oh there we go
hello everybody adam savage and i am in am i too bright
the light that burns twice as bright burns half as long and you have burned so very very brightly roy
hello everybody adam savage here in my cave answering
questions from tested patrons today on the subject of mythbusters and today's question is a doozy
and i love it i think i'm a little off angle there that's a little better excellent today's
question comes from mikey's lab and mikey's lab wants to know if someone was to pick up the torch
and continue mythbusters what is the one critical aspect they can't overlook
this is such a good question and i don't have like a ready answer and i did not come up with a ready
answer when i read your question a few minutes ago i i'm simply gonna spit ball talking about
this off the top of my head uh so the first thing i want to say is you can't just go make a hit show
just like you can't just go write a hit song there's no formula for doing it
it is a combination of people and an idea and a culture at the time that all those things meld
together and mythbusters was we were incredibly lucky to make mythbusters at the time we did
and in the culture that we did and we got to grow for a long time under that structure but
uh you know over time the ratings change everything is a bell curve and we saw the
other side of of our success and eventually it became time to put mythbusters to bed and we did
but if someone were to pick up the torch and carry on mythbusters and i'm thinking that
you know in this theoretical you're asking i'm assuming it's not just a one-off you're asking me
what would be a formula for success or at least for avoiding failure
let's say that because i don't know if i can't give you a formula for success i can
give you some ideas about how to avoid failure because i do think i understand some of that
the first thing if you would make a science show about people who are testing the questions that
they have is those people have to be invested in those questions it doesn't matter how exciting
the question is it matters how excited the people testing that question are
and that's actually something that network television doesn't always understand
it's just just a fact uh network executives tend to think in terms of big bold ideas
and that's great like there are plenty of places in which a big bold idea is really important
and it can carry you really far absolutely i'm not denigrating big bold ideas but i'm saying
we made an entire episode in which the a story was about making a balloon out of lead
and that is remains one of my i think one of our finest episodes of the show
and there's no explosions there's no real danger except for lead poisoning uh
but because jamie and i were so fascinated by the challenge of
working with the worst material for making a balloon imaginable uh it made a great story
and so there's a there's a phrase from raymond chandler uh in talking about his
uh the hero of his detective novels and the hero of a of a detective novel in general chandler says
um he says wait a minute i'm trying to get this quote up in my head um
he says the story is this man's search for adventure it's describing a detective story
says the story is the main character's search for adventure and it would be no adventure if it did
not happen to a man fit for adventure i'm sorry to use the gendered phrase that's how it was written
but i love this idea it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a person fit for adventure
and that's what all of us hosts brought to the show i think we brought a fitness for adventure
a fitness to investigate to ask questions to argue to fight for your point to put your body
into the mix to test something to make yourself super uncomfortable to approach the shame and
exhaustion all the things that we dealt with that's what made the show interesting i submit
that that was more important than the actual stories we were doing it was the fact that we
were interested in the stories there's something inherently interesting in watching someone do
what they love and what they're passionate about it is always going to be thrilling so you have to
find hosts that understand that balance and know how to work within that balance all five of us
really understood how television works and how real life worked and also we learned over time
how science and scientific methodological testing worked uh and you have to balance those things
those things have to be worked in orientation with each other there's this really cool moment when
at one point discovery was thinking about doing a lot of doing some 3d programming
and they partnered up with jim cameron's production company because he's one of the
leaders in 3d and they have just an insane amount of institutional knowledge and cameron sent out
one of their lead producers to spend a day with us and i pretty sure i remember that we were filming
the jack sparrow holding the boat underwater story which was a really complicated story to film
and the dan tapster or the executive producer mythbusters was on set at the time and then
cameron's producer like spent a few hours with us and he turned to dan about halfway
through the day and he goes let me get this straight am i seeing correctly
that the story that the that the test is taking precedence over the filming and dan said yes
yes it is we're making sure we get the shots but we're also making sure we get the test
done right and yeah it does take precedence and the guy was like i didn't see that coming
from a television production standpoint that is a that's a that's a hard needle to thread uh
you've got to come you've got to be able to adjust to reality as it's happening uh and tell and tell
and still tell a true story no matter what happens and in television production you've got a certain
amount of footage you've got to get every day this is why reality television is so scripted
because it's hard to make un super unscripted television it's a real pain in the ass so you
look for the simple narratives um on mythbusters there were very few simple narratives so you need
a production team and i've got just the one you need a production team that is also super
light on its feet uh if you want to test things scientifically you've got to be ready to change
up the testing that you're planning to do when you come to a result you didn't expect because that
happened to us all the time and in those cases the way we were able to keep making the show is
because of our producers because of our production team our production team um again not again i
i've recorded a couple of these today and in a previous one i mentioned uh producer linda
wolkovic who was with the show longer than almost anybody and i had worked with her at industrial
light magic an incredible production manager but also an amazing maintainer of client relations so
linda engendered this across the whole team and everybody was really good at
at keeping our keeping our vendors and locations really happy so if we had to film out at alameda
or the alameda bomb range or crow's landing or wherever we went we left the location better than
we found it every single time without exception we repaired everything we broke we fixed everything
that may have been broken even before we got there and we did that because it's the right thing to do
and it also made sure that everybody we work with wanted to work with us again and that meant that
we could come to an unexpected result be like oh my god we can't do this next test indoors it's way
too percussive we're going to need a big outdoor location oh my god and that's when the production
team would reach out to someone and because of a previous relationship we'd be able to do it
so in essence i think i've taken your question as what were the formulas for mythbusters
success and this is a ridiculous and impossible question to answer
but i can say that some of the things that i feel strongly contributed to our success are
the things that i've listed thus far um that the hosts and the on-camera talent is as interested in
the story as they appear to be or should appear to be that the production team maintains a high
level record of treating their vendors and their collaborators and their locations with the utmost
respect uh and that both the production team sorry all three the production team the network and the
hosts all have to be willing to have their minds changed there were plenty of times we'd call up
discovery and say you know that big explosion you were hoping for at the end of this episode
we're going to do a totally different thing and it's not going to be it's not going to sound as
big but trust us it's going to be awesome and they never regretted taking our advice when we did that
i would love to see someone pick up the mantle of the show and run with it again
it would be a very different show and it should be a very different show
but i'd love to see that show oh my gosh i just was like sitting there thinking like ah
yeah that'd be really neat thank you so much for that delightful walk down a strange lane
to think about but very fruitful i really enjoyed it tested patrons keep submitting
your questions and i will always answer them thank you guys and i'll see you next
time