hey everybody adam savage in my cave and i am taking questions today from tested patrons about
mythbusters and today's question is a really interesting one robbie dehaan says i've been
watching early mythbusters episodes lately and i've noticed that adam jamie and cary grant and
tory would collaborate on nearly all of the myths in the early days but as the show progressed the
two teams seemed to separate and only work for special occasions like jado and cesa saga what was
the reasoning for this decision and did you prefer the two teams to work together or separately
the reason that that happened was not because of anyone's specific preference it was because
of the workload that we had um if you are ever lucky enough to make a show of some kind that
rates well that is an awesome thing um it yields its own really unique and interesting problems
for instance you make a show as we did the first season of mythbusters which took 10 months to make
13 episodes and those started airing and as soon as they started airing they were doing so well
discovery said next year we'd like 20 episodes and you're like i don't know how we're gonna
do that without dying and then you figure out a way to do it um because when you have a success
your parent company wants all of the success you can give them they want they want they just they
want it now they want it yesterday you better keep on going don't stop don't stop keep on going and
that's kind of the reason that we never stopped filming mythbusters there was no on season or off
season in making the show we started filming in the early spring of 2003 and we wrapped in late
2015 and for that entire time we never had more than three weeks off like three weeks is a great
amount of time to get off don't get me wrong my schedule was was terrific but i mean within
television production that was it was unrelenting um and the unrelenting aspect is the reason that
the two shops eventually bifurcated and became sort of their own shops uh jamie's shop was just
not big enough to house five people building stuff all the time not with camera crews etc
and though yeah we started out doing lots of collaboration and i really enjoyed that i mean
like i said i've worked with you know as is known i worked with tori and with grant for years before
mythbusters so we had a lot of familiarity a lot of easy working relationships and that was
delightful um but the unrelenting aspect of the schedule required a separate shop so we built m6
which was near m5 and then that was season two and then season three we built m7 yeah m5 m6 m7
um and that was the year that grant first started because uh scottie chapman was uh third mythbuster
uh in season two uh and then the m7 was the other team's shop through the end of the show and they
really [ __ ] we we functioned like two separate television shows for the majority of our run um
yeah that team had their own camera crew they had their own producers uh and their
own production facility effectively and we did lots of cross-pollination talking to them every
single day multiple times per day the two shops were only about a five minute bike ride apart
but in order to service the amount of material that our parent company requested us to make
doing it as five hosts working on the same things all the time was just not feasible
that being said the episodes in which we did get together like see-saw saga were so much fun um
we're so much fun and it's the same for those of you who saw savage builds tori belayce
um currently viewable on the escapists with one of my all-time favorite presenters richard hammond
um tori came and did a guest spot with me on savage builds in which we had a food fight
using cannons and larger implements and catapults and things and what was so there's this hidden
aspect of bringing tori over to to show up on the show that was so delightful and that is
that tori kerry grant scotty jamie and i there's a few others in that mix we are the only ones that
that's most of the list that we're the only ones that really know
what we went through as hosts of that show and by the same token all the mythbusters cameramen from
paul henry to peter coleman to scott sorensen to benny uh everybody like they share something
really unique in that position on the show and we did right so there are aspects to what
i went through while making mythbusters that only those people understand only those people witness
what i witnessed and went through what i went through and that yields an intimacy
that's really special um and so this is this is the longest way of explaining like tori shows up
on my show i hadn't seen him in the better part of 18 months and it was an absolute delight um he
torey was on the same show i was we worked the same exact way he knows exactly how to do
the awesomest piece to camera he knows what's funny he knows what's good drama and he's an
amazing maker right so he shows up and just all this hand-holding that you normally have
to do with a guest on your show doesn't have to happen more than that he's having so much fun
i'm having fun we're all like having a blast um that was what it was like every time we got
to do a collaboration seriously uh because we're in our own fifedems you know just like doing our
grinds but every now and then we cross pollinate and do the grinds together that was that was a
special occasion um so the demands of production were the reason that the two teams separated
um yeah i think that's all i have to say on that subject this was a short one thank you guys
tested patrons for these awesome questions um i just feel like every single question
i get about mythbusters is one i've never heard before remarkable um keep submitting
them i will keep answering them thank you guys so much stay safe and i will see you next time