Bailey gets real

Fenton Bailey, director of more than 100 documentaries and reality television shows including the Tori Spelling favourite Tori & Dean: Inn Love, has seen it all.

He's seen beyond the red carpet glitz of Hollywood to bring audiences the 'real lives' of some of the world's most famous faces — and also the average ones. And for Bailey reality-TV is still a winning formula.

"Technology today has made it possible for us to capture reality, and reality is strange. There's nothing more compelling than what's real; the situations and conflicts real people really find themselves in.

"I think many movies feel artificial and contrived by way of comparison."

With projects all over the world, Bailey claims there is nowhere he'd rather film right now than Dubai.

"Traditionally, America has been the place you go to make your dreams a reality. But Dubai is the land of opportunity, and the new frontier. Dubai is becoming the next New York, the new LA, the new London and the new Paris — all in one city."

But with restrictions on filming, rules and regulations about what not to wear and recent scrutiny of the excess of the expat lifestyle, how real will footage be from Dubai?

"Reality-TV can be a misleading label, because the truth is all television is some kind of mediation. In fact all media is, by definition, a mediation. And that's not a bad thing.

"Every culture is different and has its own taboos, just as every person is different and has their own boundaries. We always respect the culture and our subjects and work in a collaborative way so that our representations are real but also respectful. And it's not all fun and games," he says.

Painstaking

"Television shows, like movies, are rather painstaking things to make. The whole process can sometimes seem to resemble watching paint dry and the best part about producing a show is definitely when it's finished. There's always a point (and sometimes more than one) in any production when it feels like it's going to fall apart, and you're convinced that all that's going to be on air is a blank screen.

"We've come close. Once we were editing the final part of a show while the show itself was being broadcast, but it worked out in the end. It always does."

Having worked with celebrities including Pamela Anderson (in a reality series called Pam: Girl on the Loose), Spelling (in the series which follows the star and her husband, Dean McDermott, as they attempt to run a bed and breakfast establishment in California), Monica Lewinsky, Macaulay Culkin and Tammy Faye Bakker, who he describes as "profoundly compelling people", you'd think Bailey's ideal subject would be the latest face in Hollywood.

Think again — he'd much rather film buildings.

"I come from a family of architects, so I love buildings and find them fascinating. Alas, there aren't a lot of architectural reality shows on television.

"But if it can be done at all, I think it can be done here. Dubai, without doubt, is the most exciting architectural city. Not only in the world right now, but very possibly in the history of mankind. I truly don't believe we have ever seen anything like it. It would be so sad if all this energy and effort went unrecorded."

But Bailey also concedes celebrity television will probably always be "bread and butter" subject matter.

"One of the paradoxes about any celebrity is the more overexposed they are, the less they reveal themselves as people. We try to bring out that side and show an audience a celebrity is just a person with the same needs and vulnerabilities as the rest of us."