Big Brother (Serbian season 4)


Veliki Brat 2011 or better known as Veliki Brat 4 was the fourth season of the Serbian production of the Big Brother reality television series Veliki Brat. This season was the first that features housemates from Croatia, and therefore sets the record number of participating countries to 5. Other countries that take part in it, besides Serbia are Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republic of Macedonia. The program is known as Big Brother in Croatia due to a former Croatian Big Brother series that aired for five seasons independently of Veliki Brat.
The show started on March 13, 2011, marking the first time that the regular season is broadcast on Pink TV.

Production

Trailer and subtitles

For the first time, a trailer was produced for a Veliki Brat. The trailer features some of the housemates from previous seasons, dressed in uniforms and attending VB - Škola za poznate. Hosts of the show are also featured as teachers, and one housemate from a Veliki Brat VIP 4, Boki 13, appears at the end of the video. The trailer premiered on YouTube.
Even though most of the press already dubbed the season as "School of fame", the official slogan is taken from the Bible - "Ljubi bližnjeg svog". Another teaser trailer was released few weeks before the show; this one featured falling flowers, and writing out "Ljubi bližnjeg svog".

Auditions

Auditions took place in December 2010 and January 2011. Applications were submitted via SMS, telephone call or filling out the form on Emotion's web site, while in Croatia, auditions were open for everyone, with no previous application needed.
The first casting was held in Podgorica in 24 December 2010. The day after, auditions were held simultaneously in Sarajevo, and Skopje. The first round of auditions was wrapped up in Banja Luka.
Second round of auditions were held in Croatia, where over 5500 people applied, and the auditions lasted six days in three cities: Zagreb, Rijeka and Split. Final round of castings were held in Serbia, where auditions were held in Čačak, Užice, Niš, Novi Sad, Kragujevac and Belgrade, between 14 January 2011 and 23 January 2011.

Censorship

Previously, each of the regular seasons was broadcast on B92 channel, while some of the celebrity editions were shown on Pink TV. This is the first time that Pink airs a regular season.
There was much speculation about who would host the show; many celebrities were tipped as the new hosts, including Nataša Bekvalac and Severina Vučković. Eventually, the producers announced Antonija Blaće as the host of the show, as well as Marijana Mićić who was confirmed only a few days before the launch.
At the end of February 2011, Pink was criticized for having way too much reality programs, with everyone getting more vulgar and inappropriate than the previous one. RRA - Serbian Broadcasting Agency warned both the broadcasters and the producers that there will be zero tolerance on violence, racism and hate speech, and said that they'll keep them under tight supervision.
The production company Emotion said that they'll do all in their power to minimize all the content that may be considered harmful and that the live streaming will be delayed a few minutes. For the first time the show is marked as unsuitable for viewers under 18 years of age, but later the age limit was lowered to 15.

Big Brother's relationship with the housemates

Big Brother can talk to housemates in 2 ways:

Through the speakers

Big Brother talks to housemates through the speakers when he needs to announce beginnings or endings of tasks, when he needs to inform about the punishment or when he needs to call a housemate to the Diary room.

In the Diary room

Big Brother's relationship with the housemates while in the Diary room is very special. He asks different questions or sometimes he provokes. Big Brother is also very humorous and can joke with housemates or even sing with housemates. The production is very witty when it comes to those special things. Because of that, the Diary room interviews can be very interesting to watch.

Big Brother's voice

Although there's more than one person that talks to housemates their voice is filtered to sound very robotic and unhuman. Because of the robotic voice housemates have an impact that Big Brother is one person who's watching them all the time.

Broadcasting

Companion shows

Big Brother's Colosseum
For the first time, Big Brother's Big Brain wasn't broadcast. During the previous years, many companion shows were broadcast, but only Big Brain was broadcast every year.
This year a new show is produced: Big Brother's Colosseum, which is a game show in which the winning housemate gets to be the House Captain. The House Captain is immune to nominations, and the nominations that housemate places are worth double. The show is hosted by Marijana Mićić and Maca.
The show got canceled halfway through the season since two of the housemates were injured during one of the games. The medical crew had them checked and Dražen had to be hospitalized, so he had to leave the Big Brother House, while Soraja needed some bed rest, so she was able to stay in the House. After this incident, the show was canceled.
Call on Big Brother
Pozovite Velikog brata is a new show, hosted by Irina Radović. It's a phone-in morning show, where Irina and a guest receive calls from viewers, who comment on what happened in the house during the previous days. Some of the guests were family members of the housemates, while others were psychologists, astrologist, and some of the former and evicted housemates.
Halfway through the season, Irina signed a contract with another Serbian television Prva and had to leave Pink TV, so Marijana took her place.

Eye and the house

For the first time producers completely changed the design of the eye logo. This season uses British Big Brother 2010 logo - an eye drawn out of flowers and petals, but slightly different coloured. The opening credits were changed as well; the music stayed the same, but the intro is the one used in 2010 British series, although slightly altered.
The house itself remained the same; it consisted of the kitchen and dining room, living room, bedroom, toilet and the garden. There were a few changes though: the walls of the showers are completely see-through, the swimming pool is now placed inside the house. The biggest surprise was the bedroom - this year all 16 beds have been merged, and all the mattresses and pillows were sewn together to make one giant bed. Also, there was just one huge bed cover. For the first time, there is a smoking booth - until this season, smoking was allowed in the garden, but this time there is a booth in which housemates can come in one at the time.
Next to the house, another secret area was built - the Dumps.
The following celebrity season Veliki Brat VIP 5 used the same logo and titles as this season.

The twists

Prize Fund

The prize fund for this season increased from €100,000 to €150,000. However, with the increase of the money saw the introduction of a fines system, where any infraction of the Big Brother rules resulted in money from the prize fund being taken away. In addition to the prize fund decreasing, the weekly shopping budget also is decreased with every rule break. In the end, the winner was rewarded with €104,000.

The Dumps

The Dumps is a secret place in the Big Brother in which some housemates live. It's a yard full of garbage. Housemates live in an old bus and have an old car acting as a Diary Room. In the second week, a so-called "ninja" entered the Dumps. His task is to obey housemates and to bring them things they want from the main house. He must be careful as the housemates from the main house mustn't be aware of his secret task.

Poisonous arrow

Housemates can be hit with a poisonous arrow. Big Brother will decide to do something to the housemate who was hit. For instance, in Week 1, Ema was hit with a poisonous arrow by Duško. Big Brother then decided to take away all the personal stuff from Ema. In Week 2, Bojana was hit by an arrow and had to do all of the house chores by herself.

The Lioness

On Day 49 the Lioness conquered Big Brother who became her servant and kidnapped the boys and placed them in her cave, which is known as the Lioness' Cave. The Lioness will train the boys so they would be more attractive. The Lioness said to the female Housemates that they will have the chance to save some of the boys. For every saved boy they will receive €81 to their weekly budget.

Indecent proposal

During Week 9's eviction, Big Brother offered the housemates the chance for one evicted housemate to return in exchange for €35,000 from the prize fund. They had to unanimously decide whether to accept or reject the proposal. Though Duško, Brandon, and Antonia initially rejected the indecent proposal, they eventually agreed to the offer. Upon accepting the deal, housemates then entered the Diary Room, one by one, to vote for the housemate they wanted back in the house. Having received the most vote to re-enter, Ema was sent back into the Big Brother House.

Housemates

Weekly summary

Voting history

The public votes for whom to save from nomination. The bottom three Housemates with the lowest saves are up for eviction. The Housemates then voted for whom to evict, with the first vote receiving 2 points and the second, 1 point. The Housemate with the most points is evicted. This year introduced a House Captain and a Dumps Captain, both are immune for eviction and vote with double eviction points The House Captain is awarded to the Housemates residing in the main House while the Dumps Captain is awarded to the Housemates who reside in the Dumps.

Controversy

Breaking the Isolation

The live eviction incident

One of the main rules of Veliki Brat is that no contact with the outside world is allowed and that no new information should enter the house. During the first live eviction, when Marijana Mićić talked to the house, Nemeš started to show off and provoked her, to which she decided to put him down by saying that she and all of the viewers from 5 different countries saw what happened between him and Marijana Čvrljak the other night. This is the first time that an information entered the house.

Slaven

During the 21st day, an intruder entered the house. Tamara recognized him as her boyfriend, Slaven. Slaven shouted at his girlfriend from the rooftop, saying that he's angry because of her flirting with Nikola Maurović and that they should break up. He also shouted insults and threatened Nikola, and told Marijana, that everybody saw the sex scene and that her father renounced her.
As soon as this news hit the internet, most of the fans and people on the forums commented that the whole situation might be staged, since the house security has never been breached before, and it is impossible to climb the roof and not get caught by the guards.

Vladimir's ejection

During the show, Vladimir decided he wanted to walk, and Big Brother told him that he had to wait 24 hours, and if doesn't change his mind, he'll be able to leave the house. Vladimir didn't want to wait for that much, so he started breaking all of the rules of the House. At some point, he started giving out the information from the outside world to the other housemates, and Big Brother had him ejected.

Nemeš and Marijana hate groups

After hooking up with Nemeš, Marijana became a popular target of cyber-bullying. Many hate groups and fan pages, that judge and threat Nemeš and Marijana, were created on Facebook members.

Fix speculation

Some of the contestants, after they've been voted out, claimed that the show was fixed When interviewed by the press after the eviction, some of the former contestants said that Marijana was promised to get the prize money if she had sex during her time in the house. Both the press and the fans noticed that on a number of occasions Marijana had said ‘Ja sam svoj zadatak ispunila.’, which they thought related to her affair with Nemeš.
Speculations like this were common during the previous years, but when Marijana won forums and even some columnists claimed that the winner was not decided by the public vote. In addition to the surrounding controversy, Croatian broadcaster RTL Televizija, published the news that Marijana won before the voting lines were closed.