hey everybody adam savage and i am here yeah i will oil these wheels hold on just a second
oh yeah we're watching the sausage get made today
excellent hi everybody uh adam savage in my cave and i am
answering questions today about mythbusters from tested patrons
today's question's a funny one and i have a funny answer to it uh today's question comes from
hyperband hyperbone says what is the most obscure
skill you picked up while working on mythbusters um
it's a good question uh and the main takeaway i have for mythbusters is a very very oh
let the oil work its way around those wheels so they stop squealing
yes i learned lots of skills on mythbusters i learned all sorts
of different things how to put together a lead balloon how to herd ducks uh yeah i i
learned how to water ski behind a an excavator um however the show worked best
when we weren't sure of the outcome and that was most of the time there were times that we
were specifically attempting to get a specific outcome because we were doing an interim test
we wanted to show a positive that had been done hundreds or thousands of times before by other
uh experimenters and that's when we always got boned when we needed a specific result
something would confound us on the way to that result um but for the most part the show was
best when the narrative was totally completely genuine when we were building something we had
no idea of what the outcome would be or we also had a certain amount of time to achieve something
and we got it done at the last minute like that happened a lot on the show and that's
because it happened a lot in real life and it's because of a very particular skill that all of
us gained in the course of making the show and that skill is knowing how much work you can leave
to do that you can still get done within a day okay so let's just say let me just theoretically
for this let's take a couch everyone knows what a couch looks like so a couch is composed of a
bunch of different uh components composed of components yeah that's good english uh there's
a wooden frame usually uh that wooden frame has uh foam and batting attached to it and then fabric is
upholstered over top of that um so each of those things requires a certain set of steps to get done
and what we all became experts at is in knowing how much of a couch
to leave unbuilt so that we could get it done by the end of the day and the joke i make now is that
my job is to paint myself into a corner and then film myself getting out and that's the
skill i learned on mythbusters i learned what is just enough work and just enough uncertainty
to make a shooting day both exciting and yet to get to the result you wanted to at the end and i
don't mean looking for a specific methodological result i mean getting the story on camera
and it's i mean i'll have that skill for the rest of my life uh i know one day builds always
take longer than a day and my ambition here in this space uh has has been famously overblown
um because no one day build ever happens in a day um and yet like on savage builds and mythbusters
junior the same thing held true that there were regular check-ins with production where they'd
be like can we really get this all done in a day and go yeah we can totally get
that done in that day and moreover it's going to be exciting because it's going to be tight
and that makes good television i don't know that that skill applies to anything but television
oh actually it totally does when we built the uh the command module escape
hatch at the smithsonian in the summer of 2019 that was me utilizing that skill
for a public performance yeah and my whole team was like are we really gonna get this
done in a day and i kept on being like yeah i think so and i learned to trust that i think
so i learned to trust my intuition about that and i was right it is a skill i would continue
to exercise and all of the media i play with um you know on the mythbusters tours i did
with jamie we had equipment break down all the time on stage and that was kind of the
point we never really got around to fixing it so it wouldn't break because it would break in
these really funny ways that we'd have to fix on stage and that was like the audience felt like
they were getting an extra show and they were it was real we were like climbing onto stuff
to try and fix it and rerouting water pipes and stuff like all of that is really fun to witness
it is really engaging to witness an adventure being partaken by people fit for adventure and so
you know when something breaks on a stage and the people on that stage fix that in front of you you
feel like you're seeing something pretty special and i agree that that is pretty special that's
kind of neat that is like that's really unique uh it's what made mythbusters unique
uh it's hopefully what one of the unique strings in all of the media that i will produce
and it is by far the most esoteric and hard to define skill uh that i gained while making
mythbusters yeah i think that's a pretty good answer thank you guys so much hyperband thank
you for your excellent question and uh per always keep submitting your questions tested
patrons and i will continue to answer them stay safe happy holidays whichever holiday you feel
like celebrating well that's the one that you should and i will see you guys next time cheers