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Chasing UFOs - National Geographic

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I bought Out of the Blue that Fox did as a prequel to I Know What I Saw. I really enjoyed it. I did watch the premier episode of Chasing UFO's and although some of it bordered on compelling most of it was over acting and far too many over-dramatic close ups and profiles of people. You could tell they were trying so hard to be so serious when really it was just a bunch of people who saw something they may not have been able to immediately explain and were just standing around talking about it. The producers were trying to give you a sense that these people saw these UFO's and it changed them in dramatic and emotional ways. I didn't really buy that at at.

As was pointed out in this thread a few times this is just a TV show and it does not reflect what could really be going on in our skies. The seriously unfortunate aspect is, as many have indicated, shows like Chasing UFO's provide the public's over-all view of how people address and investigate this subject matter. It ends up tainting the public's image (more so, perhaps than it already is) or at best providing an unrealistic heroic quality to the field of study. It would stand to reason, however, that if you made a UFO investigation show that would appeal to the scientifically inclined and, as some here may indicate, would be a "perfect" UFO show, it wouldn't get the ratings, would bore the heads off the general public, and would be canceled rather quickly due to no watchers.
 
Sean Elifritz said:
Yeah, I recognized him the second time I watched it. I don't blame him. If you want to do a show about UFOs or the paranormal nowadays producers demand that it be ridiculous. But my goodness, that trailer takes the cake. It looks like a video game.
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Dear God....I actually watched the first episode (dvr'd) before I read this thread. I am really sorry I did as it was without doubt one of the largest wastes of time I think I have ever utilized on this subject next to perhaps the documentary ABC had on the Mayan Calendar nonsense.

Reality TV is bad enough as it is without the need to ad UFOLOGY to it. I wonder if they might have Linda Moulten Howe speak about her interaction with the Phallus of the Giant statue she found recently....without a mouth....a definite alien likeness.
 
Well, I've seen it now and it certainly ain't all that great. On the plus side the woman in it is presented in a more realistic, earthy way much of the time than the hotty-totty thing she had going on in the trailer. And I thought the former PO in ep 2 talking about a 1978 CE2 came across as credible. Beyond that... well... it could have been worse I suppose.

This seems to be the only kind of show we're allowed to get post-Ghost Hunters. GH ruined everything because now producers want "night investigations", flashlights, night-vision, EMF detectors, yadda yadda yadda, all the time even if it makes no sense. That stuff might or might not be appropriate for investigating haunted houses since in theory a haunted house is haunted all the time. But what good does it do to run around Stephenville in the dark looking for UFOs when the sightings that brought you there happened 4 years ago? I still think the best way to present UFO investigations in a reality-show kind of way is the way UFOs Over Earth did it. The ghost hunting way is silly for UFOs.

But what's the point in blaming Fox? I doubt this is the way he'd present it if he had creative control.
 
If he had the creative control, but he still agreed to do it, creative control or not - and it turned out quite silly for him. All the forced drama and stunts you get on TV in the end turn out like stupid entertainment. Emphasis on stupid.
Even more than that, if we keep getting supposedly serious researchers trying to make a quick buck with reality stunts like this, the whole field is going to break the barrier of the amount of shit we can accommodate.

Stuff like I Know What I Saw is good, but this Big Brother/Lawman meets UFOs is total garbage. I'm now totally afraid of seeing Steven Seagal chasing some Greys around. How much more embarrassing can the public view on UFOs become?

I just hope James Fox can use the money he gets from this to do some good dox and research...
 
lancemoody said:
"I Know What I Saw" begins with his account of the Phoenix lights. This case has had problems from the beginning and many folks now recognize that it almost certainly was completely prosaic. Fox doesn't even consider any of the virtually ironclad disconfirmations of what some of the witnesses claim.
Lance
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Excellent point Lance and the very reason why so many of these shows have devolved to the sad level of "reality" programing. If you cannot share with the audience the pros and cons of a theory or explanation, then you must have something for those who are looking for a more base "controversy" to tune in. It's like covering over the mechanics of a video game with a great deal of eye candy and bells and whistles. The more you throw in the time it takes to realize you just lost 60 bucks buying the front cover of the box, you begin to understand why programming is so very important. Unfortunately the audiences of this world don't go that far. They see the bells and whistles, play the game for a little while, then put it down for the next one....and on and on.
 
Why can't these folks in TV land talk to people like Gene , Chris, Nick , Richard and Don instead about Unidentified Flying Objects phenomena ? This just gives the tin foil hat believers more ammo!

Anyway back to more important TV show Aussies verse the Poms in the one day cricket . Go get them Aussies:)
 
PararealitySaint said:
Excellent point Lance and the very reason why so many of these shows have devolved to the sad level of "reality" programing. If you cannot share with the audience the pros and cons of a theory or explanation, then you must have something for those who are looking for a more base "controversy" to tune in. It's like covering over the mechanics of a video game with a great deal of eye candy and bells and whistles. The more you throw in the time it takes to realize you just lost 60 bucks buying the front cover of the box, you begin to understand why programming is so very important. Unfortunately the audiences of this world don't go that far. They see the bells and whistles, play the game for a little while, then put it down for the next one....and on and on.
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To get a TV show on the air is a miracle, and in doing that, you have to deliver a product that the network regards as salable to advertisers and entertaining enough to attract and keep an audience with the right demographics. And demographics are crucial. Take the the TV procedural, "Unforgettable," on CBS, about a detective, portrayed by Poppy Montgomery ("Without a Trace"), who has the ability to remember everything. There were more than 12 million viewers every week, which is extremely high. Because the show didn't attract high enough numbers with the right age groups, despite the large total audience, CBS cancelled it; they relented and will schedule a second season as a 13-week summer replacement in the summer of 2013. But that development is pretty much a miracle in the entertainment industry.

So, even if a show gets on the schedule, there are no guarantees of success. You and I might chafe at the sacrifices that have to be made, but the key to "Chasing UFOs" is whether the facts they present are honestly and accurately presented, shorn of the flourishes and excesses of commercial reality TV. It's not a show designed for us, but for the general public, most of whom could care less about UFO sightings.
 
I haven't seen the show yet, but I find it really hard to believe that anything could be as awful as Finding Bigfoot. I watched two episodes of that show and the only reason I watched the second was because they were doing their so called investigation in my home state of Ohio. I swear every single time one of the idiots on that show heard some animal noise in woods at night and immediately jumped to the conclusion that "It's a squatch maaaaaaaan!" I had to cringe. Shows like that are part of the reason that the vast majority of people don't take the subject of the paranormal seriously.
 
lancemoody said:
Take a look and see what you think.

These idiots scream "What the Hell was That?" several times per show.

Their way of finding UFO's is to do a ground survey (using metal detectors!) even on cases which were solely seen in the sky, like Stephensville. And when do they do the surveys? At night, of course. This is not just on one occasion, either. Both shows so far did the same thing.

Lance
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I will eventually, I'm not a big TV person, I prefer to spend my nights reading. I'll echo the sentiments of another poster on here and say I only turn my TV on to fire up my Xbox. That being said the situation that you've presented does sound pretty effing ridiculous. Why in the hell would they do that at night? Even UFO Hunters didn't go for sensationalistic crap like that when it came to their investigations, then again, they got plenty of sensationalism just by having Bill Birnes involved. However, they did have a few interesting episodes where they destroyed some of the debunkers ridiculous claims on classic cases like the Aurora, Texas airship crash and the Rex Heflin photographs. I know it doesn't have anything to do with this particular show but it does go to show that even in a pile of elephant shit you can still find a few gems. Hopefully Chasing UFO's will have a few as well.
 
Just broke down and started watching and even though I'm only 15 minutes into it, I already want to turn it off. They've got this lady who wants to remain anonymous (but she's on television) and I feel like they're feeding her paranoid delusions. Let's be reasonable here, is the government f'd up? Yes. Do I think they know at least a little more about UFO's than they're telling us? You bet. Do I think they have the time, resources or inclination to follow every idiot who posts a video of some lights in the distance? F no. I mean let's face it, this video is no better than 1000's of other "lights in the distance" UFO videos available from a quick scan of Youtube. I doubt it's going to lead us to a better understanding of the phenomenon, we've all seen these kinds of videos 100's of times. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, would bother to follow this lady over this trivial video. Yet nobody, not even the skeptic, bothers to bring this up. She says "I'm not really paranoid, it's the truth (referring to being under surveillance) I mean c'mon.... I know that you have to make it interesting to the people out there who aren't already interested in UFO's but this just feeds into the stereotype that everyone interested in this subject is batshit crazy.
 
Well, I have watched the first two episodes. I do have a few thoughts/observations:

1. Fox's "Out of the Blue" is perhaps the best UFO documentary I've ever seen. "I Know What I Saw" was also quite good, though I was turned off by the fact that it had totally lost the indie look that Out of the Blue had and looked like something that was OBVIOUSLY produced for the History Channel.

2. Episode 1 was better than episode 2. The Stephenville episode had some interesting eye-witness testimony, but episode 2, "Dirty Secrets," had little redeemable value. I'm just not buying their investigations when they actually go out into the field to "chase UFOs."

3. To be honest, I'm not sure how much hope I have for this show, but I am willing to stay open-minded. It may be that some episodes are very good because there's a lot of background info to present, while others are not so good, because they have to produce a lot of filler, i.e. them hanging out at night staring at the sky.

4. This show seems to be a poor man's UFO Hunters. I understand the problems that people had with that show. I've had on many occasions heard about Chris's comments being taken out of context and we all know that Bill Birnes is sort of looney. But I will be unrepentant in saying that I actually LIKED that show. I thought it was generally well-done and was sad when it was taken off the air. Some episodes were better than others, but the episodes that were good were really good, in my opinion. The Stephenville and "Code Red" episodes come to mind as being really solid.

5. Erin Ryder is cute, but she isn't really all that.
 
I'm having a hard time buying the field investigations as well, and they definitely need to get rid of that face camera crap. I'm looking forward to the episode this Friday though, they're looking into the Romanek case. I'll be the first to admit that his alien in the window video looks fake as hell, and his whole "golly gee whiz, I'm just the lovable dummy who has all these strange experiences" thing is tired. I am interested in the physics equations side of it though, and he seems to have convinced some pretty smart people that he couldn't have come up with them on his own. So it'll be interesting to watch, especially since they seem to have caught another "grey" looking in Stan's window on the show, so if it's a puppet or some type of hoax I'm hoping they blow the lid off of it.
 
I finally watched the first show. At one point I turned to my wife and said, "What does this have to do with UFOs?" There was just so much poorly executed contrived drama that had nothing to do with anything. Repelling in the dark is just one example.

However, it also caused me to ask the question, "If I had their budget what would I do?" Would it be something similar? I would be looking for good reports and investigating them. I would stake out hotspots. I would interview folks who have reported seeing UFOs. Finding reports worthy of field investigation would be a pretty big undertaking in itself. I certainly wouldn't waste my time on areas or reports around known military bases or airports though and I wouldn't fill the show with Ghost Hunter like gags. I would "fluff" it up with bits of UFO history, a skeptic vs. believer (need a better term) segment, and interviews with investigators.

I think Fox is a better producer than the ones putting on the show. I have a feeling that the Ghost Busters like feel of the show wouldn't be there if he had some control over it but I'm just guessing. I wish those guys luck with show but I'm pretty sure unless some radical evolution occurs over the next few episodes it won't be around for long.
 
To be honest, I think the best type of UFO show could be done would be one that attempts to examine the social phenomenon associated with UFOs rather than UFOs themselves. For one thing, there would actually be something there to study. You would have a selection of modern material stretching back for several decades to draw from along with what is happening on the Internet.

After all this time the question of whether UFOs are real or not isn't going to treated or answered to everyone's satisfaction by a television show, but the subject can still be an entertaining and educational vehicle for human interest stories, pop culture, and if you tried hard enough some science. It would all be in the approach.
 
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