page_title: The Real World: New York
section_title: Production history
hierarchical_section_title: The Real World: New York / Production history
caption_attribution_description: English: 565 Broadway, at the corner of Prince Street in Manhattan’s SoHo district, where The Real World: New York was filmed in 1992.
context_page_description: The Real World is the first season of MTV's reality television series The Real World, which focuses on a group of diverse strangers living together for several months as cameras follow their lives and interpersonal relationships. It was created by producers Mary-Ellis Bunim and Jonathan Murray.
  The cast consisted of seven people, ranging in age from 19 to 26, most of whom were already living in New York City when the series taped. The cast was filmed living in a SoHo loft from February 16 to May 18, 1992, The series premiered May 21 of that year. This is the first of three seasons to be filmed in New York City. In 2001, the show returned to the city in its tenth season, and again in 2008 for its twenty-first season, set in the borough of Brooklyn.
  As the first season of one of the first series in what is now considered the reality television genre, The Real World: New York is sometimes credited with pioneering some of the conventions of the genre, including bringing together a group of participants who had not previously met, and the use of "confessional" interviews with participants to double as the show's narration.
context_section_description: The Real World was originally inspired by the popularity of youth-oriented shows of the 1990s like Beverly Hills 90210. Bunim and Murray initially considered developing a scripted series in a similar vein, but quickly decided that the cost of paying writers, actors, costume designers, and make-up artists was too high. Bunim and Murray decided against this idea, and at the last minute, pulled the concept (and the cast) before it became the first season of the show. Tracy Grandstaff, one of the original seven picked for what has come to be known as "Season 0", went on to minor fame as the voice of the animated Beavis and Butt-head character Daria Morgendorffer, who eventually got her own spinoff, Daria. Dutch TV producer Erik Latour claims that the ideas for The Real World were directly derived from his television show Nummer 28, which aired in 1991 on Dutch television. Bunim/Murray decided upon the cheaper idea of casting a bunch of "regular people" to live in an apartment and taping their day-to-day lives, believing seven diverse people would have enough of a basis upon which to interact without scripts. The production cast seven cast members from 500 applicants, paying them $2,600 for their time on the show.
  The production discovered a nine-story, ten-unit residential co-op building at 565 Broadway, at the corner of Prince Street, in Manhattan's SoHo district, after much searching, and converted the massive, 4000-square-foot duplex to be the residence and filming location. Walls separating two adjacent apartments on the second and third floors were removed in order to form a single 4,000-square-foot (370 m²), four bedroom residence, and were renovated for the filming of the series. Production personnel, which included up to 13 people at one time, utilized a work space with a separate entrance. The cast lived in the loft from February 16 to May 18, 1992. The series premiered three days later, on May 21, 1992.
caption: Co-op at 565 Broadway, where the season was filmed. The loft built for filming was on the second and third floors.
exif: {"Image Make": "CASIO COMPUTER CO.,LTD", "Image Model": "EX-Z750", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2008:08:16 22:41:22", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 0, 5, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, 22, 0, 2, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 5, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 16, 129, 0, 0, 0]", "Image ExifOffset": "280", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "826", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7301", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:08:16 13:41:11", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:08:16 13:41:11", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "1136/375", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "79/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1200", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1600", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0/0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "38", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}