My name is Evan and I’m a producer with Jet Set Zero.  I follow my friends around, film everything they do, then help piece it together into episodes like the one you (hopefully) just watched.  I have an awesome job and I’m insanely lucky, which is why I’ve been happy to remain anonymous throughout this whole process.  Also, my bosses determined that I don’t meet our standards of attractiveness.  But while I may be barred from appearing on camera, there’s no rule in here that says I can’t blog, so after 8 months of producing, shooting, and co-editing, I’ve decided to break the silence and share with you a little bit of what goes in to crafting this series.

For starters, you should know that everyone who works for JS0 is a complete masochist.  Most companies that produce shows like ours do so with a crew of at least 3 people in the field.  They also have an editor, assistant editor, and a couple technicians back in the States to put it all together, and then a whole slew of people whose jobs are to encode, embed, advertise, track, quantify, and sell it.  Here at Jet Set Zero, we thought it would be funny if we did all of that but with only 4 people.  Total.  It turns out that we were kinda right; We’re in the midst of producing our seventh season, and each person involved works around the clock to bring episodes to air.  And we love it.

Making it look easy.

My current 24-hour shift started in late April, when I flew down to Quito.  I hoped to get acclimated to the altitude, improve my limited Spanish, and get a general feel for the city in the week before the cast arrived.  I had been warned that climbing stairs and drinking beer would be challenging at this height, but I was happy to find that it was just the stairs.  On my second day in town I climbed to El Panacillo, the highest point in Quito, and definitely felt a bit winded up top.  I immediately went back down and found the lowest bar I could find, which was actually just a pool table with some crates around it and a kid selling cigarettes.  Unfortunately, those crates were still 9,350 feet in the air, so it wasn’t a huge relief.

The altitude definitely made things difficult early on.  The camera we shot on (the Canon 7D) is surprisingly heavy and I’m not-surprisingly weak, so lots of times I found myself struggling to keep up with the non-camera-carrying cast.   During Freddie’s uphill trek around Guapulo (the part when he says the view looks like a postcard) I ended up about 100 yards behind him.  That wasn’t so bad, though, compared with what was to come.

I’ve climbed a mountain once in my life.  I was 10 years old, so it probably wasn’t a very tough climb.  Mt. Punay, on the other hand, isn’t nearly as forgiving.  When I applied for this job with Jet Set Zero, I highlighted the fact that I’ve regularly had the crap kicked out of me while making films, but climbing this mountain was easily the most grueling, challenging, arduous shoot I’ve ever worked on*.  It’s next to impossible to get a good tracking shot while walking backwards up a muddy, rocky mountain.  In fact, the only tracking shot that appears in the episode cuts out just before I almost fell over.  I learned that when you climb a mountain, your job is to climb the mountain.  Anything else – like, say, producing a web-series – comes second.

After 3 hours of putting the show second, we made it to the top and took a long, long rest.  Then, of course, we watched the sunset.  I hope that the footage conveys a tenth of the beauty that we saw up on that mountain.  As I stood awe-struck at the sight of the setting sun, I realized that this scene, this magnificent moment, plays out every single day, and has since before any of us existed.  As I write this, that sun is still setting over those clouds.  If we don’t screw things up too badly, that stunning view will still be there after we’re gone.  If you ever get a chance, you should see it with your own eyes.  But pack light.

From Quito,
Evan

*Except for the time I was shot by a taser.