During the pandemic, I was lucky enough to work on a weekly talk show for Discovery called Josh Gates Tonight. Josh is the host of Expedition: Unknown and is used to filming adventures all over the world, so the COVID lockdown was especially frustrating.
While we were all stuck at home, a group of incredibly talented people invented this lockdown talk show for Josh on the fly. We aired Wednesday nights, and every Thursday morning we had to start the next episode from scratch. Week after week, it was a challenge that was as exhausting as it was creatively rewarding. Josh and the production team leaned heavily on the post team, shooting unplanned gags and relying on us to come up with something, anything, out of thin air to fill in the blanks.
The unspoken rule was "if legal can clear it, you can do it", which I always took as a challenge. When I got this silly bit with dominos, I thought about the game Mousetrap and elaborate Rube Goldberg contraptions. In a burst of inspiration, I asked our unflappable post producer to get me the clip of Alan Shepherd golfing on the moon. Great, I thought, now how am I going to get to the moon?
Working with little sleep, less time, and a lot of inspiration, I literally took this one-off gag to the moon and back.
While we were all stuck at home, a group of incredibly talented people invented this lockdown talk show for Josh on the fly. We aired Wednesday nights, and every Thursday morning we had to start the next episode from scratch. Week after week, it was a challenge that was as exhausting as it was creatively rewarding. Josh and the production team leaned heavily on the post team, shooting unplanned gags and relying on us to come up with something, anything, out of thin air to fill in the blanks.
The unspoken rule was "if legal can clear it, you can do it", which I always took as a challenge. When I got this silly bit with dominos, I thought about the game Mousetrap and elaborate Rube Goldberg contraptions. In a burst of inspiration, I asked our unflappable post producer to get me the clip of Alan Shepherd golfing on the moon. Great, I thought, now how am I going to get to the moon?
Working with little sleep, less time, and a lot of inspiration, I literally took this one-off gag to the moon and back.
