I’m a big fan of survival shows and adventure/exploration shows. I have always wondered how the camera crew manages to film in tiny caverns or in the middle of the desert. I’m certain that TV magic is used to an extend, but I’m still in awe of the camera crews. Thoughts?
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I always think about this while watching “The Amazing Race”; these people are running to get from point A to point B before the other teams, but they have another person following them, also running, while carrying a camera. That person has to be strong and have great stamina. They cannot be paid nearly enough, too.
Almost all the shows are fake and staged. They helicopter in with a vast crew, do multiple takes to get the shot they want, then go spend the night at a resort hotel.
Survivorman is the real deal. All he has is an emergency sat phone, and is otherwise alone and carrying all his gear, including cameras.
Bear Grylls is weak.
I love Naked and Afraid. I love that at night the crew is gone, so the only footage is from the survivors handheld cameras. And they’re upfront about the crew sleeping comfortably in a camp not too far away. Sometimes the survivors try to sneak into the crew’s camp and steal food xD
I work with documentary film crews pretty often in my conservation work.
It’s a lot of preplanning, setting things advance, reshoots and multiple takes, knowing or scouting the area ahead of time, and editing.
I know my area well and ai discus with the film crews far in advance about what kinds of shots they want to get and what story they want to tell.
I suggest places to them and we go over the options together.
When filming everything is planned out in advance, shots are made, and redone to get different angles and such, different days are edited together to make it look like a single continuous sequence, etc.
Sometimes three days of filming in 6 different locations will be edited down to a few minutes (or even less than a minute)and made to look like a single sequence at one location.
I usually push back a bit in order to maintain continuity and I’m very insistent that film crews don’t misrepresent the area, the work, or the species, but other than that, I’m ok with the ‘magic’ process of it as ai understand that they also need to tell an engaging story.
It really depends on the show.
If you want a bit of behind the scenes, watch the Documentary “Free Solo” on Disney+.
1) It’s absolutely excellent.
2) There is a decent amount of it that covers how they filmed it. Everything from the stress to the actual technical aspects.
It’s a really neat doc that’s meant to focus on one guy, but does a great job showing how his decisions impact his family and friends. The camera team are all world class athletes as well as filmmakers, so that’s their secret sauce.
Just want to throw Meateater into this conversation. They have a pretty serious crew that actually hikes and helps pack stuff in/out. They’ve done a few “behind the scenes” episodes showing how they handle everything (can’t remember if those were youtube or netflix). My favorite bit was that the PA’s were responsible for loading/packing/rearranging saddlebags so that they didn’t overload the mules (might have been llamas?) on one side more than the other so they were constantly weighing all the bags
I worked for a season as an actor on the history channel show “mountain men” and it was basically completely fake. We would establish the story in the morning around Panera that the film crew had got, go film scenes for the stories that day, and over several weeks would get filler shots for the story.
I also know a guy who was in 2 seasons of alone and he described his experience as being totally alone out there with a camera.
A lot will depend on what the show is trying to do, but I’d say if it’s not obvious that the “survivor” is the one creating all the shots, it’s probably almost all fake
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