What did you do with the contestants when they left the beach? Where did you take them and how did you make sure the game did not continue while the cameras were off?
We made the decision to bring them to base camp so that we would all be together. We put each tribe in a separate room with absolutely nothing in it. No food, no blankets, no pillows, nothing. They were monitored by producers the entire night. And, to their credit, they did not talk or try to form alliances. They honored the good faith agreement we had made. The next morning, we returned them to the beaches and the game resumed.
One other note that fans may enjoy. On the way to evacuate them, I ran into our POV guy, Andrew Metz. He’s responsible for placing cameras inside of challenges so we get those crazy shots of a hand untying a knot or a foot coming down in the mud. Since we obviously couldn’t have any of our camera crew out on the beach during the storm, I asked him if there was any way to put a camera on one of the beaches, just in case we got lucky. He said the battery will die in four hours. But he said if someone has an extended cell phone battery he could hook it up and make it work. Our location supervisor, Michael Glaser, happened to be walking by and said, “I have one. I’ll grab it.”
So Andrew headed out to the beach, set up a GoPro — and that is the shot you saw where the Gen X tribe camp was literally destroyed by one huge tree. Had he not come up with that idea we would not have the shot, and without the shot there would be no way to show just how strong and potentially deadly the storm turned out to be. Reason #3,875 why I love working on this show.
