From the very first episode of “Game Changer” — in which players were confronted with a lie detector machine that was revealed to be under the control of their significant others — the show has played with making and breaking classic game show and comedy formats. The Dropout series has continually tried to “one-up” and “yes-and” itself over the course of its run. Looking toward Season 7 of “Game Changer” on an episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast, the show’s host and mostly gentle dom Sam Reich (also the show’s head writer, executive producer, and Dropout CEO) wasn’t sure how “Game Changer” was going to keep topping itself.
The answers to that worry are starting to come in, now that Season 7 has opened with “One Year Later,” wherein Reich gives players Vic Michaelis, Lou Wilson, and Jacob Wysocki one calendar year to complete a series of tasks, ranging from keeping a sourdough starter alive to getting the most followers on a Soundcloud account to taking the best candid photo of Reich himself. “Game Changer” has expanded its scope visually. The show now boasts a much larger set with multiple entrances and more space for performers to play. It’s also expanded its ambitions in terms of how and when it brings in players beyond the three contestants who stand behind colorful loop-de-loop podiums each episode.
IndieWire spoke to Reich about how Season 7 has leveled up what’s possible for the Dropout series, and what “Game Changer” fans, no matter how devotedly they’ve picked through the trailer, haven’t spotted yet. It’s telling that this year, Reich didn’t seem worried about how Season 8 will go even bigger. Season 7 might be as appropriately ambitious as “Game Changer” wants to be. But if that’s the case, Reich reckons that the show has proved they have multiple pianos worth of notes they can hit. Now all the “Game Changer” team has to do is play them.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
IndieWire: What has having that bigger stage space opened up for y’all?
Reich: You’d be surprised in the past seasons how many decisions were axed because we simply couldn’t elegantly get something through the stage curtain. So now that we have this grand entrance, we can wheel the most elaborate stuff out onto that stage — for instance, two jet skis.
You sort of get a sense of it watching [Season 7], but the open play space and the distance between the cameras and us are so massive that to be on the stage this season, it felt a little bit like there weren’t cameras in the room. They were so far away. I think that contributed to a bit of just how free we felt as performers.
This is a byproduct of budget as well. In previous seasons of ‘Game Changer’ we had our three cast members. And then anyone that we were going to surprise them with came from outside the world of the Dropout cast. And this season we have way more ‘two sides of the aisle.’ There are the cast members who are in the episode, and then the cast members who we’ve partnered with to surprise the people who are in the episode. So it’s almost like every single episode is a bit of a collaborative prank in that way.
What was the timescale of Season 7? How do you go from ideas and budget to figuring out episodes and the spaces? I’m curious how quickly it all comes together.
Because we’re not a typical shop, it means that we can run the creative process in a pretty non-typical way. We head into every year knowing what the budget’s going to be. There’s also a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy there where we headed into this season of “Game Changer” with a bigger budget because last season was so successful for us. As CEO of the company, I try to be disciplined about this, but as the show is more successful, it means that we can justify spending more on it.
My quote-unquote writers’ room is mostly production staff. It’s me, our production designer Chloe Badner, our producers Paul Robalino and Ryan Creamer. Paul and Ryan are chiefly my co-writers but we take contributions from a huge number of other supporting writers. I think there are 10-plus names of folks in the credits this year who all pitch on the show regularly.
We’ll begin that process the moment that ‘Make Some Noise’ wraps. We’ll solicit probably 10 pitches a piece from 10 writers, so like a hundred episode ideas that we’ll then [start meeting about them] on a weekly basis. And we’ll go through them slowly and meditate on them and say, well, maybe if we took this half of an idea or use this as a leaping off point, and so on. Then that’ll take us basically through the summer. Then by the time I leave for the Edinburgh Fringe, which is in late August, we basically know what episodes we’re going to do. And then while I’m at Fringe, I am creating loose versions of the scripts.
You’re writing while you’re at Fringe?
Yeah, this proves the masochistic creative appetite I have, but I will go and watch five or six shows a day and then I will write in my jet-lagged state from 9 p.m. or sometimes from midnight until three in the morning. I love writing at Fringe because I’m literally going off and seeing the weirdest possible theater every day and it just puts me in that head space, you know?
Wow. Edinburgh is magic like that.
Yeah. Then I come back from Fringe in September and we have Alpha versions of all the scripts and then we’re shooting in October, November. So that’s the loose timeline.
There’s so much we can talk about this season and we’ve been so good so far — even in the context of the teaser trailer, we’ve been so thoughtful about ‘OK, what are we giving away and what aren’t we giving away?’ Because our audience has a mad eye for detail, you know, we wanna make sure that we aren’t spoiling too much while also giving them something to look forward to. It’s a tricky balance.
What is comforting about this season versus last season is there were these long threads where people were dissecting the [Season 6] trailer going, ‘OK, we have this episode and that episode, and here’s what we know, and here’s what’s probably the game.’ And last season I think those threads were 90 percent accurate. This year they’re only 50 percent accurate. I think it’s really helpful that we have a bunch of cast members in episodes where they aren’t the players.
Do you feel that the spoilers aspect of it is important for “Game Changer” specifically, as opposed to other shows where if we know who the contestants are, that isn’t as big a deal?
Well, it’s interesting, right? I’m sure “Taskmaster” has this to a degree with its fandom. But there’s no game show I can think of where spoilers are a part of it. You know? No one is watching “Jeopardy” or “Wheel of Fortune” caring about spoilers, but “Game Changer” now — because it’s striking so many notes on the piano and also because it shares a fandom with other Dropout shows — it has a fandom that really cares about the details, you know?
I think we’re in this constant tightrope walk there, where we’re trying to think of and cater to that audience as best as we can while at the same time we’re a relatively small team and a relatively small show as compared to something on traditional streaming. So every once in a while, there’s something where someone gives me way more credit than I deserve. It’s like, someone will write some long and complicated post about something very poetic we did where I’m like, “Oh man, we did that because we were in a rush and for no other reason.”
Well, that seems like it’s the beauty of being a small team. You have to make the stuff for you, but then once it’s out in the world, people will find things in it you absolutely did not have time to see.
Yeah, for sure. And I do sort of love it. I’ll never correct them.
Of course. I feel like it’s apparent on watching “One Year Later” but I’m curious, thinking about the show overall, were there things you were excited to level up for Season 7?
Totally. I mean, there’s no such thing as a completely open sandbox. “Game Changer” is a show that’s dictated by its restrictions in the same way that it’s easier to write poetry with rhyme than without rhyme. So this season needed to increase the size of our toolbox and I think the episodes in which we did that the most were the ones, and there are a few this season, that take place entirely outside the studio. And I was a little nervous to do that because there’s a piece of that feels like, well, what even is our show if it’s on the “Game Changer” stage?
Our show is, at its heart, a very modern alt-comedy in the context of a retro ‘70s game show, right? That’s the conceit. And if you take away the set, my concern was that half of the show would kind of go away. But this season I think we found some ways to do it that made a lot of sense. And I’m really eager and excited for folks to experience “Change Changer” in that new way. I think now we’ve earned a whole other piano’s worth of notes. It’s going to make next season that much easier, creatively, because now we know we can do all these different things.
I mean, this is what I’ve been saying. I don’t think next season is going to be meaningfully more ambitious. I think I’m very content to be exactly this ambitious for a while. I don’t know that the show could really grow more without buckling. But we just have so many more toys to play with now than we did before.
Toys in terms of technical tools or in terms of having proof of concept for things you want to do, or a little of both?
I mean, I think that one is as simple as a new entrance means there’s bigger stuff we can fit through there, right? Another is, you saw in the trailer, there’s this giant game show wheel we built that’s really complicated. You’ll see when that episode comes out. The whole game rests on that wheel. And boy did we do it. The art department just absolutely killed it. And then some of the little cameos and guest appearances that we have on this season, without teasing too much, there are two cameos in this season that are people who I’ve wanted to get on the show for years who are finally on the show.
And then, finally, the ability to shoot off-set if the idea is right. Our season finale takes place in front of an audience of 120 people, which is nothing we’ve ever done before. There are actually two episodes of “Game Changer” this season that take place in front of an audience. One of them has an audience in the studio and the other has an audience and is in a theater location. And it makes such a difference to the energy of the performers to have someone to perform to.
I mean, in early seasons of “Make Some Noise,” the players would occasionally earn crew laughs. And that felt like such a badge of pride because it was very rare. And then once that started to happen, we told the crew they could laugh, and now there is this very free vibe on both “Game Changer” and “Make Some Noise” sets where everybody feels comfortable laughing. And so you get this almost like 20 percent of a studio audience kind of feel. Which I actually like.
I think in some ways it feels more contemporary, certainly, than canned laughter does. And it’s more generous to the performers because they really do light up when they get laughs and it’s nice for them to have someone to perform to. But a whole audience just does make a difference. I think that finale episode, which we shot at The Elysian here in Los Angeles, it’s just electric.
And what a trust fall for my performers. I mean, they basically walked out on stage not knowing what was going to happen in front of a hundred people.
I can think of few things more “Game Changer” than that. And I love the inclusion of crew laughter. It feels like it’s part of the series that jokes hit all the way to the edges of the set and we see those edges.
Yeah. That’s always been a little bit of a character on “Game Changer,” too, is showing the seams of production. It feels very much like shooting “Game Changer” is a character in “Game Changer.” The show has never shied away from being meta. I mean, going all the way back to Season 1 in our murder mystery episode, it was about shooting the show. It was the murder mystery. So I love that part of it. I love the mirror-maze of meta that “Game Changer” is.
“Game Changer” airs every two weeks on Dropout.
