KYTL Season 5 Finale: Ian Interview

foreign [Music] here of season two through five editor season six player I thought you said that uh you'd never never play the game ever uh yeah yeah you know um uh that is true except for this this one time except for this you know there's an exception to every rule you know and so uh in general it is true that I would I would never play Survivor um after editing all of these seasons and seeing everybody cry and all this kind of stuff but what I left out was that when I played season six I hadn't seen all of that stuff yet because I hadn't edited all the seasons yet I'd only edited season two and yeah I did see everybody crying stuff in person but um it's not the same as you know having to relive it for for hundreds and hundreds of days editing it all and going through the emotional turmoil of it so like if I had edited All-Stars maybe I wouldn't have played season six but because I'd only edited the season two which you know grand scheme of things are relatively drama Dr less drama season than some of the others I guess that's crazy easy to say that's actually ridiculous thing to say the point is I did play and I was just lying about it though to everybody online yeah my phones my phone's blowing up dude I'm getting uh lots of people messaging me like bro why didn't you lie about this dude why did you tell me that you played so that's good to know they change is there a new YouTube account yeah yeah if you're listening to this go go subscribe to Survivor Michigan Gen 2 new new era new channel you know so uh definitely go check that out it's gonna be gonna be all kinds of great content coming your way so is the Survivor Michigan one just forever like I think I think we'll change the name of that one to gen one and then it'll just be kind of like a defunct immortalized yeah it'll be it'll be done more or less you know we don't want um people to it's like an internal Club thing basically but just it makes more sense for each like group of people to like just be the only ones having access to their own thing and like the younger people don't want us older geezers involved in their and yeah you know so on so it's just like seemed to make the most sense yeah that makes sense yeah they don't want the younger ones don't want the uh the older people in Fall with you know generation two there's no way anyone from no yeah yeah yeah nobody from gen 1 would have any role in Gen 2 certainly not as a player so uh yeah you're the only one right it's only Ian you know we're seeing no other remnants of gen 1 and gen 2. that's it yeah that's it nobody else from General I'm pretty sure right like nobody else from gen 1 ever played again to my knowledge so you know or I guess me and I will play for the first time I don't know why I said that played again that doesn't even make sense of what I said everybody from me Noah Georgia Katie hadn't played before so like there would never be someone from gen 1 who played on gen 2. I not that I I'm aware of obviously obviously not obviously everything we say too is 100 truthful and should be taken I've I've never lied I have never lied to the audience I've never told a lie I've not heard one lie no I only speak the truth yeah so just just so you know everything said in these podcasts 100 Canon 100 believable never will be contradicted at any point in the future that's true um but um so I mean I know there's a lot of stuff that we want to talk about for you like in all stars and kind of like you know get your take on All-Stars we have a lot of questions but you know figured that we can since this trailer just did get released uh it makes sense to talk a little bit about uh just season six and Gen 2 in general like so this season six did it happen right after all stars like what will happen in the kind of how did this chronologically work yeah so season six was the semester after all-stars so that was the last semester that me and Katie were in college so we had like wanted to play Forever and Ever you know like and um I had applied for season four and not got cast and at that point I pretty much was like I you are going like you're going to cast me on season six like you can't not cast me like I thought it was ridiculous I didn't get cast for season four I forgot you applied for season four yeah I thought it was so for season six when I applied um that time it was more like I knew I I knew they were going to cast me because I remember in my interview they were it was like Matthew and I think a few other people and they were like so what like how much will upset you if you're not cast and I said well if you don't cast me there's not going to be a Seasons three four and five like I will not like I that obviously isn't true but like I was like yeah why would I edit three more seasons of this if you guys like aren't gonna cast me like that's ridiculous like I'm putting so much work into this like I I just want to play I want to see how I can do I after seeing my friends go through it for so many so many semesters I really wanted to know what it was like I really wanted to experience it myself um so I really wanted to play and uh like you know so I was really excited I was really excited about it um and uh the other people the other producers all of them like speak to their own their own stories about why why they did season six but for me I just really wanted to play and I had wanted to play the whole time and I was like I just want you want to know there's a part of you that wants to know you know you want to know how how you would do on the season so yeah so I played season six people you know play Survivor for multiple seasons and edited them and basically all it sounds like in the trailer you're saying that all that I've been doing it wrong that is correct yeah that is correct yeah but every pretty much uh yeah my belief system was that people have been playing Survivor wrong and I was here to show them you know the true the true light the true way I don't know I don't know what the context is for that line like I'm sure I'm referring specifically to somebody like on the season or something but so going into the game like did you have what was do you have any sort of strategy like beforehand like let's say that this is let's say it's December 2019 you know All-Stars is finishing wrapping up you know that like season six casting's probably happening you're thinking about season six you know what's what's in your mind for like I mean I was extreme I was extraordinarily nervous I remember being insanely nervous I mean I don't want to I don't want to say too much about my strategy or anything you know I don't want to want to spoil anything like everyone should just watch the season you know it's it's a great great great season and uh everybody should watch it but um uh I remember being really really nervous and I was really really scared about there being like a big Target on my back potentially because of my role in the show and stuff like that so those are the things I was nervous about and um I also like I kind of had heard of rumors that like Katie and Noah might be applying but I did not know uh for sure what was going on with that and I had no idea that George was going to be on the season so uh that was a shock to be sure when I showed the first day and George was there cool yeah also like there's two trailers that got dropped today we also saw a nice look at like Gen 2 in general season's uh six and Beyond yeah oh yeah yeah there's two trailers Gen 2 Gen 2 lots of Legends like it's gonna be nuts dude yeah everybody should I like didn't even know who they were but I was like I want to see I want to see who these people are they sound there's a lot of great lines that sound funny yeah yeah Gen 2 Gen 2 best gen that's what everyone says that's what that's what I wanted honestly like um yeah first is the worst second is the best third is the one with the treasure chest right yeah gen 3 was entirely pirate themed the entire generation was pirate so that's where the treasure chest comes in but uh yeah so that's season six great great season um I think it's gonna be I think it's gonna be fantastic and I can't wait to can't wait to see it so there's a lot of time um no spoilers but you know you can do you can make your own uh I don't know no spoilers at the very beginning trailer that they start filming in January of 2020. uh yeah I remember this yeah yeah and then it says it's airing this fall that's like it's kind of crazy it's like coming that's coming up I know I know that's what I heard so yeah and I also heard that if it's airing in the fall that means it's guaranteed to come out in like you know September October right because they they would never say this fall if they didn't mean like early fall like when I think of fall I think of you know the leaves changing college football Halloween like September October or fall months November is like borderline December is definitely winter so when they said this one December release that would just be ridiculous so would it even makes sense so when they're saying this fault they're actually the people who are ending this they've promised you a September like they promised you like Liberty probably right it's not beginning of fall yeah I've actually heard that that is the release date I I can't confirm it but I've heard that rumored so you know if you're out there listening to this make sure to Hound the editors and tell them that you want to see this thing in the fall because anything later than Halloween at last would be just like get out fake it would be a completely lie in a fabrication dang I'm actually impressed I didn't think it was being edited that fast I mean it kind of makes sense in that like since there's different editing teams for these future Seasons it was there is a people were able to work on them like kind of simultaneously as as season five so it's one of the benefits of having these multiple teams Gen 2 great stuff very exciting um but we still got to put a put a cap on gen one here and uh and the All-Star stuff because that's what you've been working on for a very very long time so how's it feeling like it's it's done all stars is done you know what the um I thought it was gonna be a lot sadder about it than I actually have been like it was a very emotional thing for everyone involved but I think that like going to Vegas with everybody watching it together and I actually got to watch it twice with people from Survivor because I um some people who were in New York who couldn't make it to Vegas I watched it with them like a week before also so I got to like cry with everybody about it like two different times and um through all of that like it was kind of like a big group hug afterwards you know for a while and uh it felt very very um they're very very cathartic and so for a really long time I thought it was gonna be really really sad about it but that hasn't really set in yet like maybe it will sit at some point but right now I'm just like enjoying life like I've been playing pickleball with my friends I've been going to the gym like I've been uh catching up on shows and stuff I watched a succession finale last night you know I loved that like um so uh yeah it's the the board I would use to say is a satisfied like I feel very satisfied I feel like I did exactly what I said I was going to do and I feel my biggest fear was always that like it wouldn't be as good as I wanted it to be or the season wouldn't turn out how I wanted it to and somewhere in the middle I was kind of concerned about that like the reception wasn't as positive as I wanted it to be from some corners from some places yeah and uh I was worried about it but you know I stuck to my guns and the last couple episodes especially turned out like exactly as I'd imagined them all these years and so I feel very satisfied with how it turned out and I feel like I'll always be able to look back on it and be like just very excited about it you know it's got to feel nice to have uh so much more free time it is really nice because honestly it sounds like everyone who played was satisfied or most everyone who played was satisfied with their edit which is pretty hard to do so that's definitely a win yeah yeah I feel very like every I don't know anybody who's like I mean they obviously I guess they wouldn't tell me if they were but I'm pretty sure that nobody is unhappy with their edit I'm pretty sure everybody liked their edit and the vast majority of people felt like they were shown you know in a really positive yeah more or less and that their whole their whole thing got shown so that was always my goal and there was really specific parts that I you know had had in my head for a really long time and those parts worked so like when I was watching with everybody and the two parts that like the main that the Survivor group when we were all together watching it like that people cried at was obviously the end and then also the scene where Cooper and Cooper's like send off it was interesting like so when Crouch gets voted off there's obviously the Crouch montage and everybody we were watching with like 20 of us everybody was like cheering and clapping like oh yeah we love Crouch let's go and then the Cooper one it was like a totally different vibe everyone was like crying and sad it was a more like sad thing and specifically the line where Cooper says that um you know uh I have been waiting two years to make this video you know I kept this going with a couple other people specifically to do this and so many of you got to play because we did this you know and that's like the real that's like part of the thesis statement of it for me was that um without that without these other people doing this all these other people wouldn't have met they wouldn't be friends some of them wouldn't be you know lovers now etc etc like all this happened specifically because like some people wanted to keep it going and um Wanted to make a community out of it and uh so yeah at the end of the day I feel like I I did exactly what I said I would and I feel very proud of it it's awesome yeah it's I think I've mentioned this before on on the podcast and stuff like uh I think one of the things I think is really cool about All-Stars and what you did was that it was very like unique like you made it um you edited the season in the way that you wanted to tell the story and that meant like it'd be experimenting and doing your own thing at different times and like uh you know I think that makes it stick out among everything else that's out there because you you really made your your own distinct take on like what college Survivor is and like how what All-Stars was and how how the story is told um you weren't you didn't necessarily like you know make yourself Boxed In by the ideas of what CBS Survivor is or how the story is told that way and like you know Drew inspiration from CBS Survivor but also like made it into and also you know past college survivors but made it into your own thing as well yeah yeah I mean that was yes especially with All-Stars that was something I'd always had in mind you know I wanted to do like to be continued at the end of every episode and always I always had it in my head that the last the penultimate episode would end on a shot of like you know the statue hyping up this is gonna be we're going back to the original final Challenge and then it would be to be concluded because there's just something like there there's something about that I really like they did that in the back to the future movies that's where I got the idea from so in Back to the Future the end of the first one says to be continued in the end of the second one says to be concluded and there's something so definite about that so definitive like I'm like obsessed with endings um if you couldn't tell from All Stars like basically like I think that um I had a column when I was at Michigan in the Michigan student newspaper the Michigan Daily that was um all about the whole column was about like endings and I have this whole theory that not my theory but I think that the ending it defines the meaning of the story so if your story doesn't have an end it doesn't have a point basically um and that's an issue I have with a lot of modern day media you know with like the MCU or like Star Wars or stuff that like they're not allowing it to end and that's kind of taking away like the point you you like the moral of the story is always at the end you know um yeah and that's like really what gives the story its power it's not it can't just go on forever you know everything ends at some point right the sun sets and like everybody dies at some point and every story has an end and so it felt like um uh what am I talking about yeah I don't know I thought a lot about that going into All-Stars about like what is the point of this story and not just like the finale but the whole season as an ending what is the point of this story and the point of this story to me was this is a story about a community being born like in season one none of these people really know each other there's like a couple people but mostly they don't know each other and by the end it becomes so interconnected that you're seeing all of these problems with like production is bleeding into the game and the game is bleeding into life and people are dating and people are best friends and people are dating people on production and it's like the line between the gate there is no line anymore between the Game reality and anything at all and uh and so I was like the point of all this was really just that they that this community got got born got created and we've watched it over five seasons this is like a documentary about that yeah and honestly it's helped create other community as well like I know some other College Survivor that have started because of it which is crazy it's really cool yeah yeah I hear from people all the time that like Survivor Michigan inspired them to make their own College Survivor and et cetera et cetera just like we were inspired by Survivor Maryland it's like a passing of the Baton you know um uh somebody else will be inspired by us and they'll be someone else will be inspired by them and it'll go on and on yeah forever and that's very cool I really like what you said about how the the ending like defines what the story is you know because I it makes sense to me given that like in the end I win so it kind of works you know it really it really comes full circle that like Sam from the very start was the best one and that's why you know an author well I've I always said that one of the main story lines of All Stars was these competing philosophies between Cooper and Leia and who is correct and the answer is neither of them the answer is somebody in the middle you know somebody in the middle of somebody who's flexible somebody who takes a little bit of Leia's philosophy and a little bit of Coopers you know um and it's not yeah like both of them were wrong both of them were too stingy and too stagnant and that's not to say they're wrong in every season but in every season of Survivor is different for this season the right way to play was something in the middle of those two ideas um and so I think that it makes sense at Sam won because he was the person who straddled that line and the bet I think the key thing is in the end of the game I said this elsewhere the end of the game both Cooper and Leia believe that Sam agrees with their view of the game another thing was the the best one of the better moves you made it's not like a move per se but it the fact that you were able to have both of these people who had such opposed ideologies 100 believe that you agreed with their View and that ultimately helped you win it kept Cooper wanting to work with you and they kept Leia knowing you would never turn on her I got you all the way to the end and it got Cooper to like vouch for you on the jury yeah I mean it was about yeah it was like I think it was I probably didn't think about it the same way that that you're like articulating it here as much as I was like I need both of them to think I'm on their side in general but I mean in all seriousness like I definitely feel like one of the things that's that's cool about how you've edited All-Stars and in general the other seasons is like yes it's a story about you know who wins and how the winner wins but it's also like a there's a larger story that's being told too you know it's like it's really a large the true stories about like this community and what happened to the people that were like friends in college and were doing college at Michigan while also playing this game and like you know season four you see a story about how Dale wins but it's also about Shannon and her right it's not important a lot of things it's about multiple things at the same time there's like not just one simple story you know it's not just yeah it's about so many different things it's about loyalty it's about like uh it's a it's really about how do people play this kind of effect up game when they have these real relationships you know and in many different ways they have them like Megan and Jackson are dating you have it's like where's the line making it like is the line of the game like what what is what is fair and what's not fair in this sort of game Does anything go because if anything goes is it morally acceptable for Megan to be lying about her relationship for months ahead of time and have fake discussions about a breakup like I can imagine if I was in that scenario I'd be very upset with Megan when if I found out that she like if I had a real heart to heart with her about some kind of breakup that would like I've had those conversations with people and to find out that's fake that's like a very violating thing you know um so it's like yeah this is one of the cool things about college Survivor I think like I feel like with CBS you know we're on season 44 now so the 44 is done it's kind of like we've kind of like obviously they add twists and different things to it but we've kind of seen that format a bunch of times now but College Survivor introduces all these like other elements to it of like people that that are you know you don't see in CBS survivors so to me it feels like there's still a lot of kind of innovation and like the thing I always loved about CBS Survivor these like kind of moral debates about like what is right and wrong within the context of the game and a lot of those have been kind of like work through and like understood over the years and just kind of like reached a point where people more or less agree but when it comes to college Survivor now suddenly like there's all these other things that are thrown into it like you know yeah free like lying like having a fake relationship or about um like screenshotting things and sending them to people or about like people being friends beforehand and like how do you treat that like so I think the interesting thing about college survivors as in these other elements that aren't that haven't really been seen before and now there's like these moral debates about these things and I know that people like some fans didn't like the whole moral debates like like Leia's like whatever uh at least it's interesting because these these questions haven't really been discussed like the same way before because it's a different College driver is a different thing yeah no I agree I think that that's made also so fascinating to me was that there were all these kinds of questions being brought up about things that I'd never seen before and you know um so many so much of the Dynamics was something that I've never seen before you know and uh I found that fascinating I think that it's endlessly fascinating because there isn't really a right or wrong you know like Leia could be right or Cooper could be right it just depends on your point of view you know like there's a part of me that thinks yeah in a game anything goes and we all agree to this and we know but there's another part of me that says you know especially I can say this now that like I've played that it's open that I played Survivor I understand from watching it editing it and having played it that it isn't a game when you're playing it it feels like life and death it doesn't feel like a game so it can't just be you can't just like I said this is very early on in her thesis like it can't just the answer of oh it's just a game can't really be used because it really isn't it doesn't feel that way even though it intellectually you can say that but emotionally it doesn't feel that way to like 95 of the people playing it except for maybe like Jackson or Cooper but even then like when Cooper loses a game I don't see him cry you know I see him lose games all the time even Jackson says like in one of the early confessionals and all-stars Matthew asked him if he would vote off be willing to vote off Megan at the end if it thinks right and I'm gonna say I'm not going to speak for him but I don't think he would have yeah he's kind of like uh I don't know I don't know if it'd be worth it like you know if you could very well have seen a version of the Season where they get to the end and now like and Jackson loses because he you know is not willing to I you know I don't know if Jackson would have been willing to vote off Megan we'll never know I guess but I don't think he would have been but yeah I mean the beginning of the season because it sounded like he would he's like oh that'd be a tough one I I don't know if I'd be able to like uh you know do to do that one like it kind of sounds like he's he wouldn't do it it's because it's what Leia says near the end she says like knowing that doing this is taking something so important away from somebody you care about that's where it becomes really up and twisted that's where it's like me doing this thing is I know like I know that this is Cooper's number one thing in college that Cooper has been waiting for years and years for this moment and so it's like to take that to act to be spending all of my time trying to take that away from him it's a very wild emotionally damaging whole situation and another thing that's so different than like what you see on like where your traditional Survivor is that like there's no million dollar prize like you're not performing in front of um you know like millions and millions of people so it's like the stakes I mean even though the stakes feel like the most important thing in the world while you're playing like you kind of inherently know that this that if you lose or whatever like it's not like it's not that the stakes aren't as high so like if you so the millions because the million dollars isn't kind of tingled in front of you I think that also can lead to people making like different decisions because it's kind of like the friendships are weighted a little bit more and the money at the end is like waited a lot less so like even though you want the glory of winning and of like competition it's also like I don't know it's also it's not it's kind of like a little bit more balanced but now there's like a real question about like what actually does mean more like this title and this win or like kind of these relationships and you know whether it should even those things should be connected in the first place yeah the the removing the money aspect does change it dramatically it makes it about solely how much do people care about it you know and that they want to win um yeah it was fascinating it was a fascinating story to explore it was a fascinating story to tell and um I'm very happy and great grateful that I got the opportunity to do it so you've got a lot of questions from uh the fans just like they asked the finalists questions there's some questions for Ian and uh the first one here uh is talking about the music they say the music was really great what was your process for finding and choosing themes throughout the season yeah so music is really really important to me and it was more it got more important to me as the seasons went on and for all stars I had so for season four Dale and Shannon each got like their own theme music Shannon's was um uh the tortuga song from Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man's Chest and Dales was from Blazing Saddles and they had these theme musics they like came up a few different times and Shan's actually continues on it's the same music that gets played when we have the like Idol recap with Shannon in All Stars um for All-Stars I wanted everybody to have their own theme music and pretty much every single person in the season has their own theme music um some of them might be like harder to see than others so they're like more obvious you know like uh what's uh like Tom has the the Flight of the Valkyries which is actually what he had himself played in his audition tape so it just seemed like a natural thing and it just fit they would pick music that fit the person and their character and like their role in the season one of the earlier ones I had was um I had the last rights music the music that plays with Cooper gets voted off I had that picked out like so long ago so so many years ago um and also Crouch the Crouch had his own little like kind of jingle that comes in each time um different people had different had different theme musics everybody had one Bailey had the West Wing theme um Emily B had uh barricades from Attack on Titan and Emily B1 was one of the earlier ones also because I really I had I actually edited that tribal was I think the first or second tribal I edited it was the Emily B tribal because I had the music picked out forever and ever that that was gonna be the music because the lyrics for that just fit so perfectly for me with what's happening in that moment it's like um I think about the price of our soul you know and it's like as we're doing this thing and voting off Emily B it what's this going to do well it ends up destroying Cooper's game you know it blows up the game and leads to all this crazy happening um and so there's a bunch of different versions of the barricade song If you go back through an Emily B confessionals all through the season all the way back in episode one that song is playing under her confessionals so there's a lot of different stuff like that that you could go back if you watch it Megan and Jackson had their own theme music the All-Stars theme was the first was that I discovered I always wanted to have a theme for All-Stars like like the force theme from Star Wars you know or hedwig's theme from Harry Potter and uh the music I found this music that plays at the very beginning of the very first episode the very very beginning it's just like that's like a bad version of it but pretty much that's what it is and that comes out in every single episode there's like an actiony version of it there's um like a sadder version of it and it became more and more prevalent throughout the merch but it's in every single episode usually in moments of people discussing things that are outside the game impacting inside the game so that which is like the main theme of the season so usually if it's people talking like their friendships or uh or it's like just a key Alliance being formed like it plays under Sam and Adam talking for the first time I think and there's some other examples of that whenever Leia's talking about Leia's list it usually comes up it kind of duels as like a Leia theme honestly in a lot of ways and uh there's an action version that you see a few different times it's also the music that's playing during the final challenge at the end when it's flashing between all the different challenges um and that yeah that music was from the uh 2007 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie so a lot of what I would do is find good soundtracks from kind of obscure places that people wouldn't recognize it's like sometimes I'm like in the trailers I had a bunch of Star Wars and Stranger Things music and that's fine but I didn't want the main All-Stars theme to be something really recognizable I wanted it to be something that you probably weren't familiar with um uh Akshay had a good one too akshay's theme is actually like the music from the uh from a section of uh by one of the Bionicle video games basically and it's from it's the section of the the water tribe in that video game so akshay's theme is like the Pawnee theme basically because they're the water tribe and he came up with that name so and that starts off as his music and then it later reappears every time there's like a big pony scene so in a lot of meetings between Sam and Megan or Megan and Adam later on in the show we'll go back to that potty theme uh because that's like uh that's representative of them in some way so the music was very important to me I thought a lot about the music all the time um and uh very intentional yeah it's all the music was very very intentional and if you I could find my list somewhere of all the different theme musics but everybody has one in the end everybody got one for a little while I wasn't sure I thought maybe not everyone was gonna get one because I couldn't find music that spoke to each person but eventually I I did and all 21 people got their own music can we expect like uh All-Stars or Survivor Mission like gen 1 soundtrack one day I would love to do that that's on my list of things to do I would love to release a soundtrack with like it would have the track name of what I'm calling it and then also what the actual song is it would have both of them yeah yeah um you know because I'd love I've actually have sort of plans for this I've written out certain songs like uh for certain things and yeah I think a soundtrack would be really fun to release at some point I don't know how but I would release it somehow it'd be fun you could make like a like a playlist like a Spotify playlist yeah Spotify playlist put on the keep your torchal at Spotify uh playlist or something yeah maybe maybe I find the YouTube ones and upload them as MP3s into the I don't know I can figure it out um yeah but yeah I mean uh that's one of the things that like I think the All-Stars has a lot of re-watch value because for things like paying attention to the theme and like to the music and like all these little things that um I think that because of just how much you content you see and watching it for the first time and there's even trying to understand like who are the characters and what are they doing and a rewatch is where you can really notice things like that like the foreshadowing and like the music and even like how the music is communicating a part of the story yeah I would hope that I think it would have a ton of re-watch value like so many there's so many little seeds for things like every time you see the brioche Chiron has such a different impact when you know how that all ends when you know that it goes from like the breed to briatch to Brianna like these three different like aspects of Bree that we get in the finale um and there's a lot of stuff like that like there's a lot of eighth place foreshadowing for Megan I was honestly surprised that I think people just didn't want to see it but I thought there was a lot of pre-telegraph stuff that Megan was going to go home in eighth place um or that's somebody from Pawnee was going to it seemed like they're not pretty well established that's one of the thing I think I think was brilliant about it though is that there's a lot of foreshadowing that somebody from Pawnee would get eighth place and it kind of ended up by the time we get to the final late but the three names out there are myself Megan and so like those are those are literally the three names that are written down at that Tribal Council yeah remaining so it was kind of all leading towards one of us and honestly the way that you could see the season even getting into that episode you could have reasonably seen any of us going yeah I think you could have I totally could see that yeah so I think it was cool one of the quotes I really liked from that episode was and I didn't even realize that I said this but watching it back at the challenge you I think Brady asks like um you know Sam you're the only one that's done the uh loved ones challenge twice and I was like yeah like last time I was final eight and I like got voted off like you know you the loved ones challenge either propels you to get voted off in eighth place or like all the way to the victory in the end and it's like that's kind of the two different scenarios that that happened both had literally had happened to me in those two seasons and also like that's kind of the of the Pawnee people one of us was destined to kind of repeat the eighth place again it was like was it gonna be me or is it going to be Megan so I thought that was an interesting there's some really good foreshadowing I'd have to like I don't know what my favorite one is but there's a lot of there's a lot of really good ones I think a lot of really good ones so I would definitely recommend a re-watch at some point I think it's a really re-watchable season I think there's like more and more you can always dig into with different characters stories will and Kevin have a lot of really funny scenes in the re-watch you know like in their very first meeting they shake hands and Kevin says hope this works out hope this works out hope this works out I've been saying like I'm gonna be a different player this time like yeah like new Kevin he says in the first very first episode of the first line the characters are the most dangerous are the ones who have learned from their past mistakes right oh that's another thing uh another thematic thing for me was that pretty much another like thing I thought about was that everybody repeats the the history repeats itself the the scene in the finale where it cuts between the season one final four with Mitch and the season four final four with Shannon and the season five final four it was also something I had in my head for a really long time and when I was editing season four the finale I was already thinking about the specific flashbacks I was choosing I wanted to then be able to do have those same ones All-Stars along with some flashbacks from season four and really tie it all together this through line that this keeps happening at final four and when will says uh his line about um Survivor players don't change it's just the same stories told over and over and over again that was to me a really important part of his story and everybody's storyline so the thing for me was that in the opening credits we see something from the previous season and then All-Stars and to me the a key thing was this was always the thing that haunted the player or it's something that it was like uh something from their past that was still haunting them or was the reason they lost their original season but all of them also were foreshadowing for what happens to them on All-Stars in a lot of cases so for example Jesse's is her saying like a clue to what you know and then at all stars she finds this she spends tons of time looking for this fake Idol or another example would be Jackson I have no morals in All Stars he gets screwed over by somebody else having no morals you know and like you know leaking all this stuff about his game exactly Megan oh like sweet innocent and non-threatening well at all stars she becomes this nobody sees her as sweet or innocence at all you know they later on they see her as this whole like mess basically um and there's tons and tons of examples of that Crouch and Breeze were like specifically called out in the finale everybody else's you can go through them and like figure out most of that more but the one person that's different for was again the winner the winner Sam his very first confessional is that about how he wants to play different from season two and season two him and Jack and Sarah Z you guys you keep your Torchlight group uh all turned on each other and they all lost and he wants to not do that this time and he pretty much stick to it you go to the end with pre and Leia you stick with your alliance don't turn on them and so on a thematic level the other the other thing was the winner was the person who learned the most from their mistakes and everybody else fell into the same trap again Kevin pretty much plays the the will Blind Side is like a redo of the Daniel blind side but actually much worse um and there's a lot of examples of that throughout the season so that was an important thing for me thematically also that I thought a lot about I don't know yeah it's cool it's almost like uh if you're going through and rewatching you had to like take notes on all these things because you could literally I feel like there's like 10 different you know kind of threads you could follow for every single episode I'm like this person's storyline their music their foreshadowing but also like how did their past performance get repeated this time and like it's a it's interesting too you say like you know as for as far as my character was like I learned from some of my mistakes but you also see me fall into some of the same mistakes as well like the uh in season two I accidentally like tell I like don't know who was on the phone I tell Abby like oh it'll be the five of us in Abby I thought that she was somebody else and like kind of exposed that she was in the outside of the alliance like this time I exposed the first episode like uh that kind you know that I was thinking of voting off Adam like it's kind of funny you see also like you know I think it's because these are the same people ultimately like time has passed but people are the same people you see the same personality traits but also people's strategies sometimes they either they change or they yeah they don't I mean people don't I don't think people some people do change but in a lot of ways people don't change you know and they just they're the same so some people want to change too they like it's like one of the tragedies I think of Ben and will is that they both want to change and like become played differently than they did first time and then they end up being like uh they both end up being like basically stabbed in the back uh after like you know they both had their lines in season three like they both kind of like be whatever went against each other they got bet will got betrayed by Ben but like they kind of both betray each other and then they both like go come back like I'm gonna be loyal this time and then they both get betrayed by like somebody else and uh and end up being their undoing in both the returning Seasons like it's kind of a tragic story of like I want to change for my first time but like you know you just weren't allowed to basically yeah yeah Will and Ben have like parallel storylines basically which was really cool so uh uh here's a good one kind of talking on the note of all this like kind of the foreshadowing and stuff like that if you had known the outcome of All-Stars before editing season two what if anything would have you what do you have done differently in season two's edit um that's interesting I think that I would have emphasized um I think I would have emphasized you betraying Sam and Sarah more like I'm sure it was like a big deal but I think it I would have emphasized it even more as like this really really big deal that you guys are go that you guys were turning on each other because it's such an explicitly thing but honestly most of the other stuff like I feel like Kevin and Bailey was pretty well set up in season two for what happens to them in all stars and I think that uh Nick's storyline was was pretty well set up like I I I think I might try to give Bree some more screen time in season two if I could if I could go back I wish I could give Bree more screen time in All Stars also that's that's one thing I would if I was editing the entire thing now I I'm like I love like you know um uh what's continuity right and so I would go back and like have briatch chirons in season two I would have all this theme music I said for everybody that would like carry on throughout everybody would have it in all the seasons it wouldn't just be an All-Stars thing um I uh would have Megan missiles coming up in season four stuff like that I would do all that kind of stuff basically so like I would do that there's a lot of stuff like that that I would do I think I would go back and do stuff like that but honestly there's not that much that I would really really change all right we're back I had to take a quick break to because some stuff came up um but here we are recorded in the second half of the podcast here good to be back sorry about that little uh break in your podcast feed but you know some important business had to be taken care of and now we're back in action yep yep if you're listening then you probably have not noticed except for you know us mentioning it right now but if you're watching on YouTube you see we had a little outfit change very cool so little intermission a little chance for you to go you know take a break gather your thoughts while you uh engage in the rest of this you know really fulfilling and fascinating interview of course so we're talking through some All-Stars uh going through the questions and uh next question I got for you is were you surprised at the reception any players got from the viewers was I surprised at any of the reception the players got uh yes yeah I was um I I wouldn't say that I was surprised that people that Megan was a fan favorite but I was surprised that she somehow at times it felt like became like the only fan favorite that really surprised me I thought that the cast was um uh such a diverse array of like personalities that I thought that like there would be lots of different people who had stance and I think I might just underestimate it in today's day and age of like internet culture like it's always going to become an echo chamber people always are going to just like stand like very specific people but I kind of assumed that I I thought um Adam AJ would have much more much more stands than they seem to have especially after they shave their head and flip the entire game I thought that would be a couple episodes stretch where the AJ stance really really come out and uh are just rooting for them the rest of the way and that like didn't really happen um I will say that I think I predicted Leia almost almost completely correct I said that people were gonna hate Leia but then by the end they would there would be a lot of people kind of rooting for her and that they would still get Stockholm syndrome into almost rooting for at the end and that that did happen there was a lot of people in the comments saying like Oh I thought Leia should have won you know uh she played the best game and I don't like her game but she played the best game so I called her correctly I think all of us also thought Cooper would be more of a villain than people saw him as I think that a lot of the people on the jury production and the cast always saw Cooper as like a villainous figure um this season but a lot of the fans seem to you know root for Cooper and see him as more of a hero so those would be the ones that surprised me the most in general I just expected that there would be a more wide range of opinions I didn't I thought it was going to be like because like the season itself was sort of controversial I thought that it would be a real divide of opinions I didn't think that it would be so stagnant that most the vast majority of people were like fans of Megan you know I thought there'd be some Megan fans some Sarah fans some Kevin fans some Cooper fans some bayley fans etc etc yeah that makes sense um kind of on that note uh about fan reception so seeing the fan reception now would you have edited anything differently did you expect the public consensus to shift after the dark era of the early merch um I would not have edited it any differently I was surprised that some corners of the internet found the season uh to be less enjoyable than I I thought it would be um Cooper and I sat around about a week before the season premiered and I was sitting on our couch and I was just kind of like dude I'm really nervous like what if people don't like it you know and he was like bro people are people are gonna love it like they love season four and that's the Bad season like they're gonna this is like Survivor cocaine you know like this is this is anything anyone would ever want for a Survivor season basically like how could they not love it basically and I was like you're right you're right you're right and I definitely knew that there would be a slow stretch in the early merch but I didn't see it as any different than the slow stretches in every other season of Survivor Michigan like I think the early merge of pretty much all five seasons is pretty similar like a group comes together they stick together for a couple votes then they blow up that happens in literally every single season of Survivor Michigan season one through five so um the reception in again in certain places you know I I think that there's also an echo chamber aspect we got tons and tons of comments mostly in like the post episode polls where I think people were more comfortable saying it that like they love the season and the season was amazing and all kinds of stuff like that so it wasn't like there was only people that were found the merge to be unfulfilling but I definitely underestimated how much people would hate the majority Alliance you know I think that I saw it as I didn't see them as as wholly unlikable as a lot of people felt they were big because I think that I don't find people just on each other to be automatically unlikable like there's likability and there's like do I like them as characters which is two different kinds of things you know like to me it's like Kevin is not a likable character in the sense that he's being a dick to everybody the whole time but he is a likable character in the sense that I like watching him because he's good TV and that's kind of what I thought it was more so like I don't think any I didn't really think that I don't know I think that I just felt that all the people were three-dimensional and they were all heroes and all villains in different people's eyes so I didn't think it was going to be seen as such a black and white thing as some people saw it as but I wouldn't change anything about it because I told the story that I wanted to tell and I do think that people a lot of people came around by the end and I do think that a lot of the more hyperbolic reactions were somewhat overblown and that with time people look back at it and feel differently um because in the moment when you're watching something like a good example is succession spoilers if you haven't seen the succession finale I had a real knee-jerk reaction to the succession finale uh the person who ended up becoming CEO I didn't feel like the story had properly set that up and I didn't really like it but like even with like two days time already coming around to thinking like you know that that actually really did make sense and that was like a good ending for the show uh I mean I mostly love the ending but there was a specific thing that happened that I was like oh that doesn't feel right it feels like it would have been better for it to have been somebody else maybe um but that's because I had my own like you know version of what I wanted at the ending to be and if you have that locked in you it can be hard to get around to what the actual story is so I think that once people now they know the whole story of All-Stars you can go back and just appreciate the journey a lot more than worrying about you know in my idealized season where you know Megan wins or something like that now that you know that doesn't happen it can be easier for you to watch it probably yeah I think a lot of the story is just like are much more satisfying uh after you know what happens you can kind of see like this setup all along and kind of how like you know for all these characters uh I don't know there's there's like lead up and there's foreshadowing you can kind of see like how their Arc uh you know starts and and starts and you can see the middle and you can see the end and it all kind of like it all kind of fits you know yeah I mean I won't pretend it wasn't it wasn't hard like it was really hard you know the stretch in the middle there from probably episodes about like seven probably about episodes seven through eleven like from the Cliffhanger episode the ending of that through to episode 11. it was like a tough stretch emotionally because I still was spending every single day editing every single day working on it and at times it was like people don't even like it like why am I you know spending all of my dedicating all of my time to this it felt kind of crushing that like this thing I had spent years and years on it was disappointing like the the hardcore fans the people who like loved it the most because those are the people you want to love it the most um but eventually I was just like you know it's also an outspoken uh vocal minority you know like these episodes are getting thousands of views and the most comments we ever see is like a 100 comments on YouTube 200 comments maybe and like if an episode got like four or five thousand views that's like a fraction of the people and even like the Discord Etc there's probably lots of people who I there were tons of people who watched the show who I knew and I would like say oh people don't like it as much as I thought they would have like what do you mean man it's been great what are you talking about like I don't even know what you're talking there's so many people who watched it who don't read those comments don't look at the YouTube channel the YouTube live stream and stuff and like when I thought about it I was like I when I've never commented on a YouTube video like every YouTube video I've ever watched I don't comment on so there's probably that and the fact I know that for a fact that lots of people did like it because they kept watching you know if they really really disliked it they would just quit watching and up to the very end we had pretty much like a pretty loyal contingent of viewers in the episodes all did very well um they had about the same percentage of drop off as every other season of Survivor Michigan but they started at a higher point so they uh it ended up doing very very well so I was pretty happy with it in the end and I did the last couple episodes like brought home uh most people were fairly satisfied with them I think definitely yeah I think it's just the thing about like if you if someone if you have something like really negative to say it's easy to say it and kind of like hate comment on something but if you like something it's much more likely that you're just gonna like whatever like like watch it or like like the video or like subscribe to the channel if you're not gonna be like oh like this was great it's like it's just less less common you know if you're is why I let you go on Twitter most of those tweets are going to be negative because it's just easier to say something that's negative and that's what like people are gonna like that's what people are gonna interact with because it's like it's catches your attention I guess it's kind of like if there's something negative just say you'll see it nothing positive to say people don't say it as much yeah um I mean it was a it was a learning experience it was a growing experience but no I wouldn't change anything because I believed in the story at the end of the day it wasn't some kind of there were some people I saw in Discord who at various times accused me of like lying or like why did you guys say the season was good if it was bad it's like I believed it was everything that I said it was I believed in the story and I believed that you'll never see another season of Survivor quite like this and I stand by that and I don't think that you will ever see a season of Survivor again that gives the level of credence to every single character and has interesting stories for each person and has this Dynamic of a situation just in general I think like you can only be furious about something that you're like really deeply love at the end of the day like people only are mad at the ending of Game of Thrones because they love the rest of the show so much and so it was impressive to me also that like for a production standpoint Megan was such a like um nobody character you know she almost didn't get cast in the season if she wasn't dating Jackson I don't know if Megan would have even been cast in All Stars because production thoughts so lowly of season four and only really the editing team like saw the potential for season four and the fans obviously loved season four and then love those players on All Stars and I think it's a testament to the story we told that even that people that like Megan who most of the cast dismissed is not a significant factor was such a fan favorite on the show because we easily could have just told the story that certain members of the cast saw you know and they wouldn't have been a significant factor yeah on the uh kind of on this topic another question says has the reception of the season and your experience editing changed your view on CBS Survivor uh yes I would say that I understand now why CBS does certain things the way that they do and I would say old CBS also because the new CBS seasons are also edited in kind of a different way but one of my complaints about CBS was always that I don't like I don't like the winner edit I don't believe in the winner edit I don't like the idea that the story only revolves around this one person who won and therefore we need to like twist or degrade other people's stories to like prop up that person uh that doesn't make sense to me because there's like so many more people in the season it doesn't make sense to me like a season's bad if I don't like the winner that's like oh so there's one episode I don't like but if I enjoyed the other 15 episodes then that's a good season to me like a good season to me is if I enjoyed watching it and had a good time watching it you know um but I understand now more why CBS like has leaned into like you know the winner edit or they really want people to like the winner and they'll edit things certain ways to make that happen because I do think that people that's the story people want to see they want to see a hero triumph over the villain they want to see a simple story of like black and white good versus evil like do you think that that's what people inherently want out of a story and so um by all-star's very nature I didn't set out to tell that kind of story so uh I understand more why CBS does do it the way they do now because they're doing something for an extremely broad-based audience and they just want the vast majority of people to come away from it you know feeling good about it they don't want people to come away for it feeling like someone they didn't like win right they want people to come away from their their it's a product they need you to watch the next season they want you to tell your friends to watch it so they don't they're not as interested in like people have said All-Stars is kind of like a documentary like yeah that's sort of true you know like I at the end of the day as much as you know obviously season six is fantastic I hope you watch it it's the best season of Survivor Michigan ever obviously because I'm on it so you should obviously watch it in season seven eight and so on and so on I've heard are amazing but the goal of All-Stars wasn't to get you to watch the next season which I think the goal of CBS Survivor is to get you to watch this it's interesting because like when you think about it like CBS like even this in the question itself like oh like what is CBS Survivor editing like you know it's changed a lot over the years and when I think about how Survivor started like season one Borneo like was a lot more similar to what you're describing where like it was much more like a documentary of just like here's these people and what happened to them while they were living in the wilderness and like Richard hash the first winner like he's not a winner that like you come away from being like wow like I feel so good that Richard won like he was kind of like a villain he was kind of like mean to people and like that you literally wins the game because he was like the most ruthless essentially and that's what the whole snakes and rats speech is about and like that's kind of how Survivor started and I feel like the way all sorts of edited is more similar to like the very early seasons of Survivor and kind of like more of the roots of Survivor than like kind of as Survivor you know continued on and on and made more and more and more seasons and are trying to appeal to a broader audience and kind of like almost get sanitized in some sense like it I feel like that changed but if you think back to like what it originally was I feel like it is kind of more similar to what you're describing yeah and that makes sense to me and I think that um uh the story I was interested in telling was specifically like this is a really crazy messed up thing that happened to these people and let's show what it was and let's show that like college students tried to put on the reality TV show is a really hard thing to do and it's a really hard thing to maintain any kind of like Integrity when everybody is best friends everybody's like dating and sleeping with each other everybody's friends with production like Productions sleeping with the cast members they're living with the cast members like it's an endlessly messy situation and um I wanted to show that I wanted to show how messy it was it's the story of college students trying to do what they have teams of people doing in real life you know like it's honestly crazy that this is a thing that happens it doesn't like this is college students in their free time basically and like busy with so many other things doing something that in real life is a professional professional people's jobs right like I saw a lot of people were like oh my God like the final immunity why did Brady like you know end it basically by making you go to one foot and like not letting them last forever it's like people had exams like Brady been up all night you know like everyone else on production had abandoned him I promised him I'd be there all night and I I wasn't I gave up and went home me and Matthew Israel both gave up it's like at a certain point I don't blame him at all for that um because he's a human being and the game takes its toll on production as well like he was also out there all night in like 10 degree temperatures freezing his ass off like something had to give and had to give um another question for you is uh on that like speech you had at the very beginning of the finale uh it says how much were you choked up on the other takes before you got to the final take you included in the episode uh well that was the only the take I included was the only take I was able to successfully get through it so that was the only like good take that existed basically actually I filmed that the morning before I flew to Vegas so it was like a couple hours before I flew to Vegas for the finale because it was the it was basically like the very last thing I felt because uh I've been putting it off because I knew it was going to be a struggle for me to get through it and I had like written it out but then like I didn't even really follow what I had written and um I kept trying to get through and I kept I kept getting choked up when I was like reading when I was saying everybody's names uh um and I had thought you know I have some of these things planned out for a very long time like I had thought for a really long time that I was gonna say you know it was gonna end by saying like they're all part my Leia's list you know because for if you've watched the show you know what that means right if you haven't watched the show you're not a part of it that doesn't mean anything to you but if you've watched it I felt like that's sort of a powerful thing to say it's a it's a it's not you know it's not nothing to say someone's on your latest list that's like serious serious business um and I do think there's like a level of fondness that I'll have for everybody from all of seasons one through five but especially from All-Star season uh as a special fondness I have for all of them uh for the rest of my life so yeah that was the only take I was able to get through without like just completely breaking down so that was as soon as I got through it once I was like all right I'm putting this in and I kind of wished it had been a little less weepy I think it was a little I would have preferred it to be like a little bit less weepy but I was like I'm not doing this again like and I had I needed to pack still like I was running out of time I couldn't I kept trying to do it I couldn't get through it and I knew I wasn't going to be able to get time to do it in Vegas with everybody around so it was authentic uh you know you got through it it's your one take that was nice um I have a few questions that are just kind of about like the editing process in general first one very simple what program do you use to edit uh Adobe Premiere Adobe Premiere I've always used Adobe Premiere I think it's the best editing software available for you know General like People Like Us basically that you can get easily as a you know semi-professional young professional so I use Adobe Premiere and I've always loved Adobe Premiere one issue I had this season was that Adobe Premiere they upgraded to a new version and the new version um the way that the graphics work was going to be completely retooled in your old graphics cards that you had weren't going to work anymore and that upset me because all of the chirons for seasons one through four are very specific actually there's actually a slightly different version of the Survivor font used for each season for seasons one through season one and two are actually the same and then Seasons three and four I actually created my own version of the Survivor font the slightly I took the server font and with it a bit and made each one slightly different in a way that I thought fit that that season and then for All Stars I was saving like what's kind of the modern version of the Survivor font I was always saving that to use it for all-stars so each season was kind of gonna have its own font and so I wanted in the intro sequence before everybody gets sorted into their tribes for all-stars when they're fought when their shy runs are coming up when we're first getting reintroduced to all the different people it's their original font from their original season and I wanted to look exact the same as it did in those seasons and this is probably something no one would ever notice besides me but like I said earlier I'm really a sucker for like continuity and things like that and I always try to think of like I want to make this the season I would want to see and like if I was watching it what would I want to see what I want to see is to feel like the editor cares as much about the show as I do and like is obsessed with those kind of canonical details as I am and I would want them to have the original try rods because those are the tribes they're on before they got these new trips and in the new version of Adobe Premiere it was going to wipe that out and I was not gonna be able to use the old chirons so I actually kept the old version for two years longer than I should have and if it might have been more buggy because of that because I didn't want to lose those old fonts for the previous seasons and I actually yeah so I had I had a folder with everybody's child from seasons one through five because I wasn't sure who I was gonna need for cameos also like in the scavenger and I couldn't remember who all was in it so I made a new Chiron for every single person um and so that was uh yeah that was something that had to do with Adobe Premiere but mostly different is a great software and I highly recommend it for any college Survivor editors out there so detachable details uh I think a lot more than people probably realize like watching it through the first time um how did you another question on the editing stuff is how do you begin to approach editing a season with so many hours of footage and how do you organize all the footage and know what confessionals to use I mean it was uh I mean it was an insane amount of work I kept an editing journal for All-Stars that I've been editing I've told Sam we could maybe put it in the link to this kind of like the link to Leia's thesis but I'll have to finish editing it first because there's some stuff I need to cut out but it's 245 pages long and over a hundred thousand words so that's basically like that's basically a short novel um yeah and I kept I just a lot of it is like you know oh today I did this and not very interesting but some of it is pretty interesting but uh in that you know you see that like it's a very very slow process of organizing the footage and people summarizing you see the whole summary team and you know you could probably just use a transcription software to transcribe everything but I don't think that that captures like the soul of the confessionals necessarily like sometimes 10 different people explain the plan but I need to know which person explained it the funniest way I didn't know which person explained it in the most coherent way you know in the way that it's gonna convey it to the audience in the best way and that sometimes requires watching 10 different people say it or having somebody who's already summarized it like I know it says this fits really funny so there's a lot a lot of summary work a lot of help from Sam and other people who summarized hundreds of hours of footage and then we have each every week is organized by person so like all of Sam's confessionals are in a fold they're all of Cooper's confessionals and so on and so on and then the way I always try to think about it was just like little bit by little bit so each episode I break down into what I call sequences which is basically like a scene so like a sequence would be Sam decides to uh flip on Cooper and then that scene is about Sam flipping on Cooper and it's like a five minute seed say that's a sequence and then the next sequel the next sequence would be Sam meets with Leia tells him we're flipping on Cooper that's its own sequence you know and um so I just build sequence by sequence and I would any Clips I think should I go through all the footage from that week I read through all the summaries and I pull out any clips for each sequence I think is important and sometimes you have to make more sequences along the way sometimes you realize the sequences you had aren't quite right and then I have a temp order for them and once I have enough sequences together then I put each sequence into a giant Master timeline and then I start rearranging them or it doesn't this piece actually need to go there is this piece better here and slowly and slowly the episode comes together and uh after you've done that once then you have to do it 14 more times for all the other episodes yeah that's not the first version the first version is like much much longer than the real episode like you think that the episodes are long I mean you should have seen the uh assembly cuts some of them were like twice as long I think I wonder what the longest one was are the the finale rough cut was what like four and a half hours at one point yeah yeah so because then it's like each of those sequences goes through iteration process of like you know review it like watch it look for should this be shifted around here there you know can we cut this line what lines we have to add in does everything make sense and you do that a few times until you get the final episode and the summarizing is like I mean I don't even know how many what would we say was like 250 hours of is that how many hours of footage it was I don't even remember how many hours it was that seems too low that seems too low because more it was an insane amount of footage but all literally every single minute of the footage was all watched and literally transcribed like with timestamps every single minute even like maybe every 30 seconds of like so and so says this so-and-so you know then this happens then somebody watched every single one of those videos yes and like the really good lines or funny moments are usually put in bold so they're like they're spreadsheets that'll be like obviously episode one they'll have a different tab for each of the 21 players and each tab for like let's say sam episode one will have like a you know a row for each video uh you know video title in one column then like the description of the next column with like time stamps of everything uh and for literally every video for the entire season you can like find you know realistically you could go and like find any video from the entire season of these spreadsheets and like exactly which time stamp was this thing Set uh so insane amount a lot of work there's a lot of people that did help with the summarizing over the years for you know all the seasons and and all-stars uh I mean I would say that probably Cooper and myself and yui and did most of it or at least the largest portion of it uh so it's a lot of watching stuff but I feel like also it's like watching the videos is really where you're able to find kind of those needles in the haystack like that like if it's all just like transcribed as words you might not like it might not hit you the same but like if you're watching an hour-long video of like Megan and Jackson you know 36 minutes in you you hear like a line that you realize like oh this is like perfect for shadowing like I can't believe that they said this and like that might not have been caught if you just like skim through it or didn't summarize it or you know transcribed it in some software so like a lot of it's also the tone right like um Megan Jackson's a good example like a lot of their meetings are them flirting and like that's hard to convey over a transcript but watching it you can feel the tension and figure out what the best moments are to include same thing with like jokes or like certain people like Crouch like you really need to watch all Crouch's footage to see which parts he's saying are like the funniest or when he gives a goofy pause that you know really has with the dynamic that's that's true a lot of it isn't even it isn't always worse like sometimes it's like what are people's facial expressions like maybe a funny thing is because there's nothing said or because somebody like you know pauses at a certain point and there's an awkward silence like things like that that you only catch if you actually if you actually like watch it and like see it 100 and then like every episode goes through a series of revisions I mean each one of these All-Stars episodes had at least three versions sometimes more I mean the premiere had like six versions yeah um and uh people everybody gives notes to them everybody being Sam Cooper Mason and Brian um give notes on them and then we go I go back to the drawing board and you know cut stuff down and do more editing and I know everybody thinks that the season was too long the episodes were too long but and I won't be able to do this forever because I already can't do it for some of the earlier Seasons but right now like today I could you could point to any line in all of all stars and I can tell you why it was included like every single every single line in the entire show was included for some kind of a reason you might not like the reason but there is a reason like I watched each of these episodes probably like 30 times before they came out at least for each one and I would think about every single line do we need that light can we cut that line you know like because I was always trying to get them as short as possible um so every single line in the sea is at no point was it out of like oh laziness would just be longer every single line in the entire season was put there for a deliberate reason or purpose and sometimes the reason was just I thought it was funny you know sometimes the reason was that I feel like it closed off some very minor plot line that you might have not even thought was a plot line but to me and my crazy brain of where there's like so many little things that there's like a good example is the fake um Advantage given to Kevin by Jackson um that had some dialogue around it in the next couple of episodes even though I really didn't ever play into much but to me that was like a tiny little thread that needed to be closed off somehow you know like there was no way we were gonna cut Jackson giving that to Kevin out of the show because it didn't it would have made no sense to cut that but it also felt like to include it we needed to at least have some of Kevin's thought process on it in the next couple episodes Show how he realizes it doesn't that he that it's fake and show people slowly saying like oh yeah Kevin has a thing we think it's fake those are lines that like could be cut from like a CBS season but to me it's like that's like a minor plotline that needs to be resolved like I wanted to make sure that there was like no unclosed Loops that every single little thing was tied up as well as could be yeah I have all Loose Ends speaking of a loose end that needs to get tied up another question says Ian will you ever make and publish the cat Cut we need it the cat Cuts if you don't know what this is I've joked about a version of season four like an hour-long special in which it's edited such that cat is a genius as a genius schemer masterminding the entire season and Cat wins the season um and just steamrolls everybody basically and I'm pretty sure the footage exists to like make this happen and it would be kind of a funny gag um I won't promise when but like I think maybe we'll see the cat cut one day one day when I'm bored and sitting around I think that I think I would like to make the cat Cut maybe it's like an anniversary special for season four at some point so no promises what but I would like to do it at some point in time and I will finish all of the um bonus scenes from All Stars and episode zero which I've promised those will all be finished and released at some point in time no promises when but they will all come out cool episode zero you want to describe what that is episode zero was an episode that takes place before the season it takes place between seasons four and five and it covers all the pre-gaming that went on and the irony is like the season got accused of people saying oh it's all just pre-gamed but the point of episode zero is going to be that pretty much all the pregame amounted to absolutely nothing like a lot of the pregame alliances Sam and Aaron for example met up at a meeting where they talked about how low they were going to be to each other in the game we saw how that lasted and a lot of the heavy pre-gaming was done by Will and Emily Paddock you know who did very well in all-stars so they're pre-gaming clearly like you know help them out so much and forget about them Tom Tom as well so like you know it would be a chance to go in and you know get back some of our favorite characters who we didn't get that much of an All-Stars and include some funny moments basically Tom fighting for his life and pushing the vote on the day one vote onto Akshay and seeing how that all came together a little bit and just seeing kind of the craziness that was going on that summer this is something I wanted to get them released during the actual season but I ended up similar to the bonus scenes it ended up becoming more important to me to like make sure that the final set of episodes was like ironed out how I wanted them to be than it was to finish like extraneous bonus content which at the end of the day I couldn't finish whenever that is fun that you know if you are obviously we talk about Gen 2 already and how we are already looking ahead to season six and Beyond so it's fun that you know if you you have a soft spot in your heart for all this uh fun generation one season one through five stuff and you're sad that the content is over it's not over there will be more stuff someday so it'll be kind of fun to to look back at some point yeah exactly there will be it'll be like a little hit of nostalgia you know we'll get we'll still there's still some more Megan and Sarah footage that's great from post merge one of my favorite Sarah confessions didn't make the show so that'll be in there at some point I think it's an episode nine the episode nine bonus content and uh you know lots of fun stuff there's a Rites of Passage you guys did right to passage in the finale and I actually did a cut of Rites of Passage I I edited it part of it for the finale and I just cut it for time because it just was like we don't have time for this and there's enough rights of passagey things in the finale that I didn't feel like we needed it and that'll be fun that'll be fun that and you know if you're if you're watching maybe like in the near future it probably won't be in the description but if you're further on in the future you know Ian's uh editing Journal will be in the description you can click on and see that below uh so if it's not there right now just tune in later that'll be there you know you talked about the uh soundtrack one day um I know there's some even some stuff that like with kytl and some fun little bonus content I want to do someday so like they're you know we're season five is like chapter's been closed but you know there will there'll probably be some more stuff someday that that you guys can see definitely definitely so uh here's a fun question you'll love this one Ian um what is the selection process like for the new editors P.S Ian is the best editor of any version of Survivor in my book oh thank you it's so kind of you the selection a succession yeah the succession of the new editors well uh it's not so much a process as it was who is interested in doing it you know some people from Gen 2 reached out to me before all stars at during season four about being interested in and you know continuing it and so I brought them those guys Mason and Brian on board for All-Stars and they summarize footage and they helped with the they watched all the rough cuts and gave notes and me and Sam kind of talked them through the process of how we were doing it and they have a new editor for Generation two um named Megan and Megan has done a wonderful job so far she did the Gen 2 trailer which is already out on YouTube and um so uh and she's editing Seasons seven eight nine and ten and actually uh George from season one is editing season six because he was on season six and he wanted to edit it so that's what that he's doing that so you actually know the guy editing season six probably already you already have a sense of his editing Style mostly it's people who want to do it are interested and I think both of these new editors in George and Megan are fully fully capable and will do a very very good job so I'm very excited to see uh you know what they do basically yeah yeah I mean I I really like the trailers that that they put out it's cool seeing the different styles I thought they were great I thought they were great everyone's their own style and it's cool to see and also that's like the benefit I think of yeah but we really had like three different editors for season five six and seven so like the workers being done simultaneously on all three seasons at certain points and that's like you know one of the things that for one I'm really interested to see the different editing Styles and two it's like it helps uh ensure that we're not gonna have like you know year-long years-long gaps between these Seasons yeah I mean I think like season six and seven should both come out like in relatively short time frame because of that so that's really cool and that means that you know there'll be more much more Survivor Michigan content you won't have to wait too long for your next for your next fix you know of course um last question here uh is a very long rant I think that I thought that was a fun question to leave for last okay sounds good so I mean it probably is going to say similar stuff we've already talked about I haven't even read it yet but uh I'll do a little reading of this uh of this rant and you can respond to it so uh for for reference uh just so you know everybody listening uh you know all of these questions were submitted anonymously by uh just like fans of the show where they were just like kind of submitting any questions that they had for the players the finalists Ian uh and this specific person whoever whoever it was like I mean like basically had this like really long rant where they talked about all five of the finalists and like finished with Ian and all them are just kind of like destroying each finalists and like how much like hey like by the way like Crouch like Cooper Bree Leia Sam like here's why like you're the absolute worst and why you suck so bad and they finished with Ian so uh if you if you listen back to our old podcast you'll hear uh the other interviews you'll hear this person this person's rants they're pretty entertaining for the other finalists and now we're gonna hear the final part of it which is uh to you Ian so uh here it is and now for the biggest villain and flop of the Season Eden Ian if it were in my hands I would easily award you with the best edited Survivor season ever not just College stuff award just because your creativeness and the threading of all the narratives as well as showing us a different way of watching Survivor but all of that came at what costs I mean your perception of the season was obviously biased because you like these people so much I'm sorry to tell you the vast majority of them were very unlikable and not in a good way and for long periods of time too hearing your Praises season beforehand defend the season and the players on the post episodes all that is fine I'll let it go but if I hear you say the production screw up wasn't that bad one more time I don't know what I will do you even go on to say that it didn't have that much of an impact and this is all Interactive but on the same episode Dylan goes home because of it Megan his friends relationship is and Megan by your team is tanks from here and out now it's lowercase again I also hate it every time you try and criticize Megan's game like nobody's a Megan standard for gameplay like we get it but we don't see you criticizing the Cabanas gameplay from the majority of the cast leaders so what the stop messing with the queen and embrace and praise her for being the only 10 out of 10 aspect of the season and a lot of your editing decisions are very questionable like including Abby at all that was disgusting the whole Pringles idle thing well yes I was surprised to see Andrew really had it I didn't really get the point of why I was edited that way because at that point he knew when everyone else knew that his Idol was legit so it wasn't a oh I'm playing this and we don't know if it's real or not the longer episodes well I didn't mind most of them some definitely need to be cut down like egregiously so but to be honest the good outweighs the bad and questionable editing Wise by a large amount out of curiosity anything you would have changed editing wise seeing the reaction of the Season also what the is up with the dildo a YG the half-assed blur it I have a million other questions for you and I'm tired of running like this don't come with that um where do I start with that first of all thank you for the uh compliments that as you would call me the best Survivor editor that's great I'll start with a dildo I I had originally I just had the dildo in there without any blur but then I was actually working on the finale on the plane to Vegas watching it through the last time and uh I was there was someone sitting next to me like you know like uh somewhat elderly uh gentleman and he looked over at my computer screen and saw the dildo and Crouch and he just kind of like kind of like gagged a bit or like had this look at his face like what what what is going on basically and I realized that you know like my parents watched a show like my mother watched the show I know a lot of the cast parents watched this show and I was like I think that this even though the show is kind of like a hard PG-13 leading R in terms of the language like there's a lot of f-bombs and you usually get one F-bomb for PG-13 movie so we're leaning hard R in terms of language but it's mostly meant to be a family-friendly show to a degree you know and we don't want to have like sexually explicit content on the show and so I was like all right maybe I blur out the dildo but like there was no like good way to blur it that wasn't it to seriously blur it would have looked so weird that I was sort of like all right this is just I'll blur it I wasn't worried about YouTube sensors like taking it down for some reason I like wasn't super clear on like how YouTube operates with like more nefarious like illicit content like that I tried to blur it I realized I sort of couldn't fully blur it and I was like maybe it's funny or if you like can basically see what it is but know that he tried to blur it like Crouch when he filmed that confessional he's came over to my house just with that and he's just like around with it I was like yo do you want to take this out of the frame he's like why bro is it bothering you he's what do you mean he's like this is my this is my thing man like I'm doing this today I was like okay like I was like why do you it's like why do you have that Crouch he's like what do you mean do you not have one like I was like okay so that's why the dildo he just like walked over to your house and just brought like just brought just himself in the dildo he was like all right I'm gonna film a professional that's right yeah um uh and he was very confident at that point that he was gonna be in the game that they were voting off Cooper so what other actual questions were in this uh why the Pringle Idol I think I've talked this before but the two main reasons for the Pringle Idol was it made Emily and Crouch's stories much more interesting uh Crouch you know he doesn't think he I always try and show the game from the player's point of view and Crouch thinks he has a fake out the whole time and Emily thinks she has a real Idol and the original cut of the Season about I got about halfway through the season editing it this way uh it was just played for Laughs completely and you knew the whole time that crowd the joke was Crouch's charm would say real Idol thinks it's fake and bockwick's Charon said fake Idol thinks it's real and it was just played for last constantly like oh they're both just idiots basically but like and you see like on the recent season of Survivor they clowned on that girl Jamie for having a fake but the thing is first of all Crouch had really good reasons to think it was fake and bachwik had every reason to think it was real so I didn't think it was really fair in the edit again again I've tried to like be honest to the story and to the players I don't think it's fair to clown on them for something that was like pretty legitimate like they're the longer the season go went on and the less nobody else had this Pringle Idol like bockwick's belief it's real is being legitimized over and over and it's in the exact spot the clues led to nobody else has ever mentioned having it it looks real it's with the real paper it makes sense it's real Crouch is all these legit reads for thinking it's fake but his clue is the wrong number and it kind of looks like a piece of and like lots of people could have gotten there before him and uh so it made sense to me that we shouldn't be treating them like clowns and I like the mystery aspect it added a nice little Flair to the season actually got the idea from Scotty Survivor with their Puppet Master season it inspired me and gave me the idea so I gave them credit for that you should go watch Sky Survivor season two if you haven't seen that but um so they inspired me for that idea I thought it was a really cool mystery that we could kind of drag out one thing is originally it was revealed at the end of episode 11 and the original version it was actually this was this case until the day the episode came out when I changed my mind um originally after all the trailer for like the final batch of episodes and stuff after Emily Vegas voted off the scene at the very end of that episode it actually shows Crouch it shows me to be saying oh at least they won't know who has the idol hahaha and it was gonna cut to crouch and like show that he has the real Idol it's gonna come up and say real Idol has the principal Idol with the last second I changed my mind because I decided that I thought that wasn't satisfying enough I thought that it had been built up so high in people's minds at that point that I thought we let's wait to reveal it until he plays it um because it just felt like that was a more exciting time to reveal it and I think it honestly would have worked either way but I'm happy with the way that it ended up I do think it also would have worked as a post-credits scene which I like the idea of but I think the way it worked out was also fine and fun yeah I mean it would have worked there but I feel like the it makes more sense for the kind of climax of that storyline to end it like a big idol play at a tribal council then kind of like okay Emily's voted off and like all right also here's like it's kind of like post at credit scene everyone might not even see like oh yeah yeah the storyline is done too yeah exactly like what if people don't see that yeah because it was so Central to Emily's storyline there was a part of me that felt like we should know when she goes out yeah but it's fine on the re-watch like you you'll understand that her storyline is even more tragic than originally thought that the idol she thought she had the plan she thought she had was never going to work by the way but funny Insider thing on Matt which I'm I'm bummed I messed this up but when I'm when me and Jack did our uh and Sarah did our interview with Emily um we basically like obviously at the time that like she was voted off uh the audience doesn't know that her Idol is fake so uh we at we had this whole like extra segment of the interview maybe like five or ten minutes or so just talking about the idol and like all the idol stuff and what her thoughts were on it and you know how when she realized it was fake and like when she was like watching it and everything and like the whole idea was like all right we're gonna cut all this out and put this like 10 minute section into like you know we'll show you later like basically like end of the season maybe like attach it on to like one of our other interviews or episodes um so well obviously that was cut from like the original interview like you don't have her talking about the idol at all but I lost that I ended up like losing the footage of like that like the original footage of her saying all that like I was cleaning out my like computer and like whatever I was dumb I just like deleted the source footage so now like that footage is just like gone forever I'm like all right well I guess no one's ever gonna hear what Emily thinks about this like 10 minutes long of like Emily talking about like her fake idle just like completely gone like oh bro that's tough I don't delete anything ever I have a copy of every single thing that ever exists you know like because I don't know when I'll need it well the thing is I always think that I always thought it was fine I was like all right well I don't really need like the source footage of these interviews like I like all of them are on YouTube anyways like but like that was one instance where like because usually it's like all I do is I cut out I cut down like whatever kind of like the nothing like dumb like sections of like the interviews that like are not really needed so I was like all right if I reasonably needed footage like I would just like redownload it from YouTube like YouTube to MP4 but that's one instance where like I recorded something that like wasn't in the YouTube episode and I also happened to be like the one time I deleted footage because I had like every interview ever in my computer all once I was like okay I don't need all this like I can delete like whatever 10 gigabytes worth of stuff right now and uh yeah rip so what other questions in here can I answer this guy said Abby uh including Abby that was disgusting I mean look Abby was a part of the season it's a it's a less entertaining product if we don't some people are like oh just we shouldn't have known who leaked it and this kind of stuff it's like no it's a character we're familiar with and it also like it retcons Abby from like no offense Savvy I love you I don't think you ever watched this so you but even if you did you wouldn't be offended by this it's like not the most you know memorable player from season two but now she's like uh you know Infamous icon of college Survivor and I thought that was like very exciting also that Abby in one 10-minute Scene goes from somebody you probably barely remember to a name that will always live on an infamy amongst College Survivor so yeah maybe the I know that some people felt the Abby intro sequence was a bit over the top but my take on all this stuff was like once it happens and I wish it hadn't happened but once it happens I'm gonna make the most entertaining version of it possible and the most irritating first are possible was to again have this Arch Village of Abby show up yeah and you know user in some way and it's kind of like you know you're showing kind of like I mean Abby doing that was like a big moment and it's kind of like it's almost like you don't hate the messenger hate the you know it's how you're almost like it's not like you're just the messenger because like obviously you can shape the narrative the way you want to as the editor but like in a sense you're just telling you're showing people what happened you know like you didn't have to give up your own title sequence I guess but in a sense it kind of was like it kind of was a revenge like it kind of Abby kind of did have a moment that like was big you know it kind of makes yeah I mean she was getting revenge on production for not casting her and if product like this is what I said I think production should have just cast everybody production was asking for something like this to happen because these people are all petty and competitive and crazy you know they we cast them all these shows to begin with because we knew they were competitive and crazy and Petty and that's what makes them good TV but that also means that when we as production unilaterally decide now we have the right to decide who's no longer a member of our club you know like that's what it was we're saying all these people participate in the club and now we're saying this semester we decide who's good enough to be in the club still you know that is a little cruel in a certain way and especially we only cut four people and uh like back in high school I went to a small High School in my theater program we never did cuts for the shows and then one day we did into the woods and we they said we were gonna do cuts now and they ended up cutting three kids and there was five Kids cast as trees now you ask me what is the difference between five Kids cast this trees and Eight Kids cast as trees right nothing they told these three kids you're not good enough to be a tree you're not good enough to just stand there and say nothing images or something right three bushes yeah yeah exactly it's like all these kids have to do is stand there and like you know they just want to be a part of it and we we told these guys you're not good enough and especially like I don't think the line between the people who got cut the people who made it in was like so drastic I mean the casting meeting went on for like seven hours of everybody fighting about it so like once it was established that a lot of these people are kind of on the same level let's just cast them all yeah we'll figure it out yeah honestly it's like at that point like you you either got to go to the extreme of like you only cast 16 and you only cast like the people you think were like really like whatever All-Stars in their first season or you go with everybody but like this kind of like 21 it almost feels kind of like a half measure of like all right well like what's let's include as many people as we can let's include a lot of people but like not everybody but it's like all right like at that point like if we had had 50 people apply it we obviously couldn't do a cast of 50. but we had like 26 people apply we could have just cast them all you know um and when I say 26 is because levana also applied but then dropped out so like there was five people who applied who didn't end up playing levada got on but then she dropped out and that actually got Dylan in so but uh yeah uh so yeah I mean the Abbey stuff obviously not good wish I hadn't happened it wasn't fair it wasn't fair it was bad for the game but it was good TV it was damn good TV and uh you know people you you love the job you love Jaffe Baratheon you know and you need to have your villains and Abby was a True Villain on the season of all the people I said everybody to hear everyone's a villain I'll I could say that Abby was uniquely solely a villain on this season yeah if you want your hero Abby go before you watch season two yeah yeah and uh Southern what else is in this thing off in there you want to comment on not really I think I'm I think I'm pretty much good on that comment all right well uh that's all the audience questions at least I mean anything else you wanna or any of these production questions like interesting you can look through them um there are a lot of them are kind of similar to what we've already talked about this one's saying do I regret over hyping the season yeah yeah essentially um this is interesting Matthew is your life talking about this and it's like it's like first of all even if we did think the season was bad and What scenario are we not going to Hype it like this is our show like we're going to promote it we're going to say it's good at no point would we ever say oh yeah like at like season four we hyped season four and a lot of people thought season four wasn't very good from the production standpoint so at no point where we were gonna say oh by the way guys this is like the bad season before All-Stars like don't worry about it you know like it's okay but like also be better it doesn't make any sense we're never gonna do that so even if we had thought it was bad we were going to say it was good regardless because it's our show like why would you watch our show if we tell you it's bad that doesn't make any sense like that just doesn't make any sense at all but second of all we also truly believed what we were saying and thought that it was like the best thing ever and that's what I like put into all of the trailers and all of the like uh like everything about it was like this is the defining chapter like this is what people will remember about Survivor Michigan gen 1 will be this season um and uh I stand by all of that I think that I hyped it accurately and I mean the episode lengths the titles the music every single thing of the intro every single thing about it there's we put way more into it than any of the previous Seasons I mean oh yeah um so I no I stand by all of that and I don't think that like lowering the hype level would have changed people's opinion of it I think that people because they cared so much they had their own impressions of how it was going to go you know and uh it's hard to live up to the hype like I think this was one of the more hyped College seasons ever probably and certainly one of the most discussed and one of the most uh I think because people our show had become a real real TV show to people they felt comfortable a lot of these other college Seasons you know and not not to disparage any of them there's so many great great College survivors but there is some aspect of certain fan-made stuff that you're not going to criticize it too much because it's fan made you know and you know people are doing out of love and passion and we are too but I think that Survivor Michigan had started to transcend to that and people who watched it started to feel like it was just like a real TV show and they're comfortable criticizing it because it felt like a it's felt closer to a real show to them and that makes me happy at the end of the day because that means we did something really impressive that made it we made something that people don't feel like it was just made in the backyard it wasn't just like thrown together by some people that loved Survivor it was really thought about it was really like you know um like kind of like oh like good job like so you know yeah yeah so that felt good it felt good to know that people cared about it enough to criticize it um which if they didn't care about it they wouldn't feel comfortable saying those things so you know I was impressed by the um amount of reaction to it and I don't think that I think the people who um uh wanted slightly different things to happen or the controversial stuff um it would people would see it as the same basically I don't think that that would really change that much I do think that if you looked at this question says my question is what production marketing conversations were like regarding the promotion did you anticipate the mixed reactions and how did you manage them um after the season happened in the player's view also this is the best and yeah everybody thought it was the best pretty much everybody involved in all-stars besides probably like Jackson thought it was like the best season of Survivor Michigan pretty much for production cast crew everybody thought that everyone thought it all the way I think most of them still think it um Everyone Cared about it like yeah these as you kind of see there's always a few people in the cast that either aren't playing that hard or like don't really know what they're doing but this one you had 21 people who were like the person the people playing the least amount on this season were probably like about playing if there if that was on if you place that person with somebody on any of the other Seasons they'd be like an above average person yeah the other one yeah if you put like the people who were trying the least hard on this season you probably they'd probably be dominating on like season four season two like so it's like yeah they're um people care the most about it and I think that like uh you get used to it watching it so you're probably as hard to understand that like the levels of strategy people were employing was much deeper than any other season you know like people were thinking about schemes upon schemes of lies to tell each other and going like 16 levels deep into stuff I mean by the time we had moments like Kevin and Jackson Trading fake advantages both trying to screw the other one or you know the the way the three two one Blindside worked in final six and uh like the whole reason Megan gets voted out is because everybody is worried about a fluke scenario in which Cooper happens to have an idol happens to play it on himself and like who are the backup votes going on in a tribe with only eight people at that point and Crouch has two immunities they're worried about who is Crouch gonna give a second immunity to what happens if Cooper happens to have an idol so we need a plan in case Crouch gives the immunity to Cooper we need to plan a case Crouch gives the immunity to Megan we need to plan if he gives it to neither of those people we need a plan if he gives it to Cooper but there's an idle plate on Megan we need to plan if he gives it to Megan as I go play it on Cooper we need a plan if Cooper doesn't have an idol we need a plan if Cooper finds out that it's him we need to play it if he doesn't find out like that it's those levels of things are not going on in other seasons of Survivor Michigan so I think strategically emotionally um and uh entertainment value wise par for the chorus person for person the confessionals are better the tribals are more dramatic tribal councils people were funnier at were more engaged and we're sick because they knew each other they're more willing to be open about what's going on um yes two two one has never happened in the history of Survivor that vote of final seven um this is the first two two two two two one ever um uh so you know between that double tribal Abby gate Kevin flipping on will uh you know the list goes on about Nick not playing his Idol the list goes on and on the the block with Blind Side the atom vote the Megan vote the Crouch tribal like Bree tried that Bree was blindsided into the final three you know like when else have I ever seen somebody a scenario where both people at final four think they're going home and they're just like they're both like blindsided basically um I mean yeah I thought that par for the measure for measure is the best season of Survivor Michigan and for me one of the best Survivor Seasons I've ever seen in terms obviously I'm gonna say I made it but like um for me at least it stood up to be exactly what I wanted it to be and I wish that everybody every single person you watched it felt that way but you know you can't please everybody and that's life and I'm not gonna the people it meant the most to it it came across exactly how I wanted it to so I don't really regret anything and I also think that it'll age well in time I think that yeah yeah as time goes on more people will come around to like watch like current CBS seasons and like tell me that they're giving every person this full kind of story that we gave them here you know yeah they're not they're just not so no I mean you watch like season 44 we had uh two people in the final five were like I barely remember their names because they're just not really in the season yeah yeah I mean one thing I love about college driver is the seasons feel distinct and different they still feels fresh it still feels like new things can happen in the game it still feels like the dynamic isn't set and I feel like more and more with CBS Survivor at least um I actually prefer Australian now but more and more for CBS Survivor I feel like um the game feels very similar every time it feels very very similar it doesn't feel like a lot of new things are happening and so I'm just not as interested in it as I am like more College Survivor so yeah and I I do think that on a re-watch like it's much more I think it'll be as much as it was very enjoyable the first time around just like I think that like you might even enjoy even more the second time like just because of how many things you'll notice that you haven't noticed before especially if you've listened to this whole podcast and like you know the amount of things that were that you're talking about Ian that you know pay attention to the chirons into like the theme music in the background and to like Jess's Revenge every time Jesse's revenge is mentioned or the girls Alliance there's a specific piece of music that's played yeah yeah and even like every line if somebody says something you think like doesn't fit within like the sequence it's probably like it's probably either tying up some storyline or it's like foreshadowing or something you know like pay attention to those things that stick out because it's like I I think there's so much that you can't really glean from like the first watch like I've watched these episodes three four times and even like the fourth time I'll like notice something I didn't notice before I'm like oh like I didn't even realize it this whole time that's what that was talking about you know yeah it is also a season where everything leads into something else every little thing in the early episodes is directly feeding into like dominoes way down the line you know the girls Alliance is an easy example that it's mentioned the very very first episode that Jesse wants to form a girls Alliance and this girl's Alliance ends up unraveling Cooper's entire game you know it ends up being a massive Factor after Jessie's gone she doesn't even really get to she's like Moses in the Old Testament she doesn't even get to go to the promised land and see this girl's Alliance really take power but um it has this dramatic dramatic impact on the game and there's a lot of a lot of little things like that like Kevin flipping on will is a much more even more Monumental moment when you realize how much it's gonna over so many other people Beyond just will himself and then even like every single Covenant will interaction like yeah in this episode one through three that you're probably the first time you're like oh like this is an interesting Alliance but the second time you're thinking like oh like I know where this is gonna lead like this is this is tragic yeah exactly exactly that's another great example and there's tons and tons of scenes like that um I think Cooper Cooper and Leia yeah like when you know that the ultimate end game is these two people doing everything they can to tear each other down seeing in the early part of the game how much they're with each other and how much people are afraid of going like are they ever going to turn with each other that's like a major thing that's getting discussed ultimately the entire end gate revolves around the two of them like wanting each other out as badly as possible and that's like I think especially pay attention in the first episode like ever I feel like every single line in that like intro is like extremely important yeah in the first like 20 minutes the really really set up every single person like basically telegraphs what's gonna happen to every person if you if you pay attention to it like Cooper and Leia's intro is literally like them talking about these different like oh yeah we're gonna be close but like Cooper's like I'm gonna whatever you know whatever and Leia's like has this kind of wholesome like oh like friendship you know so the first episode first 10 minutes you know what's happening with Cooper and Leia yeah oh one thing I wanted to talk about was the quotes the quotes at the beginning oh yeah yeah because I don't think I've really talked with this too much um originally I was only planning to do three quotes the premiere the merge and the finale because those ones I'd had in my head for the Steve Prefontaine quote I had had in my head since season season two since all stars happened I knew I wanted to open it with the uh to give anything less than your best it's a sacrifice the gift and I I thought that the quotes I wanted to would be representing not just they'd be representing like two things the player's view of the game and like and also my own view of doing it as the editor and like what I put into it so you know that opened All-Stars to me was like these people are about to give everything they possibly have to this you know and it also is how I felt about things it's like a quote I really think makes sense that if you uh give any if you're like not trying your best basically like why are you even trying essentially like you're just sacrificing your potential pretty much you know like you gotta try your hardest at everything you do because uh it's a waste if you don't and I feel like also it's definitely exemplify that like most people like really did try their hardest the merge quote was um oh my God what the was the merge quote it was uh oh yeah yeah I have learned through painful experience the most important step a person could take is always the next one and I thought about that a lot in editing because it's like this was a like this was like climbing a mountain you know I was like writing a novel like it felt at times like even getting even getting one of these episodes done was gonna be how it was going to take me forever and to get 15 of them done sometimes I just felt it possible but the only thing you can do is one scene at a Time One Clip at a time one sequence at a time one episode at a time just one foot in front of another the most important step you can take is the very next one it's not like the most important step isn't the last one it's not the first one it's the next one whichever step is next is the most important step um and that's the case for Survivor players also the most important week is this week you know like getting through this week is the most important thing you can do because next week is always next week and the passes in the past so um I thought that really hit home and the final one which was you know I began the journey alone I ended it alone but it doesn't mean I walked it alone was also in my head from very early on because it fits with Survivor in that obviously only one person can win and at the beginning of the game it's also kind of everyone kind of understands that but through the course of the game you build these alliances and you become close with people and it becomes more of a complicated complicating Factor and ultimately as the editor like I kind of also began and ended it by myself but there was a ton a ton of other people who helped along the way and I would both like you couldn't win Survivor without other people's help and you couldn't edit the seasons without other people's help either so it felt like a very like um cool quote so originally it was just gonna be those three but then the act the other episode then the last three episodes all ended up getting quotes because Sam and I were talking about it and I was like is it weird that like the like the the three-act structure there was a quote the beginning of the First Act being the second act is it where there is the one being in the third act and you were like yeah it is kind of weird like there should be one basically right yeah yeah I think it made sense to open up like the third act with the quote I think this is one minor editing we're going to have is because I actually I couldn't find a quote I really liked for the beginning of the third act and I ended up going with this Sinatra quote that was and now the end is near and so I faced the final curtain and the reason that I didn't like that quote was because it wasn't I also wanted the quotes to all be something that like or like a personal thing for me yeah like the pre-fontained thing is like a thing that used to be a big thing of my cross-country team in high school and it was like a personal thing for me and the other quotes were also for things that meant to me personally I don't have any real personal connection to Frank Sinatra he's not like an artist I'm super about her like I don't have an issue with him but he's not saying it's not a personal connection to me and the quote that I put at the end of the at the beginning of the next episode The at the Sophie's Choice one if you choose not to decide you still have made a choice and I wish that if I had thought of that quote um earlier I think I would have not done quotes for episodes 11 12 or 12 15 and 14 and I would have just had if you choose not to decide you still made a choice of The Rush song um free will I think I would have had that quote the beginning of Acts 3 and there wouldn't have I would have done quotes for act one two three in the finale because I am I do love Russia and I think that choosing not to decide and someone get choice that that encompasses the whole Final Act I think so I would have been fine with that but I'm not unhappy with all those episodes having quotes the last act because they feel more epic but it was a bit much I don't think every episode needed one yeah yeah I guess you're saying I mean I think that at least at the same at the same time like you know all of them might not have as much meaning as each other but it's still a good quote like the Sinatra quote still does kind of like yeah it definitely applies to both you know what you're yeah also what happened in the season maybe not in the same like personal connection to Frank Sinatra specifically but it does it does definitely um I thought you were going to talk about when you first mentioned this I thought you were going to talk about the uh the quotes in the title sequence oh didn't I I think I explained that in the first part of this interview yeah yeah I think you did I think you did because that was also a very very intentional definitely I'm like 95 sure I talked about that already yeah yeah the quotes and the title sequences all being bought both flashback and foreshadowing yeah yeah because I was talking about how you were the one who changed the most and all that kind of stuff so that's right yeah yeah definitely watch the title secret I was very proud of the title sequence I had really high hopes for how the child students would turn out and I was I had an image in my head of it for a really really long time and I think it turned out like pretty cool it I wanted it to be special I wanted to feel unique and I think it really captured like the Epic feel of the scope of the whole thing well I also think it was cool that you experimented a lot with them and did like different style of intros like there's probably at least three or four episodes that have kind of like their completely owned title sequence yeah yeah I mean there's the Abbey one and then you guys didn't want the attack on Titan one yeah but uh I'm glad I kept that I think that basically the final the whole final Act had its own title sequences basically like yeah that was another thing for me was the music that's used in the title sequencer episodes uh 13 and 14. is like the final like kind of actiony version of the All-Stars main theme and it was something kind of cool to me that at um when I first got into sorry Michigan I really wanted to to get a version of the Survivor theme that had the victors the Michigan fight song like in it somehow and I had some music friends of mine try to like work on it and they didn't really do a very good job and like it didn't sound very good so that's something maybe in the future inspire Michigan I'd still love to see that one day I don't know how exactly it would sound but I think it'd be cool but I always want us to have our own version of the title theme of the Survive song you know I always wanted to be unique and special and this felt like a way for us over the course of season it's like we fully transitioned into our own show as much as possible and now like it by the time you get to that theme music it fits and it feels like it felt very much like this music fit these last couple episodes and they have their own music for the title sequence because this is the theme for our show it's different than the main Survivor theme but it's becomes the theme of the All-Stars you know yeah yeah yeah the the music is something that like I mean I I've always loved like [Music] I think that's like using sit in like movies and shows and stuff like I literally like even since I was like a kid I would listen to soundtracks from like movies that I liked and just because it like since the music is so like important and like kind of just framing your mindset when you're watching something and can like feels like a I don't know it can almost be like a soundtrack for life or you'll think about like different things like the music music doesn't like for me like it doesn't know easy to have lyrics like it can just be something that's like a a music just puts you to a certain Vibe you know and that's what I loved about one of the things I loved about what you did with All-Stars is that like the music sets the scene it wasn't just kind of like some random filler music uh in each scene it just kind of like something playing in the background but like it was very intentionally chosen to make you feel a specific way like you know or even to like tell a story like maybe certain music theme music is used to like kind of uh underscore certain things happening or like kind of show you like oh like this is the girl's lives or this is Megan and Jackson or like this is the friendship or this is like villainous or whatever you know it's meant to make you feel different a certain way I think that like there's something that maybe like upon viewing you might not even notice the first time there's a lot of times I don't even notice it but it still makes you feel a certain way even if you're not actively like oh like this is what music is playing I understand this it's just kind of like it makes you feel a certain way you know yeah yeah exactly exactly yeah I love like soundtracks to movies and TV shows and stuff and like the music is such an important part of every great show every like truly great show or movie has like a great soundtrack you know yeah so um and Survivor is no exception to that like the Survivor music is really good and we started expanding farther and farther out from uh I remember in the season two finale I used some tracks from uh the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003 TV show I if you can't tell also through all stars if you just look at the music choices and the kind of things that are referenced you can get a pretty good sense for the kinds of things that I like just in different parts of my life it's like there's a lot of Ninja Turtles music there's a lot of Star Wars in like the um trailers stranger things uh Attack on Titan Avatar in the finale um all kinds of stuff Bionicle a lot of weird kind of like geeky stuff that I liked when I was younger and still like um is all over these things um so you can get a kids Next Door a lot of different stuff I liked and at various stages of my life I just referenced in the show basically um oh that's another good music thing I didn't talk about was that the very um the final music before the like end credits epilogue was this was um an epic version a Samuel Kim Samuel Kim who's like a YouTube music artist guy he did an epic version of the Avatar theme and the Avatar theme I used in the season two trailer so to me it was a two front thing it was like first of all the ad you actually hear the season two trailer Avatar music a couple times throughout final tribal when Sam is talking so first of all it's kind of like it's kind of like a Sam theme that comes in at that point um even though you already had your kind of Hit List theme this is like a different one um it's also like a season two theme because season two player is gonna win and for me personally the first Survivor video I made the season two trailer had this Avatar music and so the very I I thought this music would be perfect for the very last ending also basically um yeah uh and so that felt very very full circle and that music also worked really really well just for the vibe it's a very Victorious sort of uh it feels kind of emotion it feels like uh emotional but also Victorious and so it just felt like the perfect Survivor type feel too like it feels kind of like I don't even know how to describe like what feels like surviving it's like it's like a sort of tribally islandy kind of thing Bionicle Music also really fitted there's certain sorts of shows and like Vibes that just kind of like feel like Survivor basically yeah yeah yeah yeah no that was that was a good one I I love the I don't know if I caught I don't know if I necessarily made that connection until you mentioned it but like it's cool that it works on multiple levels as in kind of kind of like for yourself your first and last thing and then uh this is the season two Connection in general of like okay the season two player wins and then there's the season two trailer so yeah yeah it's pretty cool yeah definitely yeah oh sorry I was gonna go the distance song also for the end end credits is like obviously that I had that picked out I remember listening to that like I'm during editing season three for sure that's some of the pandemic so I think it was around that time I decided that was going to be the last music in all stars and I always had it in mind it was going to show everybody it was gonna go through every single player from all the seasons and it was gonna uh end on this you know like um 100 to like you know the friendships that lasted like 100 days and more which was the hundred days of the Season obviously and like if you've played any of these games it's about that it's about the community you formed around it it's always about the friends we made along the way you know that's like the most important thing with all these kinds of things um I wrote an interesting article about Steven Spielberg once that was saying that it was essentially arguing that every like uh major movie director like Steven Spielberg Christopher Nolan et cetera they're just telling the same story over and over again in different ways and I don't think that's like 100 true but definitely there's something to that that like Spielberg tells a lot of stories about childhood and about like um parents and like stuff like that and et cetera Etc other people have these sorts of things as well and I definitely think that um my thing is uh communities that's like the story I'm interested the most in telling and the moral of the story that I always tell is always like the most important part of the story was just the people that we met along the way basically um which sounds kind of cheesy I guess and simplistic but I don't know it's really not it sounds it's very impactful to me I think it's an important it's an important story to be telling as much as anything else so they go the distance was like the distance that obviously the winner went you won the seat like winning the season it's like you had to go the distance also the distance of this journey we've all gone on watching the show playing in it being friends whatever and obviously the distance of the editing they're like if I I always was like I was just like I want to get to that moment where I'm watching that part of the episode with all these other people because then I'll know that I did it basically and I'll know that I went the distance in that moment and so I did so that felt good and I had that in my head for so long you know and when I I didn't have like the Shannon clip when I watched season four and I saw that Shannon cat clip I immediately was like all right that also is going in there obviously because that's like a thesis statement about all of this yeah it was really emotional watching that uh watching that scene because it was like the ends of everything you know yeah I debated for a really long time at the very very end right it said the end and for a long time I was like should say nothing should it say like end of era one or something I prefer era to the term generation because I just think era sounds cooler basically um but like act one it said end of Act One activism should say should say end of all stars but that I had it for a long time as end of all stars but then when I was watching it through it didn't that didn't feel right because that epilogue wasn't really about the end of All-Stars you know it was about the end of all of it so it felt kind of reductive to go back to like oh this is the end of all-stars when the last three minutes has been about this was about like seasons one through five this is about all these people it wasn't just about the All-Stars so in the end I just decided I didn't want to do end of error one though because that like I wanted to I want to Hype up these other Seasons obviously and like everyone should go watch them and stuff but I also really wanted I didn't want the last beat of it to feel like oh wait but there's more and saying end of anything one you'd implicitly think like okay well what about era too you know because yeah the end of Seasons two three and four the beat of it was always okay but there's more right like there was a trailer for each season at the end of those all three of those and I really wanted the end of this to not feel like oh wait but there's more I wanted us to like be able to breathe with it and have a moment to mourn it you know yeah and there is more but it won't be quite the same it will be slightly different it won't be this it won't be this particular story it'll be a different kind of Survivor story it was like the end of the story that was being told you know like there's Survivor Michigan as a whole has more stories to be told but the story that was being told in All Stars like it was it was done that was the end yeah I said it's the Avengers end game comparison you know I use that comparison lots of times I think it's like a pretty app comparison that's the only Marvel movie without a post-credits scene and I like I think I read they they they felt very similarly that the post-cred seem to really devalue the ending they were trying to like tell well that's the end eh yeah that's it uh if you've watched all the way through this there is if you're interested in any some season six uh inside knowledge spoilers um I won't say what but in the background of a lot of videos I have filmed for all-stars so like um post episodes uh maybe even this podcast I don't know there is um a uh a little season six foreshadowing little season six spoiler maybe somewhere or a background maybe a spoiler I don't know in the background of uh some of some of my videos so maybe even this one I don't know who can say for sure who can say who can say but uh yeah if you're interested you can maybe maybe uh look into some of the things that have been in the background of these videos I also think people should go back and re-watch the host announcement video for season five now that we know that uh uh George is coming back on season six that video has some nice tidbits and just in general there's a lot of you'd be surprised now that we know Noah Katie there's a lot of Seasons you'd be surprised how much season six foreshadowing was uh in all-stars perhaps so definitely definitely maybe uh check that out but you can watch the old keep your torch lit you might even see some season six uh foreshadowing Way Way Back in the depth oh yeah actually you have some season six co-hosts right you did we did yeah just for a little while season three so if you go back you might see uh might be introduced to some of the characters a bit early yeah a great cast a great cast and uh a truly fantastic season so you know can't wait for everybody to see it yeah same season six and uh season seven and Beyond uh from what I heard they're all great season six I I was involved with production so I you know literally and you know what happens I know who's in the cast and all that and incredible I've been really excited to watch that for a really long time just because it's also like the first time we'll it's in season one I'll be able to watch like this very fully as a fan he doesn't really have any involvement in the editing or being in the season so I'm really excited for it this fall you know it's it's not even that long from now coming up yeah I'm with you dude I'm so excited to watch these as a fan because like I like I'm like the number one Survivor Michigan fan you know like so it's like I'm so excited to watch and I just I'm a like you know one of the top college Survivor fans I've seen like almost every College from every season that's out there so it's like I'm very excited to just watch it uh as a fan just enjoy you know more College Survivor plug Survivor Ohio State season three is coming out this summer also um I think Sky Survivor season three is coming out those are the two I'm like pretty familiar with that are coming out in the like this summer this summer there's probably others um check those out uh yeah I saw Survivor Florida State just started up there's always more College survivors so definitely check all those out if you liked this one and Anders also had promised me he swore pinky promised to me that uh Survivor Maryland season eight will be released this year so I mean this year so that means like uh in like July yeah that's he's next week is what I heard this year means like middle of the year so I mean basically like before July 1st that's what he said so yeah I know it's his fault you know like talk to him about it yeah uh great talking uh hearing all your takes on uh on All Stars and um cool getting a little sneak peek into season six as well yeah man thanks for thanks for having me it's been uh it's been a blast and I can't wait for my uh final keep your torch lit appearance when I uh you know when uh season six comes out and at some point I'll I'll come back and talk to you guys again about season six or whoever is running keep your trash look bad that'll be great I'm excited I'm excited to hear what you have to say uh you know keep your torch lit uh I'm sure we'll have some some new people filtering in at some point but you know Jack Sarah and I uh we'll always have probably some involvement so we're not you're not ever seeing goodbye forever but um yeah I'm excited to excited to talk some season six when the time comes sounds good sounds good all right well talk to you later [Music]

Channel: KYTL Podcast

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Id: 7-tus9eYgog

Length: 129min 0sec (7740 seconds)

Published: Wed May 31 2023