The title of the new series "Pond Stars" may just sound like an easy play on the already running "Pawn Stars," but it is very serious about the pond part of its name.
The Nat Geo Wild channel show is about guys who make elaborate backyard ponds, streams and other water features — two projects per hourlong episode — and they do it from a business based in St. Charles, Ill.
In fact, Greg Wittstock, head of the company, Aquascape, says he owes his business, his big west suburban house and, now, his TV renown to an article on him that appeared 22 years ago, in the Chicago Tribune's old Tempo DuPage section.
"I was just a kid building ponds," Wittstock, now 44, said the other day, seated on a big armchair at his business's headquarters, a lavish work-play hybrid space dubbed "Aqualand." "And then, suddenly, I had hundreds of people wanting ponds. Literally, that story turned a summer job into a career."
Now he's trying to turn his experience into that modern next step, a role on television playing, pretty much, himself, alongside his two longest-serving employees, Brian Helfrich and Ed Beaulieu.
Asked if he is "a little on pins and needles" about being picked up for a second season, Wittstock said, deadpan: "Not at all. We are totally on pins and needles."
And to hear him tell it, the desire is not so much to boost his business or to be recognized around the suburbs of Chicago, although that has happened. (He took a picture of a guy taking a picture of him, Wittstock said.)
Rather, the goal is to spread the good news about backyard ponds. They're pretty to look at, he said. They're healthy for the environment. And you can even swim in them, if you build one the right way and big enough.
But there you go. Wittstock's enthusiasm is so infectious that now we've caught the backyard pond bug. We also want to work in his office, where there is an indoor basketball court, a weight room and themed bedrooms for overnight stays. Oh, and, of course, there's an enormous pond out front where, if invited, you can scuba dive or just jump in to cool off.
We have to remember that we came out to St. Charles mostly just to talk to Wittstock and Helfrich, 38, his company's designer, about the reality of being on reality TV. They've seen valued, veteran co-workers quit, Wittstock said, "jealous" that they weren't part of the TV show. And they've learned the ropes of reality, which is more about delivering a TV show than producing a dispassionate documentary.
What follows has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: What do you think of the show name?
Wittstock: At first I hated it, but it's kind of grown on me. We gave them 75 different names to choose from. "The Aquascapers." "Koi Boys." "Pond Guys" is kind of the traditional one. "Pondemonium." Yeah. You know what? I'm OK with the name. They're very happy with the name, so that's OK.
Q: It does speak to the reality audience.
Wittstock: I guess so. This is their business. It's not mine. And Hollywood is a wacky world. I'm a business guy. I'm a CEO of a company. And this is very creative, artistic. It's a different process.
Q: How did it start? How did you get the reality show?
Wittstock: There was a producer out in LA surfing the Internet, wanting to buy plants for her pond. She stumbled across our YouTube channel, Aquascape No. 4, and watched a couple of videos. Then she saw the video of Brian's backyard, which has a couple of hundred thousand views, and said, "These guys, they should have their own show." This is not something new for us. Everybody's been saying, "You've got to do a reality show," for years. And we'd actually gone through and filmed a pilot before that never came to fruition.
Q: OK, so this producer sees this YouTube thing. Then what happens?
Wittstock: We signed a contract with them to pitch the show, and nothing happened. That was December of 2012. And nothing happened until fall of 2013, when things started heating up. And then in January of 2014, Animal Planet purchased our show, paid for a production company to produce a mini episode. And then after that got produced, they chose not to run with our show, and we ended up finding a manager, and he took us to Nat Geo Wild, and Nat Geo Wild picked us up.
Q: Was that with the original production company?
Wittstock: The original production company is just being paid, but they've never produced any footage. Yes, it's a wacky Hollywood role.
Q: You get the money, but you don't have to do the work. So what did you think when they said they wanted to pick it up?
Wittstock: Ah, well, yeah! We had no idea what to think, and when we started to do it, we were blown away by the process of making a reality show. It was a thousand times harder than any of us could have ever imagined.
I had to re-change my context, that I was (now) shooting a reality show and every once in a while getting to build a pond.
Q: Yeah, I wondered about that. How much does it interfere with your ability to actually do your business?
Wittstock: We need to focus on producing
a show, and this is my job as the CEO of the company now. I have a president that fortunately runs the company day to day. But whatever we were doing before the show, we're not going to be doing whenever the show starts filming.
Q: So you're just working on these specific projects (in the episodes).
Wittstock: Yes. Setting them up. Filming them. Even when you're not filming them outside, you've got to do pickups and OTFs, on-the-fly interviews, just so they can sync all this stuff together. So it's a full-time job.
Q: I want to point out that Greg (Wittstock) just sat down with the biggest water bottle I've ever seen.
Wittstock: It's 70 ounces, and it's my Bubba, and it's iced tea.
Q: It looks like a beer keg. You've got to specify. So are you a little stunned by the process, or at the end of it, are you sort of getting used to it?
Wittstock: It was very emotional for me. They were filming a reality show about my life. We did not know how it would turn out. The first time we saw what they shot was basically when it was done. We were happy with the end result, but also it was a little bit nerve-wracking to see how they would portray you. And you don't have any say in it.
Helfrich: It was interesting. (Speaking to Wittstock) remember how much time we spent putting together, like, little mini-scripts? Like, "Oh, this would be funny to do here, and this here, and this here?" So we spent all this time before the very first episode putting together what could be funny little segments. They asked us to put together stuff like that, and I think they wanted it really heavily scripted in the beginning but then quickly realized we weren't actors and that we had enough chemistry just being ourselves.
Q: Yeah, I wondered about that because you get the sense watching some of these reality shows that, you know, "that had to be a line fed by the producers."
Wittstock: Exactly. And truthfully, most of our "lines" were because of an airplane or because of the cameras. So if I would say something that was funny and Brian would laugh at it, then they would be, "Oh, do that again," and then they would move the cameras. And this is where it's hard to come off as natural. If it was actually that the cameras were in the right position and the sound was good, they could just film. But it's really hard to do that.
Q: So having gone through six episodes — again, this is a question I've always had — how much reality is a reality show?
Helfrich: It's almost all reality. Where it feels unnatural is where they say, "Do it again." They never say, "Make the giant rock fall on Ed." That really happened.
Or like that episode with the snake, that's just us goofing around, but we have to let the cameras know that, "Hey, we're about to goof around." So two people know: The person that's gonna play the prank, and the cameraperson. Everybody else has no idea. And we do that stuff on a day-to-day basis all the time. We dig holes and move rocks and put 'em together again in a nice way. And to get through the day, we goof around a lot. So I think that's what they like about us.
Q: So you're sometimes saying things that have been suggested, like, "We need you to say this as a transition," or something like that?
Wittstock: Yes. The transitions. So what they'll do is they lay out all the footage, and there's hundreds of hours of footage for a show. And then they'll say, "We're gonna grab this, we're gonna grab this, we're gonna grab this." So they'll come to me or Brian and say, "Here's what we need you to say." So it's after the fact. You'll say, "OK, I need Brian over here right now because we've got to get this thing done." Well, that's just us feeding a line that will connect two scenes together.
Q: So that part is the stand-ups, where you're facing the camera. But it feels (overall) true to you and accurate and honest?
Wittstock: Yes. The end product, we actually build the waterfalls. All the reveals with the customers, that really occurs. They might stop them and say, "Hey hold that; there's a plane." It's amazing how many planes.
Q: Are you a little on pins and needles about the renewal?
Wittstock: Not at all. We're totally on pins and needles.
Helfrich: I think it's just the waiting. Because if the show happens, well, my job is the show. If not, well, I've got customers all over Chicago.
Q: But you really want it.
Wittstock: Um, this is a dream for me, because I took my hobby that I started in my parents' garage as a college kid, built it into the world's largest company in its space — I'm a big fish in a small pond — and now I have cameras filming what I actually do, which nobody understands. So for me to create that level of awareness out in the marketplace? I couldn't ask for a better gift than for this opportunity with a, you know, reality television show.
Q: Why is that important?
Wittstock: This is my passion. This is my baby. This is my hobby. I mean, I'm married with kids, but this is my baby. I created this vision for this industry and this business because
of my love of turtles. So 100 percent it's to spread the message and the word. It's a long flight when you sit next to me on an airplane and ask me, "What do you do?"
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