www.hollywoodreporter.com: While Jeff Probst may be the face of Survivor, one of the people most responsible for what viewers see onscreen has spent 50 seasons behind the scenes. John Kirhoffer has been with the show since inception as a co-executive producer, overseeing the iconic challenges that have become one of the series’ most defining and enduring elements.
3 comments:
As a long time survivor fan, I have always thought it would be a super fun job to design the challenges. Imagine your entire job is to make obstacle courses and put brightly colored, vaguely tribal-inspired patterns on them and then figure out how to get a camera crew in there. Then, you get to watch people scramble over your obstacle course and then fight about who did it the worst and then vote someone off the island because of it. That sounds like an awesome job. What doesn’t sound like an awesome job is being the people to test the obstacle course. That sounds hot and physically exhausting. However, I think its really awesome that these people are getting the opportunity to join the team this way and are being offered a way into TV production. Its weird, odd jobs like these that really get you in the door, and despite sounding a little miserable, this job sounds like a good story and a cool thing for the resume.
It's a pretty funny concept that a bunch of producers and other big production heads may have started out as just a body in space to fulfill a task. It is somewhat heartening to hear that the Survivor team, somewhat accidentally, created a somewhat easily accessible entry level position for the TV industry. Also Survivor seems like an incredibly interesting show to work for, getting to create giant over the top obstacle courses probably never gets too boring, especially when you have the dream team backing you to make sure they actually work. I like this producer's idea that good assistants should be promoted as soon as possible, and I wonder what other people at the top think on this subject, or if many people try to hold onto assistants that they like rather than promote them as he suggests. Overall, I bet Survivor is a pretty fun place to work, and seems like it might open a bunch of other opportunities in the future.
I think I've found a dream job. Growing up, I would often watch survivor with my mom. I have fond memories of each picking our favorite contestants from the first episode and seeing how far they each made it. One of the things that we would always talk about was how fun the challenges looked. As many people do when watching this type of show, I imagined what it would look like if I went on as a contestant. While I don't think I would particularly enjoy the social politics aspect, the challenges always looked like a hell of a time. What I didn't realize during that time was the quality of the team behind them. I am always a proponent of hiring from within, and seeing that the survivor team is really committed to that is reassuring to see. I'd really love to do some more research into the technical teams behind survivor and see what their daily life is like. Designing and loading in different challenges seems like a lot of fun.
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