Reality Show Cameramen Describe The Wildest Things They’ve Seen Behind The Scenes

From Alloy, quoting Redditor opticalsk:

"Every shoot, I would want to call CPS. Filthy houses (dog poop on the floor, bloody tampons sitting in a corner for months, weeks old food everywhere, etc.). One of the worst is Leah, filthiest person I've met. When feeding her twins, she would spill a bunch of cheese puffs on the nasty carpet and the girls would crawl around and suck up the cheese puffs, no hands involved."

From Redditor csbaron:

"The one that pops in my mind is filming some 'land boating' at a meth compound in the deep South. Snorting pills on the sidewalk through a tampon was a bit crazy. Going waist deep in an alligator-filled swamp to follow a crack addict also enters my mind."

From Redditor topshotcamera:

"[Host] Colby once freaked out at a female assistant, who coughed during a shoot... The audio guys were trying to tell him [it] happened when no one was talking, so it [was] no issue to edit out. So it turned on him, because his freak out actually was what ruined the shoot. He turned and said, 'Even if I am wrong, I am still right. You are fired, NO ONE GIVE HER A RIDE BACK OR OUT OF HERE!' She laughed at him and said, 'Good idea to freak out at someone over a cough, considering I am the one who texts your girlfriends back for you. Oh, and I have my own car.' She came back a half hour later to give him his phone, which she factory reset."

From Redditor GavinThurston:

"The most amazing thing I witnessed looking through the camera viewfinder but didn't manage to capture was a female Gorilla feeding. She stopped to catch a butterfly in her hand and held it up briefly to her eye to see what it was. She then almost seemed to raise her eyebrows in recognition before releasing it and watching it fly away. As a cameraman, there are many things I witness but fail to capture on video. If you [are] impressed by what you see on TV, there is way more out there to see and witness!"

From Redditor Anon930:

"[The worst was] pulling out old appliances like grills and fridges, seeing old, rotted raw chicken and mice that died in the hardened grease sludge underneath."

From Redditor csbaron:

"Fights can be awkward, but most of the time, I just hope that they don't escalate to the point where I have to put the camera down. The hardest one for me was when the subject was going after her mom and the mom started calling out for me to help her, that hurts."