This past Fall my friend David asked me to help him with a Survivor audition tape. Survivor is an American TV show that my friend has wanted to be on for years. I have helped him in the past with an audition tape, but this was his most ambitious entry yet.

His idea was to do a video that represented different aspects of who he is, highlighting traits that will make him a successful 'Castaway' on Survivor. Those traits included confidence, being social, athleticism, being a Survivor superfan and being a professional.

All these traits would interact in a Real Housewives fashion. The Real Housewives is another American TV show that my friend is a fan of. The show features several wealthy women interacting with one another on a regular basis. Typically their interactions are pretty dramatic, so my friend David wanted to show that kind of drama with his different personality traits fighting it out - explaining that each was better than the other. The idea being that all of them together as one would make the perfect 'Castaway'.

In order to pull this video off, we had to have a script. David put together a great script and I added a few elements to help make the filming go more smoothly.

Once we started filming, David got into costume. We shot one personality trait at a time, filming each scene that trait would be a part of. We had to make sure to keep each trait in his own area during the social gathering scene. We didn't want to overlap other traits. This made filming a little bit easier to not have to worry about crossover. I mic'd each trait for better audio. One trait's mic had some issues, but I had camera audio to fall back on. I green screened each trait individually for their epic group shot.

Once all the footage was gathered, David supplied me with some music, background elements, and graphics. He drew up the logo used in the video.

In the end I think the video turned out great and was a fun little project to work on. I wish David the best of luck with his entry!

-The Media Buff

Real Housewives of Survivor?