."

Quite so. And the newest show from the Law and Order franchise has plenty for a lawyer to get excited about. There's the crime — and there's the punishment. Only this time, the drama in the courtroom is very real and very high-stakes.

Crime and Punishment is the brainchild of two-time Oscar winner Bill Guttentag, a documentary-maker of long standing who co-directed the extraordinary Twin Towers, which screened here this year.

As a fan of Law and Order, Guttentag says the idea with Crime and Punishment was to make a real-life version of that show. On the line from the United States along with producer Kate Adler, Guttentag explains that they try to infuse the show with the same sort of drama that Law and Order has. He describes it as a real reality show.

"We like to say there's not a lot of reality in reality TV," he says. "A former district attorney of LA called us the ultimate reality show. He said that you don't get voted off the island if you get found guilty, you get sent to the joint."

"We'd like to think that people are aware there are real consequences," says Adler. "It's not just that someone gets voted off the island and they may not win a million dollars."

There certainly are consequences. In last week's episode, Marshall Jones, described as a "selfish little punk" by the judge, was found guilty of the kidnap and murder of his 4-month-old son and sentenced to life without parole.

Cameras follow San Diego County prosecutors as they work on cases, beseech juries, discuss strategy with their colleagues and, like an episode of Law and Order, get the bad guys. The natural drama of the courtroom and the fact that a criminal of the most heinous kind is sitting next to their lawyer makes for intense viewing.

"There's a lot of power that you get on a witness stand that you can never get in a fictional world," says Guttentag. "A lot of really raw emotion. There are other cases that are coming up which really eat at you — they're tough. Sometimes the evil that people do to each other can be brutal, but I think that's what gives it its weight."

The most nerve-racking moments are waiting for the jury's decision. The Jones decision took four days — enough to give the prosecutors an ulcer.

"Every defence attorney and prosecutor will talk about their heart pounding," says Guttentag. "Just incredibly anxious to see what is the jury's verdict, because if they find the defendant guilty, he goes to jail for perhaps the rest of his life; if he's found innocent he goes out the back of the courtroom door a free person.

"What we try to do is make an audience feel that same sense of drama, that same lump in your throat — what's going to happen?"

In New Zealand, a voluntary code of conduct covering filming in court doesn't allow cameras to move around. Witnesses can ask for protection against identification and no members of the jury or the public can be filmed.

Jurors in California cannot be filmed either, but if you were wondering how the show manages that cinema-verite style with three cameras in the courtroom getting close-ups of the attorneys, the accused and the judge, it's all thanks to microwave ovens. Or what look like microwave ovens that house remote-controlled cameras.

"The camera is panning and tilting and everything else but you can't see it tilting because there's semi-opaque glass in front of it," explains Guttentag. "And judges quite like this because it gives them the advantages of cameras in the courtroom which records the event, but few of the disadvantages, meaning camera operators and technicians et cetera."

The show is also a triumph of editing: to get that "dramamentary" feel, the supervising editor was previously on The West Wing, while others came from a documentary background.

And they have plenty to work with: nearly 4000 hours of digital footage was shot to produce 13 hours of television for the first series. That's around 300 hours an hour that you see on screen. It's a feat that wouldn't be practicable without the new digital technology — in case you're geekily interested, the show has three terabytes of memory available for editing. The movie Titanic had about two-and-a-half, points out Guttentag.

For Guttentag and Adler, Crime and Punishment is a question of their First Amendment Rights, which enshrine freedom of the press. Before each trial they have to argue their right to be there, and judges usually agree. They believe in the jury system.

"I think that [jury duty] and casting a vote are our two greatest duties and privileges," says Adler, although she and Guttentag have been turned down for jury duty because they work on the show.

"They ask you if you are acquainted with anyone in law enforcement," says Adler, "and I had to rattle off several hundred people."

In addition, Helplines in the US report a big leap in calls after the show puts phone numbers on screen (TV3 has no plans to do the same here). Victims of crimes and their families often decide to participate for selfless reasons, says Adler.

"A lot of them felt strongly that maybe if they shared their experience they could perhaps spare someone the same pain."


Crime and Punishment, TV3, 9.30pm Friday