[Music]
you
most people when they face a survival
situation generally don’t have a choice
in the matter it’s either a do or die
type of deal however in my case my
survival situation well it was
completely voluntary you see for the
last decade I’ve worked as a wildlife
adventure and reality TV cameraman and
in early 2015 I was cast as an embedded
cameraman on a reality TV Survival show
meaning that I would both be a
participant trying to survive as well as
a camera operator documenting the entire
ordeal as part of the final casting
process I flew to LA and met with
producers and executives and casting
agents they wanted to know a little bit
more about my background and they asked
me what sort of survival experience did
I have and I told them I didn’t have any
but I lived in Montana and I was pretty
good at camping that answer must have
been good enough because I would join 13
others for a very unique survival
adventure these 13 guys were from all
across the u.s. from a variety of
backgrounds we had a doctor a lawyer a
cop a paramedic a radio deejay a little
bit of everything most of these guys
however had little to no experience in
outdoors some of them had never even
been car camping before yet now they
were going to try to survive on a
deserted island for a month the show
would air on prime-time and was called
the island with Bear Grylls now this
wasn’t a game show there was no
competitions for pizza there was no
prizes and there would be no winner and
unlike most reality shows there was no
outside production team the entire thing
would be filmed by us ten regular guys
four professional cameramen but all of
us would have to survive together we
just had the clothes on our backs three
knives three machetes a single day’s
supply of water and a
of camera gear so here’s my headshot
the day before I left the island and
people often say the camera adds 10
pounds I don’t know if that’s true or
not but I know for a fact that I gained
10 pounds before I left for the island
it was my only survival preparation
tactic I could have read some survival
books or practice tie knots but instead
I ate as much ice cream as I could it’s
not nearly as fun as it sounds so there
we were the 14 of us about to be dropped
off on this island and I remember
looking around at the other 13 others
I’m thinking to myself one of these guys
has to know what they’re doing there
must be a leader amongst you know
amongst all of us and it sort of started
to dawn on me what I was about to do I
was most likely going to be starving
really thirsty and I was going to have
to film the entire thing I started to
feel a little overwhelmed I’m certainly
no survival expert real survival experts
well they’re masters at handling the
four basic elements of survival that is
they can find food search for water
build a shelter and make fire well our
group we were certainly not experts but
dealing with those four basic elements
would be our most immediate challenge as
soon as we were dropped off we’d have to
to figure out which ones to prioritize
and which ones could wait until later
however as soon as we were dropped off
we started to make a lot of mistakes and
hindsight is 20/20 but our top five
lists of mistakes that we mistakenly
identified brackish water for fresh
water
we then contaminated the last of our
fresh water supplies with some of that
brackish water we overexert ourselves
during the hot hours of the day we had a
pretty bad camp site location initially
and maybe most importantly we did not
spend enough time right away looking for
water and by the time we really needed
it it was sort of too late
obviously things were not going very
well by night two we were completely out
of water our group was in chaos and we
were having a hard time even making the
most basic decisions we knew that if we
didn’t find water soon our TV show would
be very short-lived so on the morning of
day three we decided to split up and
look for water the doctor buck and
myself went to the far side of the
island in hopes of kind of one
last-ditch effort to find water the good
news is that we did find water the bad
news is we didn’t get back to camp until
two members of our group had to leave
the island because of severe dehydration
and exhaustion so we were in a tough
place and like I said the basics of
survival are taking care of those four
elements and ironically by the end of
day 4 once we had found water we were
doing pretty well we had made fire we
were building shelters and we had found
some food but we were still a ragged
group of castaways and I think what can
put our perspective our situation in
perspective is Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs and so we had taken care of the
physical needs but we hadn’t even
thought about the rest of the levels of
the pyramid how did we go about taking
care of our non physical needs because
ultimately we had this really fulfilling
life transforming experience what made
the difference for us and the answer is
pretty simple we made a really good camp
Benji one of the other camera guys was
all gung-ho about this giant piece of
driftwood he wanted to use it as a
dining table and in my mind I thought
this was just totally impractical it was
this huge table it was going to waste a
lot of energy to move it to camp but we
did it and once we had that table it
became the kind of the centerpiece of
our community we ate there we played
games there we hung out there and the
island rather than a place cinder slowly
became a place that we wanted to be
you know we could have gone Oh Lord of
the Flies out there truthfully I mean it
could have gotten bad and things were
tough but it didn’t
it certainly wasn’t utopia and we had
our issues but we came together we
resolved our conflicts peacefully we
divided our food equally and we did our
best to communicate with one another and
there was no leader we all contributed
to the success of the whole and I think
in a lot of ways I’ve always taken
community for granted but after this
experience I realized just how vital
community is I wouldn’t have been able
to make it without the 13 others
long-term survival really requires
community and I don’t just mean survival
in the physical sense but to really
thrive to feel safe to feel a sense of
belonging and a sense of purpose we have
to have community and I think the main
takeaway from my experience is that a
strong community doesn’t just happen by
accident we must we must build it we
must nurture it and we must rely upon it
and if we do that we can face any
obstacle whether that be surviving on an
island for a TV show or just face the
challenges that life inevitably has for
us thank you
[Applause]
you
most people when they face a survival
situation generally don’t have a choice
in the matter it’s either a do or die
type of deal however in my case my
survival situation well it was
completely voluntary you see for the
last decade I’ve worked as a wildlife
adventure and reality TV cameraman and
in early 2015 I was cast as an embedded
cameraman on a reality TV Survival show
meaning that I would both be a
participant trying to survive as well as
a camera operator documenting the entire
ordeal as part of the final casting
process I flew to LA and met with
producers and executives and casting
agents they wanted to know a little bit
more about my background and they asked
me what sort of survival experience did
I have and I told them I didn’t have any
but I lived in Montana and I was pretty
good at camping that answer must have
been good enough because I would join 13
others for a very unique survival
adventure these 13 guys were from all
across the u.s. from a variety of
backgrounds we had a doctor a lawyer a
cop a paramedic a radio deejay a little
bit of everything most of these guys
however had little to no experience in
outdoors some of them had never even
been car camping before yet now they
were going to try to survive on a
deserted island for a month the show
would air on prime-time and was called
the island with Bear Grylls now this
wasn’t a game show there was no
competitions for pizza there was no
prizes and there would be no winner and
unlike most reality shows there was no
outside production team the entire thing
would be filmed by us ten regular guys
four professional cameramen but all of
us would have to survive together we
just had the clothes on our backs three
knives three machetes a single day’s
supply of water and a
of camera gear so here’s my headshot
the day before I left the island and
people often say the camera adds 10
pounds I don’t know if that’s true or
not but I know for a fact that I gained
10 pounds before I left for the island
it was my only survival preparation
tactic I could have read some survival
books or practice tie knots but instead
I ate as much ice cream as I could it’s
not nearly as fun as it sounds so there
we were the 14 of us about to be dropped
off on this island and I remember
looking around at the other 13 others
I’m thinking to myself one of these guys
has to know what they’re doing there
must be a leader amongst you know
amongst all of us and it sort of started
to dawn on me what I was about to do I
was most likely going to be starving
really thirsty and I was going to have
to film the entire thing I started to
feel a little overwhelmed I’m certainly
no survival expert real survival experts
well they’re masters at handling the
four basic elements of survival that is
they can find food search for water
build a shelter and make fire well our
group we were certainly not experts but
dealing with those four basic elements
would be our most immediate challenge as
soon as we were dropped off we’d have to
to figure out which ones to prioritize
and which ones could wait until later
however as soon as we were dropped off
we started to make a lot of mistakes and
hindsight is 20/20 but our top five
lists of mistakes that we mistakenly
identified brackish water for fresh
water
we then contaminated the last of our
fresh water supplies with some of that
brackish water we overexert ourselves
during the hot hours of the day we had a
pretty bad camp site location initially
and maybe most importantly we did not
spend enough time right away looking for
water and by the time we really needed
it it was sort of too late
obviously things were not going very
well by night two we were completely out
of water our group was in chaos and we
were having a hard time even making the
most basic decisions we knew that if we
didn’t find water soon our TV show would
be very short-lived so on the morning of
day three we decided to split up and
look for water the doctor buck and
myself went to the far side of the
island in hopes of kind of one
last-ditch effort to find water the good
news is that we did find water the bad
news is we didn’t get back to camp until
two members of our group had to leave
the island because of severe dehydration
and exhaustion so we were in a tough
place and like I said the basics of
survival are taking care of those four
elements and ironically by the end of
day 4 once we had found water we were
doing pretty well we had made fire we
were building shelters and we had found
some food but we were still a ragged
group of castaways and I think what can
put our perspective our situation in
perspective is Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs and so we had taken care of the
physical needs but we hadn’t even
thought about the rest of the levels of
the pyramid how did we go about taking
care of our non physical needs because
ultimately we had this really fulfilling
life transforming experience what made
the difference for us and the answer is
pretty simple we made a really good camp
Benji one of the other camera guys was
all gung-ho about this giant piece of
driftwood he wanted to use it as a
dining table and in my mind I thought
this was just totally impractical it was
this huge table it was going to waste a
lot of energy to move it to camp but we
did it and once we had that table it
became the kind of the centerpiece of
our community we ate there we played
games there we hung out there and the
island rather than a place cinder slowly
became a place that we wanted to be
you know we could have gone Oh Lord of
the Flies out there truthfully I mean it
could have gotten bad and things were
tough but it didn’t
it certainly wasn’t utopia and we had
our issues but we came together we
resolved our conflicts peacefully we
divided our food equally and we did our
best to communicate with one another and
there was no leader we all contributed
to the success of the whole and I think
in a lot of ways I’ve always taken
community for granted but after this
experience I realized just how vital
community is I wouldn’t have been able
to make it without the 13 others
long-term survival really requires
community and I don’t just mean survival
in the physical sense but to really
thrive to feel safe to feel a sense of
belonging and a sense of purpose we have
to have community and I think the main
takeaway from my experience is that a
strong community doesn’t just happen by
accident we must we must build it we
must nurture it and we must rely upon it
and if we do that we can face any
obstacle whether that be surviving on an
island for a TV show or just face the
challenges that life inevitably has for
us thank you
[Applause]
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