Survivorman Les Stroud Breaks Down Jungle Survival Scenes from Movies | GQ

it lands on his nose he said it was the most horrifying pain he lost his vision it all came back later but he went black in the nose that's why you may not want to go to the Amazon jungle hey GQ I'm Les Stroud also known as survivor man and this is the breakdown [Music] first up the movie jungle let us say if you knew the whole story of Yossi Ginsburg and and his time in the jungle it just seemed like everything went wrong for him that's to stop it right there first of all the concept of somebody sleeping on a raft like that when you're in the jungle when you're traveling like that you're kind of ready for a nap at any moment of the day so him being out of it on his back on the raft totally realistic I'm a whitewater instructor so I've been down many rivers that look just like that you come to a lot of bends if you have no experience to see the signs on the river you have no idea what's coming right around that bend it could be a calm serene pool where you can pull out and sit on a sand beach or it could be a hundred and fifty foot waterfall I know what you're thinking no no you'd hear the waterfall not true when you're coming from the top waterfalls are not audible when you're coming to the top of them at the bottom sure they're deafening but at the top you don't even see them the trained eye will see this you'll see a flat line and if you see little Spitz jumping up behind that flat line in the water that's definitely a sheer drop-off you want to watch for that so these guys see that little pinch up there who knows what's next there's a lot of good realism in this movie I think now I know Josi very well I actually wrote a a commentary on his book so the movie had to deal with something that actually happened in history they had to get it right and they had Yossi there as a consultant and this is why so much about this movie nails it when it comes to what the jungles really like so now you're on a raft you're going down a huge set of Rapids and what you see in terms of escape routes and places that you can get out to go by like this real fast so it's not a matter of oh look there's a beach over there let's just paddle over to it now you see it you're on it and you're past it all within a split second it's really really tough to get out of a set of Rapids when you're in the middle let alone being on a raft which you can't steer you can't maneuver very well you're at the mercy of the river at this point okay so right there you see Daniel Radcliffe's hand and the other guy's hand too on the paddle I'm happy to see this actually they're showing signs of a good paddler I'll grab my guitar show you what I mean let's pretend that this guitar is actually a paddle and here's how you'll see people paddling down the river their top hand will be like this and their bottom hands like that and they're probably wrong true way to properly hold a paddle in a whitewater situation is your top hand must always be on the top of the paddle and then you paddle and you paddle now if you want to turn the canoe there's a way to do it called a J stroke where you paddle you Bend and you kind of pivot out here's the catch here's how you know when someone's getting a paddle stroke right if they're attempting to do that term of the J stroke their thumb is pointing down and away from them if they do this stroke and they go like this and then pry we call that the goon stroke because the thumb is pointing at the goon alright suffice to just say these boys were taught well before shooting this scene because they're getting a pal Stokes right wherever they shot that scene as they come to the opening there and you see the rapids and then it goes out of camera left there well I guarantee you that right after camera left was probably just a big flat pool then then it's like pull them out and go okay cut next scene and that's the one of the things I wanted to watch out for here was how often you can spot the stunt double because they're in some real serious water here and only an experienced River rescue technician whitewater paddler will know what to do in water like that there are a hundred and fifty movies with paddling scenes and they get it all wrong this is not one of them so good on them Oh No if you notice when he grabs Kevin that's like I think that's the character's name in it they go down they're headed towards a big rock in the middle like a torpedo so they throw themselves so they go headfirst in Iraq completely wrong in fact there is a real technique and a real method to being in a set of Rapids when you're outside of your canoe your boat your raft and in this situation that I mean they had to basically prepare themselves for it and they didn't they went headfirst stupid in all whitewater situations you want to basically think about always feet first and you you do this with your arms you always do this with your arms so what are you doing you're slowing yourself down that's how you safely go down a set of Rapids always want to be feet first so that your feet take the shock of the rocks and the branches the kind of speed you're going to experience is it's it's just on the edge of scary this is a lot different than then say the bottom part of Niagara Falls that would be just like a rocket in this situation every Rock every tree every bend in the river creates a water blockage which creates a slower area of water this is absolutely probably the most terrifying place to be it's because the water that is coming down on that rock and on their bodies is like the force of somebody in a car with their bumper against your legs and they're pushing on the accelerator it's an intense amount of pressure and they're trapped on this rock so why can't they just climb up on it because the water is so powerful it makes it very difficult in a situation like that and it's probably one of the most fearful times of my life so this is a powerful scene and they've done it well when you're a whitewater paddler you hit a rock like that you're supposed to hit it bow first that's the front of the canoe and glance off it right or left if you take that rock sideways we it's called breaching on the rock and a canoe or a kayak will hit that rock sideways and will wrap around it and once it's there once it's wrapped around that rock with all the force of all that water pushing on it you can't get that canoe off without some very specific skills that you can incorporate there are ways to do it but you need a lot of rope and you need a lot of help the camera the drone comes down and we see this long shot of the guys stuck on the rock and then you see there what's they're looking at which is that Canyon with all the frothy water you remember I'm also a film editor I'm a filmmaker so I'm noticing a change just in the in the colorizing but I'm wondering if they used some kind of CGI or green-screen in a situation like that drop didn't break apart they're still hanging on to it and remember on that raft and on those two guys is enough power enough intensity of water that it's like somebody's holding them with a car with their foot on the gas pedal so kevin is looking back at the shore on the other side and he's going I can make it this guy was dubious as in any event and and you're supposed to know the water and the shoreline if you are someone who travels these rivers and I would have known looking at that there is no way that I can swim across to that just looking at the intent of the power and the speed of the water depth of the water cannot get across there so this is basically an act of desperation at this point you don't have a lot of options in a situation like that especially for the second man for y'all see who's stuck there I think the thought that Kevin could take the machete and make a make a rope and throw it to y'all see that's about it - last ditch effort you should have taken the machete and swam with it you know kind of hold it like this and swim with it anything but say throw it to me after I get over there love that just that terrified look of Daniel Radcliffe as you'll see looking ahead and that's all you see when you're in a situation like that you don't see anything pretty you just see frothing white water black water gray water and it's very scary just to see that you're stuck in the middle of a washing machine and you're sure you're going to drown by the way drowning one of the most painful ways to die you're not supposed to do that you're supposed to do a backwards swimming to have your feet in front of you there therefore bouncing off rocks you paddle backward to slow yourself down and the way to do that is you can angle yourself like a bird so you want to go to River left just drop your right arm down a bit and back paddle this way and that is how you get yourself out of a set of Rapids paddling straight forward with the front crawl and the likelihood of you smashing your forehead onto a rock is very high it and very very dangerous the whole thing about trying to swim in a set of Rapids or get out of a set of Rapids have you dunked in them it's all about entrapment if you try to stand up in a set of Rapids as you think okay I'm good to go you should never do that unless you can feel the bottom and it feels like you're in maybe six inches of water and here's what happens now you're standing up did you step in between the rocks the water's coming this way you get pushed over you snap your legs right there and now you're flopping like this with your head under the water and that's how you see your last day it can be very scary I have fallen like that I have never snapped my legs and very quickly have to kind of hold on and roll over and it's terrifying absolutely terrifying I'm glad that when he went under the water they just did it for effect they did they did a whole camera turn right but what we call that in whitewater paddling is a washing machine so when you get dunked and you're under the water and the water is all circle it's basically eyes in the washing machine it's very hard to get out of that the only way to really get out is to dive to the bottom and spit yourself out but try to have the presence of mind to do something like that oh just even watching this is intense next up predator [Music] I know aren't he's strong but this strong it's kind of stretching it a little bit those trees are pretty powerful so normally you're gonna need like like a bulldozer to get that tree to bend over like that but you know these guys are really strong [Music] okay so jungle vines yeah I gotta say it it works it's I've been blown away at times by how strong and how readily accessible vines are in the jungle and the way you can use them in you really rarely have to make rope out of something in a jungle often the vines are just there and they they suffice really well so this is good the downside of what those guys are doing right now is that they are stirring up a ton of insects many of which will be poisonous from Hornets nests to bullet ant nests when you start messing with the jungle and gathering all these vines you're stirring all of that up and they didn't really play off of that but that is what's going on you really think this boy's got to see our tripwires maybe it can see this a group survival situation and often there is the Negative Nancy the the person who is just like going yeah come on this isn't gonna work that's the person you need to give a job to do and that's kind of what Artie's character did right here when I first started in survival there were a lot of things that they seemed a little geeky at first you know but once you get into it you realize that they have their basis in just really great skills Curie's Joe can calm them Boy Scout Bulls but sometimes it's that Boy Scout book that'll save your life [Music] wow that is a messy tie job on that rope you'd think that guys with these kinds of skills would know how to properly make lashings and that is not all I can say is that's not the proper way when it comes to making trip wires for dead falls and snares that's a whole field in itself you've got to learn your knots and your rope or you know how to utilize vines it starts with knife use so now you know how to carve things and make little things then you've got you have to understand the creatures you're going after there's a lot involved with knowing how to make an animal trap deadfall is a way of capturing an animal that you might want to eat and you can do that by getting a large object setting up a triggering mechanism and when that trigger is tripped by the animal the rock or the log falls down kills the animal you got yourself dinner snare is basically taking a rope or a wire and you need to put it in the area where an animal is traveling through there's a lot involved in trapping the thing about building anything in any survival situation is it's made better with gear if you don't have even a knife to work with trees and wood and just about any material just your hands it can be done but it takes forever and it kind of takes a village I think what I loved about the predator films were that in the end you realized it was a highly intelligent being and that you know the reason was going to be the thing that enabled you to capture it so in the real world we go after animals based on instinct almost entirely on instinct but sometimes they think [Music] my guess is that this was not actually shot on a Hollywood lot but that it was shot somewhere they could get to there's definitely realism in where they are these trees are real but then they're adding in atmosphere with all of the fog that that's the thing that always got to me is watching a jungle scene and then seeing that the filmmaker decided he needed to add in atmosphere sometimes it's just always overdone it's like you know what the area is already dramatic enough it's powerful I was thought that was Survivorman I never tried to make something look more dramatic than it was because it already was inherently dramatic the network one time wanting me to start to fake Survivorman by writing in some more dangerous scenes and and I and I remember saying so let me get this straight you're telling me that a guy me alone in the Amazon jungle for seven days without food without water no survival gear filming myself is not dramatic enough for you ya know and so I never did never rode in drama because the jungles already dramatic okay next up king of the lost world basically that's a fogger machine that they've got down on the ground there somewhere for that mist blowing by I'm in the jungle a lot of times I can't say I've seen mist that thick blowing past my feet in the middle of the trees maybe out by the river but not in the middle of the trees so we're getting into some this is gonna be cheesy let's just face it okay so I really like to know how many people would see a spider web and ask what is this moss with a question mark oh oh I don't know where to begin with this there's so much that's off here the largest insects that you'll find in any jungle you know get to be you know about like this still big and scary when it you know some of them are benign and not not dangerous at all but they're you know like cockroaches for example so there are some pretty massive insects out there just nothing nothing like this spider this is not a high budget so the leaders check him see if he's alright he just got thrown out of a tree by a spider the size of a car and he's already completely wrapped in something and that's the leaders call check him and see if he's all right whatever chemicals are in that spider to eat away flesh notice how nice and clean the eyeball is though you'd think that the chemicals from the spider that completely dissolved the flesh this quickly would have done something to the eyeball as well but you know you had to have that buy the thing about poisonous creatures it's a little known fact that the closer you are to the equator the more intense let's say the more toxic the poison actually is let's make sure we get the terms correct here poisonous venomous the snake is venomous a spider is venomous they can inject the venom into you poison is something you ingest so we often just conflate those terms and say oh it's a it's a poison of such such that's not poisonous it's venomous let's get that right the problem with being bitten or stung by just about anything is that the likelihood that you will have what you need to take care of that venom that's gone into your system is pretty close to nil you can carry a snake you know anti-venom but then you have to get bitten by that snake that you carry the anti-venom for you have to administer it perfectly or you can kill the person and if you're out in the jungle most of the time you're just gonna have to try and hopefully live through it in some cases you won't here's the thing about my time in close proximity to anything that can attack me sting me bite me nothing has ever happened to me but mostly it's because when I'm in those situations I'm really cautious for example there's a difference here and how you step on or over a log now in Canada I might step over a log why well if I step up on it at the breaks I could snap an ankle however in the Amazon jungle I don't do that because if you step over a log that's where snakes like to lie you stand on the log and then you sort of jump off of it and that is a safer way to make sure you don't get bitten by a venomous snake in the Amazon jungle yeah because spiders hiss okay that's not completely untrue actually there are creatures little creepy crawlies that make hissing sounds and worse and it can be very scary especially at night here's a spider story for you I was in the Amazon jungle and the indigenous guaraní native man named Tomo and he's sitting by his fire and he's got a six foot long poker stick there's a spider size of my hand over there and he's poking this spider and the spider jumps up and lands right on his nose and bites the second it lands on his nose he said it was the most horrifying pain he lost his vision it all came back later but he went black in the nose that's why you may not want to go to the Amazon jungle [Music] oh yeah that's just so great that is a big big spider I will say there are more species of poisonous creatures in Australia but the intensity of them in the Amazon jungle is is stronger it's palpable okay she's not actually screaming boy this is some bad editing why is it always the girl that has to fall on screen why don't they have like a guy follows and I'm not talking about like like the ditzy guy like why don't they have like the hero fall and scream just once [Music] but once again I will say that there are better movies if you want to see some realism in the jungle thanks everybody for watching these clips with me now stay tuned for part 2 of jungle survival scenes

Channel: GQ

Views: 1,224,517

Rating: 4.9261703 out of 5

Keywords: the breakdown, breakdown, survivalist, les stroud, survival, survival movie, survival movies, survival scenes, survival movie scenes, survivalist movie, survivalist movies, survivalist scenes, les stoud survivalist, survivalist survival, survivorman, survivorman les stroud, movie breakdown, scene breakdown, survivalists, best survival movies, jungle survival, surviving in the jungle, predator breakdown, les stroud breaks down, jungle, king of the lost world, gq, gq magazine

Id: q7xQIfrSndc

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 25 2020