I have seen this several times in those shows about Alaska. The subject of the show goes off on their snowmobile and gets stuck. One time it was a couple each on their own machine so they doubled up and got most of the way home before the overloaded machine bogs down. Another time the lady who runs the hunting camp slides nose down into a ditch. Unable to back up she plans to spend the night under a tree and walk the rest of the way home - without snowshoes in deep snow.
Now I realize that this is a “reality” show and that the real reality is that there is a cameraman and his snowmobile sitting there filming it. So if she stays the night it is for the sake of drama. But don’t any of these people carry de-ditching equipment? We carried it in our rally car.
Ropes. A lightweight come-along or block and tackle. Folding snow anchor. Folding snowshoes. Hell, make your own snowshoes out of pine branches. I know how to do that and I live in Ohio. I know a snowmobile has a limited storage space but this is your freakin’ life at stack. Make something.
But the camera crew is right there. Are we supposed to believe they spent the night in freezing cold? Or that they took their snowmobile and went home?
I have relatives that snowmobile in the Northwest.
Yeah, people get stuck.
Yeah, they walk to find someone in their group to help them.
No, no one was ever in any real danger.
If someone hasn’t been seen in a bit, the others go looking. Remarkably easy to track down given the trail in the snow and all.
Caveat: They ride in the “drier” mountains of the region. So somewhat more powdery and not as deep as you get in the Cascades.
Good snowmobile suits are designed to keep you alive in such situations.
(One of their favorite riding pastimes is to convince someone to ride over something that looks iffy hoping they’ll get stuck. But in these cases there’s at least one other vehicle right by.)
actually on “life below zero” the crew usually stays over night where ever the people are which is why they have one for the camera and another for the emergency supplies
missed the edit window :actually on “life below zero” whitch is national geographic channel show your watching the crew usually stays over night where ever the people are which is why they have one for the camera people and another for the emergency supplies for such a camp out
Now on “Alaska the last frontier” which is on discovery sometimes they stay and sometimes they leave and come back ……theres a no help unless its an life or death thing in the contract… which is why one of them almost died falling off a mountain pass he was on because the crew hadn’t arrived for the day and wasn’t bale to call for help
As I always say in threads like these, “scripted” is the wrong word. They usually aren’t scripted any more than a pro-wresting match is usually scripted. And by that I mean that pro wrestling isn’t scripted, it’s improv. You’ve got a face, you’ve got a heel, they do a bunch of moves, yes the winner is known beforehand but they don’t work out an elaborate choreography for the match, they just do a bunch of moves until the winner pulls out his finishing move and the loser puts him over.
If you’re on a reality show you don’t have a producer handing you a script. You’re expected to know your character and come up with your own dialog. You could have producers pushing angles on you, just like wrestlers get fed angles, but you gotta do your own character and your own dialog. If the producers have to write dialog for you they might as well go back to doing multi-camera sitcoms.
On my reality show its pretty real. I mean if we have a talking scene its not real in the sense that we have to have the conversation twice once shot wide and once with the cameras zoomed in. The words and actions are all just us though.
So today we were filming building a tank so I got the crew together to talk about our plan. Then we had to go over the plan again in wide and the I had to go over the plan again up close with them filming my sketch of our work. Doing it three times isn’t real but the plan was. Now who the team was to build the tank and where we were building the tank are decision made by the producer as well as the fact we’re building a tank on this episode.
For the snowmobile stuff I wonder on my show we have get special insurance if we’re going to use drones so they try and pack it in to a few days a possible I wonder for those shows what the insurance looks like since I assume its a normal part of each episode.
But I think showing how hard it is to get unstuck would be a great show. Someone else mentioned that your buddies can track you down but some of these people are far away from any buddies. I do agree the snowmobile suits are excellent.
I always liked the old “Survivorman” show because it was just Les and his camera. That’s where I learned how to make emergency snowshoes.
Reality shows vary. “Duck Dynasty” was scripted word for word by sitcom writers, and they had table reads with the cast. That was because the producers lucked into a group of people who could actually perform lines.
Most reality shows are “soft scripted,” meaning you put the folks into a situation which maybe they wouldn’t have put themselves in (like, say, going deep sea fishing; here comes the seasick!) and watch them react. Also, it helps if some of the stuff is legit–Junior needs a car (for real), they shop for a car, they buy a car–but what’s the ending? Junior loses the keys–and he can’t afford new keys because he spent all his money on the car! Or similar. You fill in around real life. Then when the cameras are off the producer hands back the keys.
Competition shows are a different animal because they are governed by game-show laws, so you have to be careful about putting your thumb on the scales. My understanding from having worked on a few is that the producers will get involved, but only in a case where you have two people on the chopping block, both suck but one is better TV. And the judges aren’t stupid, they know what’s desired from the show. But you won’t have producers do things like mess with people’s sleep, steal their equipment, etc.
Shows like “Life Below Zero” are VERY documentary. I don’t think they mess with those folks at all, although I can imagine them saying “You know how you were going to go fishing Thursday? We need to give the crew that day off, can you do it Wednesday or Friday instead?”
“Build shows” like Oredigger77 describes are yet again a different beast. It’s pretty close to documentary though the producers are involved.
Regarding drone insurance, on my last show we shot extensive drone footage and were not limited by insurance, we just shot it when we wanted. The limitation might be that insurance will only cover a licensed drone operator, and the production only wanted to pay that person for a limited number of days.