Holding the fort at GUS 6

Carel and Donovan are once again holding the fort on Gulder Ultimate Search 6 in the Nigerian jungle. This is the fourth year we are facilitating the sound for Jungle Filmworks.

Gulder Ultimate Search is a reality show similar to survivor where 10 contestants get thrown into the jungle. They then embark on a search for a long lost treasure in order to become the ultimate man or woman. They will face all sort of challenges such as intense tasks, starvation, heavy rain and thunderstorms without any proper shelter.

Nigeria, being very close to the equator, is quite tropical and gets rain almost daily this time of year. The biggest obstacle during this reality TV show is to keep your gear running in these tough conditions. It is not uncommon for the film crew to lose two to three cameras while shooting in these conditions. Once the cameras start rolling they don't stop, not until the shoot is finished, rain or no rain. Jungle Filmworks use small format DV cameras for the shoot since they are light and easy to move around with. They do not run time-code on set since it would be impossible to distribute this to cameras. The cameras sometimes cover a very big area. Everything happens in real time, and normally there are no cuts while the tasks are in progress.

One thing that makes this show very different is the fact that an episode gets shot and transmitted every day for a period of 21 episodes or days. Obviously some time is required for postproduction, so we have a team of 13 editors that work around the clock to produce an episode every day. There are normally only a few days between the shoot day and the transmission day, so we cannot afford to lose a day anywhere. It is not uncommon to sit around for a day without any work and then receive two episodes very late at night that need to be delivered the next morning.

This year is the first year that we used an OB truck to do a multicam shoot for the "Talking Drum". The vision mixer runs SDI video, which then get mixed live to a Mac Pro to save time in the editing process. All the different sound sources get multitrack recorded. Since nothing is scripted, it's almost impossible to mix everything live. The biggest issue is the over sized crickets you get here. They are so loud that just one can spoil the sound completely. Their sound gets into every lapel microphone. If you leave every channel open, well, you end up with just crickets and no contestants. In postproduction we rely on a matrix mix setup to help opening only the appropriate microphones.

So far the shoot is going extremely well and Carel has only been struck by lightning once, well luckily not directly. Fortunately this year the accommodation is at a Golf resort. Carel and Donovan have been practicing their tennis skills in their spare time and hope to play all 18 holes of the golf course when they have more time. This is a far cry from their previous experiences in which they also lived the survivor lifestyle in the Nigerian Delta!