Laura posted recently about watching youtube videos of folks alone in nature, and keeping in her mind the reality that they are responsible for setting up, and taking down, every shot you see in the video – even if that means traveling the same route three times or more to get that effortless-seeming documentary contextual long shot:

https://blog.lauramichet.com/people-filming-themselves-in-nature

And it made me remember the Canadian tv show Survivorman, where Toronto local Les Stroud films himself solo in the wilderness in various survival situations. The first season came out while I was in undergrad and I fully imprinted on it – this was amazing, grounded-feeling information about wilderness survival, and it felt really relevant to a lot of the stories I wanted to write at the time! And I hadn’t really come across video content like this before – the show launched the same year youtube did, and probably didn’t intend to define this kind of content for decades to come? But wow it sure did.

But I wanted to share my favourite episode, and my favourite part of it, where Stroud explains that the real work, the hardest part, the bit that makes everything else higher stakes and more complicated, is the fact that he has to film himself:

This line, about hiking all the way out of sight and then back again for the camera, changed something fundamental in my brain:

This kind of thing is really, really important media literacy, and I suspect we need it more than ever these days, as we have to start parsing AI video and more. Shoutout to Les Stroud for making sure that he included this in his first season.