On location: Unbreakable
- Published: 23 September 2008 17:36
- Last Updated: 23 September 2008 17:36
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Executive producer Chris Kelly on an extreme series that tested the crew as much as the competitors.
It's 90 degrees in the Guyanan rain forest and I'm looking on as a muscle-bound power-lifter collapses to the jungle floor. As he hits the ground, his eyes roll back in his head and his legs spasm wildly. Controlled panic ensues as a doctor and two health and safety experts -contain the crisis.
As I watch them swing into action, I hear two voices in my head. The loudest is reminding me of my duty of care. The other is -quietly speculating where this dramatic incident might fit into the narrative arc. The key to being a productive and responsible TV professional is, of course, knowing which voice to listen to - and when.
We're shooting the first episode of Unbreakable. Commis-sioned by Jay Hunt and enthusiastically supported by Steve Gowans and Robi Dutta at Five, the show is "the ultimate challenge of mind and body" and it's already living up to the billing.
Eight of Britain's fittest people - six men and two women - are on a 10-week journey with the original unbreakable, explorer Benedict Allen. He will lead them across four continents, expose them to the planet's most hostile terrain and deliver them to the world's military elite in a bid to find their physical and mental breaking point.
They have already endured an excruciating tribal ritual of huntsman ant stings and been beasted by an SAS jungle expert, which resulted in our unfortunate power-lifter being struck down with heat exhaustion.
He's soon back on his feet and not in any danger but whether he'll be prepared to return and carry on to future episodes where challenges include -biting the head off a live piranha, being buried in the Sahara by the French Foreign Legion and wrestling a 12ft alligator in the Everglades swamp - remains to be seen.
"Are you Unbreakable?" was the question we asked would-be contributors as we combed Britain for tough guys and girls prepared to embark on a globe-trotting nightmare of animal attacks, military training and savage tribal initiations.
We overcame the challenge of a tight budget by recruiting a production team that was small in number but big on talent. After months of Rubik's Cube-like logistical planning, we had eight satisfyingly monstrous challenges and eight gung-ho contributors. But we were about to find that Unbreakable would be the ultimate test for both cast and crew.
The off-camera challenges started early. Silver-tongued series producer Mark Carter spent much of the Guyana shoot stuck in Georgetown negotiating film permits from government officials who were threatening to arrest us all. Then in Norway, the Norwegian army laid into the Unbreakables; blowing them up, gassing them and dropping them through ice holes into frozen lakes. The Norwegians expected us to sleep in tents with nothing but ice on the floor. Many crews would have run away screaming, or at least been on the phone to Bectu. But cameramen Will Milner and Stuart Dunn are veterans of extreme filming and matched the contributors for unbreakability.
The episode about Royal Navy training was a memorable series of slithering, dunking and drowning tests for the Unbreakables. It was also when Mark Carter discovered he had 400 insect eggs incubating in his foot and had them removed under anaesthetic. Benedict Allen was contemptuous, saying, "You should have just waited till they were the size of small grapes then they would have popped out one by one."
In the Sahara, the heat played havoc with our cameras, especially the supplementary Z1s used by shooting APs Therese Byrne and Hannah Lamb. But our secure equipment bags and insistence on a sealed Berber tent for storage kept out the grit and meant we could keep rolling.
We filmed our last two challenges in South Africa. The first pitched the Unbreakables against Zulu stick fighters. Filming on DSR cameras with all the action sequences on a fast shutter speed, we vividly captured the sharp intensity of the stick fighting contests so editors were visibly wincing as they watched the rushes in London.
The final challenge was brutal even by Unbreakable standards and we all had moments where we were swallowing hard. It was a credit to everyone's professionalism and care that while what you see on screen in Unbreakable is amazing, fierce and mind-boggling, no one was seriously hurt or injured. And the crew, for strange reasons of their own, are all desperate to do it again.
Unbreakable is a Ricochet production for Five. It airs from Monday 6 October at 9pm for eight weeks
Chris Kelly: My tricks of the trade
Extreme programmes make huge demands on the location teams so I use people I know and trust. The crews need to be technically brilliant but also fit and long-suffering.
These productions often test the boundaries of acceptable risk so I like to have a health & safety expert on location just to make sure we stay on the right side of that line.
Wherever there's sand, water or jungle, always take spare camera bodies. It's a long way to send a courier and shooting pick-ups isn't an option.
Wine gums are a real tonic in the wet, the heat and the cold. A sharp burst of flavour and a chance to see who can suck theirs longest.
