>>Mark Burnett: First of all, I've got to
say that as I was telling my teenagers I was
coming here to speak at Google Zeitgeist,
they were like, "Whatever."
They really couldn't care less until they
found out I was going to be hanging out with
Nick from GoPro.
That's important to teenagers.
And, yes, some of that footage was GoPro,
and we use it all the time.
It's absolutely epic.
You know, I look at that video there for a
minute and I was like, whoa, how'd this happen?
It's like the Talking Heads song Once in a
Lifetime, how'd I get here?
And I must be the least educated person in
this room by far; right?
I don't even understand why the light goes
on when you flick the switch.
I have no idea how GoPro works, but I think
I have an instinct, a consciousness of why
stories connect.
You know, to make it even more ridiculous
is how I even ended up in America.
I mean, I was in the parachute regiment in
a special forces team in Britain.
All I knew how to do was carry a gun around.
A little bit different gun than Morgan's gun,
by the way.
My gun beats your gun in that way.
But I was going to come to America, and my
original idea was I knew there were jobs in
Central America that all of the north was
sourcing foreign soldiers to go and fight
in Nicaragua.
And as I was leaving the airport at Heathrow,
my mum said to me, her only child, "Do you
think you put us through enough?
No more guns.
What are you going to do in America?"
And I lied and said it was going to be a security
job.
I lied.
I knew I was going to meet someone and try
to get this job in Central America.
And she looked me in the eye and said, "Promise
me, no more guns."
And I got on this Pan Am flight in the last
row of coach thinking what the fuck am I going
to do in America?
I've got $200, no work visa, and I arrived.
I knew one friend who was working as a chauffeur
in Beverly Hills.
This guy I've known since I was seven years
of age.
I called him from LAX.
Couldn't even figure out how the pay phone
worked.
I'd never seen an American pay phone.
And I reached him and he said, "Where are
you calling from?
The Middle East?
Where are you calling from?"
I said, "No, no.
I am in L.A. I need somewhere to stay.
I need somewhere to stay.
I've got to find a job."
He said, "You're lucky.
The people I work for are out of town.
I'll pick you up.
Just wait there."
And Nick shows up 45 minutes later, LAX, in
a brand-new Lamborghini.
I'm like, fuck, America is good!
[ Laughter ]
Went back to his house and I said, "Dude,
I can't do what I was going to do."
I couldn't even really explain to him what
I was going to do.
I said, "I've got to find a job."
He said, "Get a job like this, like chauffeur."
I said, "How am I going to find that?"
He said, "Look in the newspaper."
I looked in the L.A. Times and there were
no chauffeur jobs.
There was one job that had all the attributes
I wanted, which is like live in, car, $125
a week.
There was only one catch.
It said child care.
And I said -- Nick said, "That's ridiculous.
I mean, you're a commando.
You're not going to get a job as a nanny like
Mary Poppins."
I said, "Dude, desperate times."
I called up to 624 North Beverly Drive in
Beverly Hills and got myself an interview
that night.
I arrived at 2:00 in the afternoon at LAX
with no work visa or nothing.
At 6:00 I was in Beverly Hills interviewing
to be a nanny.
[ Laughter ]
And this gruff guy like in his fifties with
his younger wife --
[ Laughter ]
And all these Central American women in uniforms
are up for the job.
And I was thinking to myself, "Boy, they must
be really glad I'm not going to take the original
job."
Anyway, this guy calls me, and I walked into
this enormous living room the size of this
with these paintings on the wall, nothing
like I'd ever seen in my life, and this guy
is like, "Who are you?
What are you here for?"
I said, "I'm Mark.
I'm here for the child-care job."
He said, "Child care?
I have a three-year-old with her, a 17-year-old
and 19-year-old from a previous marriage.
How old are you?"
I said, "22."
He said, "Like I need a 22-year-old, another
kid?
I want someone to take care of the kids."
And his wife was like, "Calm down, calm down.
Let's be courteous."
"Where are you from, Mark?"
I said, "London, ma'am."
"Oh, London.
We love London."
The husband looks at her like she has three
heads, and he said, "I'll take over."
He said, "We're a wealthy family, you can
see that, and there's a reason for that.
This is not just child care.
Can you clean, Mark?"
I said, "Sir, I just left five years in a
British army unit.
They came around with a white glove to check
my locker.
Can I clean?
I'm a great cleaner."
And his wife says, "See?"
[ Laughter ]
Then he says, you know, "Laundry."
I'm like, "Once again, laundry, have you seen
the way the British army dress?
I could literally iron your shirt with a crease
so sharp you could shave with it, sir.
But then he got me.
"Can you cook, Mark?"
I said, "Sir, I'm British.
My mum can't even cook."
[ Laughter ]
I walked outside.
This is completely true.
Nick is sitting in the Lamborghini, which
still is a surreal experience; right?
I had a bus pass back in England.
I am in a Lamborghini.
And Nick said, "You get the job?"
I said, "No, no, no.
The cute young wife would have definitely
given me the job.
It was the older husband.
He was not going to have anything of me moving
into that house."
He said, "Okay.
Let's go and get a beer."
But later that night at 10:00, Pat, the woman,
called the number I'd left where Nick's house
was and said, "Can you start tomorrow at 10:00
a.m?"
Day two in America, I became a nanny and my
first job was empty a dishwasher.
Now, again, I'd never seen a dishwasher except
from my mum.
Every cabinet was exactly the same.
It took me ages to even find the dishwasher.
But that was October the 18th,1982, I started,
which makes it even more ridiculous I've got
all these shows.
And it's true, it's true, especially in the
last year, a lot of number ones.
I actually don't really know what I'm doing
that much, but I do have instinct.
I think, you know, everyone obviously here
has consciousness and instinct, but consciousness
is the one thing science obviously can't explain.
Can't explain light, and it can't explain
consciousness like the two things that have
no mass.
Can't explain.
But I also am probably so dumb, I don't actually
understand how the systems work to get the
stuff on YouTube or how Google operates.
But I do know all the geniuses that do that
is worth nothing without content.
So it creates some value that we both need
each other, obviously, because if people can't
create good stories, then certainly the pipes
that people are creating in this room are
of absolutely no value, because you aren't
going to watch a blank screen.
And people get to choose whatever they want
to watch.
It needs to be good.
You know, openness is something that America
is so brilliant.
Imagine going from a nanny knowing nothing.
I learned so much, by the way.
One thing I learned in that nanny job, even
though they were really wealthy people, I
knew think weren't really any smarter than
me in terms of instinct.
They were educationally smarter but in terms
of instinct they weren't that smarter.
They taught me a lot of things about pricing.
One day in that nanny job, Irv, a really rough
guy I worked for, really rough on me, he came
in one day, and it was a Friday, and he said,
"In that fridge, how much that milk cost?"
Now, I'm the one doing the grocery shopping.
I said, "I don't know, sir."
How much these tomatoes cost?
"I don't know."
He said, "Do you not understand the value
of knowing pricing?
Meet me Sunday morning in the kitchen and
we're going shopping."
That was my day off, on a Sunday.
I'm like, fuck.
I come in and he's brought in all these coupons
he's cut out of the L.A. Times and takes me
on a shopping trip to Gelson's, where his
wife had been sending me to buy the groceries,
and then took me down to a cheaper shop, Alpha
Beta, to compare the milk and the tomatoes
and all the pricing and the value that we
saved $36 with these coupons, and this guy's
worth about a billion dollars, that he spent
hours cutting out.
But I did learn so much from that in America,
of knowing the value of pricing and what value
means.
And the other big thing for America, growing
up as a Brit, I hung out with a lot of Brits,
drinking too much beer, watching too much
soccer at 4:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning.
But one thing I really gained, as well, of
Brits and Americans, if you are in, like,
a party and we're all drinking beer and someone
says -- half Americans and half Brits, and
someone says, "Hey, there's a 17-foot purple
giraffe in the backyard," all the Americans
get up and walk to the window to look for
this purple giraffe; right?
Shamelessly.
The Brits all sit there and drink beer and
go, "Fucking stupid Americans.
Obviously there's not a giraffe."
I go look out the window because the one moral
there is the Brits don't get up because they
don't want to look stupid.
The Brits just don't want to look stupid.
They'd rather not see that purple giraffe.
But Americans will ever never not see the
purple giraffe.
That's why I'm so proud to be American because
I will always look out that window.
I don't care if I look stupid because if I
didn't want to look stupid, I wouldn't make
so many shows; right?
[ Laughter ]
I mean, my wife always says if people always
talk about how many hit shows I've have made
and created.
They don't talk about the other 30 that were
shits.
But you've got to be willing to fail.
And in what we do for a living, it's like
one massive rejection, going and pitching
shows and people saying no all the time, even
to me.
Honestly, people think it's easy but you go
and pitch shows, there are certain truths
that work.
And if you look at -- these are things I've
not really said that publicly before, but,
you know, I do think of the emotional connection
that I am responsible for which is through
this little box; right?
I don't have any idea how it works, called
a TV or a flat thing on the wall these days
that we're sending into someone's living room.
So as making TV more than motion pictures,
like you'll speak to Brian Grazer, a good
friend of mine, in a moment, one of the best
motion picture producers on the planet earth
ever, and people go into theaters and watch
that.
But it's only invading your house when it's
on television.
So it's a responsibility of invading someone's
house.
Think about Survivor.
People think, okay, just a show on an island,
which by the way, last year in its 26th season
Survivor beat American Idol in both total
viewers and young viewers off the demo, and
that's all that story-telling.
You know, people always ask me, "Are you going
to change Survivor this year?
Are you going to change The Voice this year?"
Why would I change drastically something that's
really, really working?
People feel the need to always tinker with
and change what's working.
It goes back to me coming to America.
I remember my mother, who has since died,
and I think that there was a mailbox on Beverly
Drive in Beverly Hills.
I remember that mailbox, sending her letters
and receiving letters would come in, and they
were handwritten letters.
And there's always something comforting of
knowing people tend to use the same stationery
over and over, same handwriting, the same
stamp and the postmark.
And there's something anchoring and comforting.
The only thing that's different, right, is
when you open it, what's written inside.
And I approach my shows in that way.
The reason I don't make massive changes on
my hit shows, people are expecting this anchoring
feeling, emotional connection, when they turn
on Survivor or The Voice or Shark Tank or
The Apprentice or Fifth Grader.
They are expecting an emotionally anchoring
familiar experience.
It's like the envelope; right?
When the envelope comes, still nice to get
handwritten notes.
All of you Googley people still get to write
handwritten notes.
But when you open it, there's a fresh letter
inside.
So I make slight changes in my show every
season, but I don't change the envelope ever.
Nothing about Survivor on a story-telling
level -- I'm sure everyone in here knows about
Joseph Campbell and Monomyth, and if you don't,
you really need to read "Hero with a Thousand
Faces" for sure.
Seriously, in terms of knowing story and not
know this work, you won't -- it's a thing
that will hold you back terribly.
But one thing about that is death is rebirth.
So if you look at how I took Joseph Campbell-esque
feel into Survivor, think of Survivor, Survivor
is a think where we throw 16 people on an
island who has never met before, they have
to work together, otherwise they will starve
and frees and get too many bug bites and it's
an awful experience.
But even working together they have to get
rid of someone every week; right?
And the whole end game is the very people
you've gotten rid of are the very people who
will grant you, if you are part of the final
two, a million dollars.
So the people that you dumped or fired or
executed, however you want to look at it,
are coming back to give you the gift of a
million dollars.
So if you fuck people over too badly in the
game, you are never ever going to get that
million dollars in Survivor, is the moral
there.
But a deeper sense is how do you get rid of
people?
So I decided that most sacrifices take place
at night throughout history.
And there's reasons that your subconscious,
your awareness is lowered and you're more
open and fearful in dimly lit rooms.
If it's a very brightly lit room, it's harder
to control people.
So if you think of many institutions that
do things in dimly lit rooms, it's because
you're controlling people more because their
resistance is down in a dimly lit room.
I knew tribal council had to be at night.
I knew that I only wanted the feeling of firelight.
So when these Hollywood genius guys lighting
guys lit it, I felt like I was on Yankee stadium
and I was like, "No, no, no.
Turn the lights off."
Then there's not enough lights for the cameras.
And I said, "Turn the lights around and let's
bounce the lights off trees so there is just
ambient light.
I want everything to feel like fire."
Because the orange firelight is a warm color.
It's a feeling of life.
So they go into tribal council.
It's lit by firelight.
It feels warm.
It's life because the tribe is still alive.
Someone is then brutally gotten rid of.
It's nearly always a blind side because it's
hard to trust people in a game like this.
And then someone will be voted out and Jeff
Probst will say, "The tribe has spoken."
We'll snuff out their flame, and Jeff will
immediately say, "It's time for you to go."
Most people don't have the courage in that
situation to turn around and say, "Wait a
minute.
I just want to say goodbye" or "say fuck you
to the people who got rid of me."
They don't do any of that.
They just freeze.
It's time for you to go, and they will naturally
leave because it's in low light, they are
in a vulnerable situation, and they will do
what told they're told 99 times out of a hundred.
Then immediately, though, my music bed changes
to funeralistic.
And my lighting, as the camera shifts around,
is cobalt blue.
And we never obviously mention this in the
audience stuff.
It's just people feel what I'm saying, because
blue is a death color, and someone has basically
been executed.
They have been voted out, but in historical
terms, they have been killed.
And they're sent away, and they walk into
the forest into a blue light until they disappear,
which is basically death.
And then we don't say anything.
And then just cut to shots of people, because
even the worst person is likely to feel slightly
bad that at causing that death of someone
else even if it's in this metaphorical way
on the show.
The camera then comes back to the tribal council,
and as the camera comes back we now pick orange
up again and the music shifts back to nonfuneralistic.
And this is the key thing of why Survivor
works and works and keeps on working.
Jeff will always give a parable then.
Jeff will always mention what just happened,
what have you learned, and then the most important
part of it.
Well, I'll see you tomorrow.
Because that tells them, the tribe, while
changed and has lost someone, it there live
on.
And there will be life tomorrow and it will
be living anew and will start again.
And it's that -- That is a key sense of why
people are with Survivor.
That's why the audiences have never left.
We moved from Thursdays to Wednesdays, didn't
lose any audience.
Last year crushed American Idol.
There's a reason why shows -- you look at
The Voice.
What was it with The Voice?
My kids said to me, "Dad, you're insane.
Who needs another singing show?
We have American Idol.
We have X Factor.
This is mental.
No one is going to watch another singing show
on an already crowded lineup.
And, anyway, I thought, Dad, you said that
you were into kindness and you want to do
the raising up and spread light, consciousness
and light."
I said, "I do.
All these shows are humiliation shows."
American Idol and X Factor, their whole shtick
is to bring on a deliberately bad singer who
thinks they -- are deluded and rent them a
new one to make them look bad for TV.
I said, "No, we're not doing that.
On The Voice, everything will be uplifting."
So my kids are smart and they have been in
this business for a long time, and they said,
"What's the hook?"
Always needs to be a hook.
Think about the hook on The Voices.
Everybody likes the little guy to rise up.
So what The Voice has, because it's very nature,
the blind auditions, four superstar singers
who have always had, since they have been
stars, things easy; right?
They don't have to ask for anything.
Everyone brings them everything.
They get every deal they want.
They are superstar, multi-multi-millionaire
singers.
In this game, once they press their buttons
and they've turn around more than one, the
power shifts to the little guy.
And now you see multi-millionaire superstars
who are now fighting and begging an unknown
to join their team.
And that's the unspoken consciousness of why
America likes The Voice.
We all want to see the little guy succeed.
And we're really sick of seeing the likes
of Simon Cowell criticize little people.
We just are.
And if you move on in the last year, something
like "The Bible," "The Bible" was a huge undertaking.
It took four years and many people told me
that's career ending.
"A couple of reasons, Mark," all these so-called
conventional wisdom smart people.
That, first of all, no one cares about religion,
really.
You know, it's just nutty people in churches.
On TV, no way it's going to work.
And secondly, it's a subject that people don't
want to talk about, and if you get it wrong
in any way, your career's going to be over.
You know, I was so strong in my instincts
to bring the Bible to television, I felt that
-- personally I feel the Bible should be taught
in public schools.
Not as a religion.
As a literature document.
You know, it's obviously more important to
our storytelling, the Bible -- you know, from
Genesis through Revelation -- for storytellers,
the intrinsic stories, than anything.
Shakespeare quoted directly from the Bible
1200 times.
You've all read obviously "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
A hundred direct quotes from the Bible in
there.
You look at some of the language we have,
the first time the words "white as snow" was
ever said was in Daniel in the Bible.
"The writing's on the wall."
You know, I can go on and give you a hundred
quotes from the Bible that are in everyday
language.
But I took it on.
But there's something -- why did the Bible
do so well?
In America, a hundred million viewers, and
add another hundred million viewers globally,
and we're only about 20% of the way distributing
it right now.
Number one selling DVD in the history of television
DVDs.
Because I approached it so lovingly, authentically,
in an uplifting way.
Revelation -- Sorry.
Genesis through Revelation I believe is a
story of God's love for all of us and not
giving up on us, so I approached the storytelling
in that way.
Not as a threatening story, but as an uplifting
story.
And so I did -- which it's not been mentioned
that much but it's been online and people
have noticed it, that I had people look at
the whole Bible who were not -- didn't have
a religious feeling, hadn't been religiously
trained, people who went to Oxford and Cambridge.
My whole team was in Britain.
And just said, "Just look at this objectively.
What is going on here?
What is this book saying?
So how do I make 10 hours?"
And it came back over and over: This is a
prophecy fulfilled.
This is a prophecy book.
And I thoroughly believe in the Bible, so
I'm not saying anything sacrilegious.
Like the way that "Lord of the Rings" is a
prophecy book.
The Bible is -- obviously, "Lord of the Rings"
wouldn't have been created without the Bible.
There wouldn't have been "Lord of the Rings"
without the bible, obviously.
There wouldn't been "The Matrix" without the
Bible.
But it's a prophecy fulfilled.
So Jesus was hidden in the Old Testament and
revealed in the new, so therefore, I had a
dilemma.
I knew I had to have a scene with the voice
in the burning bush and I had to have a scene
when God meets Abraham.
And therefore, if you took this book, there's
only one person I could show as God.
It would be Jesus.
Very, very controversial.
I did that, took off like wildfire because
the authentic opening of Genesis showed that
when he comes to meet with Abraham, there's
two angels -- there's the Lord and two angels,
and I showed that as Jesus, which had never
ever been done before.
But instinctively I felt the authentic storytelling
had to be correct.
And living authentically and knowing that
you should never overthink things, just take
things as they are and tell them has paid
off for me in the way of "Survivor," "The
Voice."
Like "Fifth Grader."
Why did "Fifth Grader" work?
Because everyone here who's got kids knows
that when the kids are 10 years of age, you
cannot do their homework.
You just can't.
You've forgotten those basic things.
You may be geniuses at work at great big companies
but you can't do your 10-year-old's homework
anymore.
And a show like "Fifth Grader" showed that
the questions were all fifth grade and below,
and bringing in really smart UCLA law school
grads who couldn't answer fifth grade stuff
while the kids could raised up the kids and
made nice fun of the adults in a nice loving
way.
And that show went to 58 countries.
But it's going with small ideas but being
authentic and loving about how -- and I know
my time's up.
I could tell you so much more about how I
think.
But as this is about storytelling, I would
say the biggest thing I can offer lovingly
to all of you today from storytelling, you
really should read and really think about
Joseph Campbell and "Hero with a Thousand
Faces," because if you want to try to tell
stories, it has to be done instinctively and
there isn't actually -- even if you follow
the formulas, that doesn't mean you're going
to have a hit.
Otherwise every movie Brian Grazer did would
be a hit if it was that easy.
It's not that easy.
So there's got to be an authentic storytelling
feeling to it, but there are certain signposts
and Joseph Campbell, I'd say, is -- in terms
of storytelling structure -- the most important
signpost.
Hey, thanks for listening.
[ Applause ]
