How Long Does it Take to Produce a One Hour Travel Program?

0s · Curious Travelers Television · 22 Aug 19:58

People often ask me how long does it take to produce a one hour travel program?
I often joke that it takes as long as the size of the budget. The truth is that it usually takes a set amount of time; unless you have several production teams in the field at once you'll be lucky if you can make more than six travel programs a year, as each one takes a good two to three months from start to finish.
Here's the usual timeline:
Week 1: Pick destination and host, contact tourism boards, research destination
Week 2: The researcher works with the writer and/or producer on a draft screenplay
Week 3: Writing on the screenplay continues, with the director's input
Week 4: Producer/Director arrive in destination: Location scouting, meeting with the local producer/fixer
Week 5: first week of production
Week 6: Second week of production
Week 7: Third week of production
Week 8: First Week of editing -rough cut assembled
Week 9 Fine Cut and Sound work
Week 10 Final Cut - Music composed, sound mixed, elements set for delivery
This timeline is based on a production such as Globe Trekker, with the production based on the assumption that at most you will shoot an hour a day, with five minutes of that video ending up in the final cut. Also that a well planned city shoot take two weeks of production; a country, three weeks.
The exceptions:
A reality type travel program such as Discovery Travel Channel "Five Takes" takes only a week TOTAL, from start to finish, with editors working on set, several cameras shooting at once and practically no script, research and location scouting. (it's amazing it's as good as it is)
A half hour essay type travel that relies on a good deal of narration and hosted by Rick Steves or Cash Peters probably takes only a week to shot and a week to edit and score - two weeks total.
An hour host written essay type program such as Anthony Bourdain's No Reservation probably takes only a week to shoot; three weeks to edit, total.
So the answer is that a travel program takes one to ten weeks, although ten weeks is often the ideal. I would bet that the really well funded travel channel such as BBC's Michael Palin expeditions take months to shoot and edit.
How long did it take for you to shoot your travel program?

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Review: Take Five Europe on Discovery Travel Channel Breaks New Ground!

Take Five Europe was the first program I believe that was greenlighted by the new General Manager of the Discovery Travel Channel. It is an extremely smart production decision. The series breaks new ground in integrating written and video blogs with an on air program, building an interactive audience and using small DV and Hi-Def cameras. It also is shot and edited in one week, so certainly current events such as the London subway bombings appear in the show, giving it an up to date feel, something lacking in travel programs, that often air a year after they are shot and have outdated information, for example, on prices for accommodations, vital info for the traveler.
It's partially produced by Michael Rosenblum Associates, a producer I met about two years ago at his film school DV Dojo. The idea of the film school was to teach journalist and indie filmmakers how to become what he called VJ, or video journalists. With the introduction of inexpensive DV broadcasts quality camera by Sony, JVC,Panasonic and Canon and editing systems such as Final Cut Pro by Apple the barrier to entry to produce a television show has been lowered.
Before you had to buy or rent a camera that cost between $25,000 and $100,000 and edit it on Avids, that cost another $100,000 plus. Now you could produce a television program of equal quality with a $3,000 camera and a $3,000 computer with editing software.
The DV Dojo promoted the idea that television was now not three or five main networks but hundreds of channels, with a hunger for content. All you had to do to feed the machine was produce content to earn a living as a VJ.
Of course it's not as simple at that. The networks have plenty of suppliers they can depend on and relationships going back years, so they aren't actively seeking out new sources of programming. That said, some new companies do get a chance from time to time, particularly if they make a decent program for acquisition.
The DV Dojo courses were expensive. One could buy a computer and and editing program for the cost of a single week course in Final Cut Pro. Let's fact it: it's not hard to learn the basics of these programs. It's not rocket science although granted to get really good at video editing it's like anything else. It requires experience and certain talents, particularly if you are working on deadline.
After a year the DV Dojo put up the out of business sign. Michael Rosenblum went back to his bread and butter, producing for cable television networks. He also consulted companies such as Oxygen, the BBC, NY1 and the New York Times Television, looking to cut costs by switching over to the lower cost video formats, such as DV and HDV.
Michael hooked up with another company M3 Media and developed Take Five Europe. On the website he's not featured in any of the video blogs with the behind the scenes footage, for reasons I don't know?
Take Five Europe takes advantage of the new video technologies. The series features five VJ, now called TJ's (Travel Journalist) Travelers. Each is given fifty dollars a day to travel on, and that includes hotel and food, not much in Europe these days. They travel to six cities in Europe: Paris, Prague, Barcelona , Venice, Berlin and Athens. They also have DV cameras - Panasonic AG-DVX100A, Apple Powerbooks loaded with Final Cut Pro and are required to shoot and edit a one hour episode in a week while on the road. It's a clever gimmick and the shows are broadcast a week after they are completed, so you are seeing each program almost in real time. Usually a program takes at least a month to complete from start to finish, and as long as three months.
The five VJ's are followed around by a team of eleven with the new prosumer Hi-Def cameras, the Sony HVRZIU (the Z camera). All the HI-Def footage is unfortunately downconverted to match the DV and the program is broadcast in standard definition and 4:3 aspect ratio. I can't really tell the difference between the Hi-Def footage and the DV and it looks like any other program on Discovery, and that includes footage in the approved cameras - BetaSp and DigiBeta!
Why would anyone shot with anything else the HDV these days? Why lug around a twenty five pound betacam? In a travel program it's best to seem like a tourist and draw as little attention to yourself as possible. I'm seriously considering shooting my travel series with the really small Hi-Def Camera, HDR-HC1 with a CMOS imaging chip. Tests on this camera conclude that it has even better color rendition under normal outdoor shooting situations than the HVRZIU. Under low light conditions it's slightly inferior, but very slightly. Size wise it's a third of the size and weight of the HVRZIU, an important consideration in travel programming. And the cost? It's about the third of the cost as well.
The best part of the series are the video blogs. There is footage in the blogs that was deleted such as the ghost sequence that I would have included in the series. Some of the behind the scenes footage is, as is usually the case, more interesting than the series itself. And each episode is better than the next. The crew and cast seem to be hitting their stride.
The concept of the series is first rate from a technical point of view and a breakthrough for the Travel Channel. Little do they realize they are opening the floodgate for hundreds of submissions, just as Sundance did when it accepted DV films. I think their programming will be better as a result. Certainly the diversity of producers could be positive.
As for content the show in my humble opinion is not on a level with the really top travel programs, such as "No reservations" or the Ian Wright Globe Trekker programs. The problem comes down to the casting, it seems rushed. The producers probably got the go ahead to do the show in June for a late July debut. I saw a casting notice on Craig's list around that time. The travel journalists are not that interesting. They're the average American twenty something, that describe destinations as being "cool'. "hip" "beautiful' and so on. Sometimes they come off in their travels as the classic innocent Americans abroad. Some may consider that part of the shows charm. I prefer intelligent commentary in travel programming but it takes clever writers for that.
Demographically this program is really more for the 18-22 MTV audience than the Travel Channel, with its 25-50 audience. If the "Let's Go" guidebooks had a travel show this would be it, with the kids staying at youth hostels and eating in cheap restaurants. Perhaps the Travel Channel is trying to skew a bit younger audience and get away from it's middle age male presenter programs. I wonder how the rating are? After all the show is not inexpensive to produce. It's not as it could be - just five kids with cameras on the road. The entire crew and cast come to sixteen people, with five cameras, twelve laptops editing over 60 hours of programming.
Still the show must be doing reasonably well in the ratings, as the website announced six new episodes and is soliciting new TJ's online. I hope they do better with the casting next time. The show is a fun idea and as I said before, a break through in technology.
The good news is that it's a possible opening for new producers and new programming ideas.

Lowell Thomas, The Man Who Invented The Travel Program

If we trace the history of the modern travel program the origns go directly to Lowell Thomas, the man who invented the term travelogue. Below is his biography from the wikipedia encyclopedia:
He was born in Woodington, Ohio, in Darke County, the son of Harry and Harriet (Wagner) Thomas. His father was a doctor and his mother a school teacher. In 1900, the family moved to the mining town of Cripple Creek, Colorado. There he worked as a gold miner, a cook, and a reporter on the newspaper.
In 1911, he graduated from Valparaiso University with bachelor's degrees in education and science. The next year he received both a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Denver and began work for the Chicago Journal, writing for it until 1914. While in Chicago, he was a professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, teaching oratory. He then went to New Jersey, where he studied for a master's at Princeton University (he received the degree in 1916) and again taught oratory at the university.
A relentless self-promoter, he persuaded railroads to give him free passage on their roads in exchange for articles extolling rail travel. When he visited Alaska he hit upon the novel idea of the travelogue--movies about far-away places. When the United States entered World War I, he was part of an official party sent by President Wilson--the former president of Princeton--to compile a history of the conflict.
Soon after arriving, he went to Palestine to cover General Allenby's campaign against the Ottoman Empire. In Jerusalem, Thomas met T. E. Lawrence, a colonel in the British Army, who was spending £200,000 a month encouraging the inhabitants of Palestine to revolt against the Turks. Thomas shot dramatic footage of Lawrence and toured the world narrating his film, With Alleby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia making Lawrence--and himself--household names. He would later write a book, With Lawrence in Arabia (1924), about these events. He was fictionalized in David Lean's film Lawrence of Arabia as American journalist Jackson Bentley, played by Arthur Kennedy. It would be the first of fifty-six volumes. During the 1920s, he was a magazine editor.
In 1930, he became a broadcaster with the CBS radio network. After two years, he switched to the NBC radio network but returned to CBS in 1947. He hosted the evening news for four decades until his retirement in 1976, the longest radio career of anyone. "No other journalist or world figure, with the possible exception of Winston Churchill, has remained in the public spotlight for so long," wrote Norman R. Bowen in Lowell Thomas: The Stranger Everyone Knows (1968). His signature sign-on was "Good evening, everybody" and his sign-off "So long, until tomorrow," phrases he would use in titling his two volumes of memoirs.
Thomas never lost his fascination with the movies. He narrated Twentieth Century Fox's Movietone newsreels until 1952. That year he went into business with Mike Todd and Louis B. Mayer to exploit Cinerama, a movie format that used three projectors and an enormous curved screen. Because of both the cost and technical issues in synchronizing the projectors, Cinerama never caught on, but a quarter-century later, Thomas was still raving about it in his memoirs and wondering why someone wasn't trying to revive it.
"The world's foremost globetrotter" took his radio show on his travels, broadcasting from the four corners of the globe. Once on the Spanish Steps in Rome he was asked by a fellow American, "Lowell Thomas, don't you ever go home?" He was a fanatical skiier, helping develop the Mont Tremblant resort in Quebec and skiing near Tucson, Arizona.
He was a successful businessman, helping to found Capital Cities Communications, which in 1986 took over the American Broadcasting Company, and developed the Quaker Hill community in Dutchess County, New York, near Pawling, where Thomas resided when not on the road. Among his neighbors there was Thomas E. Dewey, one of a huge circle of friends that included everyone from the Dalai Lama to Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1976, President Gerald Ford awarded Thomas the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1989.
Thomas died at his home at Pawling at the age of eighty-nine.
His only child, Lowell Thomas, Jr., was lieutenant governor of Alaska in the 1970s.

Rick Steves' Backdoor to Europe - The Economics of a Travel Series

Rick Steves has to hold the record of creating the most economical travel shows. For his thirteen episode half hour series:
His crew is a total of three people:
- Rick Steves - The presenter
- A cameraman - usually a local, so he doesn't have to pay for flying in and housing him.
- A director
Probably if he wanted to he could do away with the cameraman and have a crew of just two people. I personally like to work with a team of at least six - director, producer, soundman, cameraman, presenter and local fixer. I think it's a more enjoyable way to work and you can make a better program.
He doesn't even have a soundman, which is the reason most of his programs are voice over narration. He writes the script as a treatment, only about ten pages for a thirty minute program, then looks for locations to shoot and has a few on camera segments, with the camera on a tripod and a lavalier wireless microphone.
The Total Budget for thirteen episodes:
$500,000 for thirteen half hour segments, so each episode costs a total of $38,461.53 per episode.
Each episode takes one six days to shoot and he shoots an hour of video a day on average.
Most of the expense is in the post production. It's edited and all the post production is done by the staff at Oregon Public Broadcasting, the presenting station, who are paid well for their services. Rick Steves provides a steady source of income to the station.
Public broadcasting pays for half of the shows costs, through a production loan which goes to paying for the post production. Rick Steves pays for the other half out of his pocket and the crew members, including Rick Steves, work for a small salary and a deferred salary.
After the programs air on Public Broadcasting for free in a type of syndication used by American Public Television called exchange, they are sold sparingly to other cable television outlets domestically and internationally -even more sparingly - for very little money but enough to cover all the production expense and also make a modest profit.
The program also receives an income from the DVD's they sell at the end of the program through a web site address and 800 number. Each eight hour DVD sells for $19.95 and cost about $2 each to manufacture.
Once the network's loan is paid off Rick Steves pays off the deferments to himself and the crew, then the profits are split three ways equally among the production company Backdoor Productions, the PBS network and Oregon Public Television, the presenting station.
In addition the program has an underwriter, an advertiser that pays a small fee for a 15 second "announcement" at the beginning and end of each program. In the case of Backdoor to Europe, the underwriter is American Airlines. Underwriting is fairly difficult to get for a new program, as the underwriter is understandably interested in a track record for the program that proves their are a certain number of viewers. In addition underwriters tend to stay clear of travel programs or any programs for that matter that are anyway controversial. Rick Steves shows are certainly not that. In fact they are fairly bland family fare programs, so he can get underwriting while more edgy programs such as Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations', with its countless references to his genitalia probably can't, not a problems when the advertising income is acquired from Discovery's vast ad-sales department.
Rick Steves programs are fairly popular on PBS, ranking sometimes in the top five programs viewed, so underwriting is no problem and the revenues for it guarantee in advance of cable and DVD sales a certain amount of profit.
So that's it in a nutshell, how this business works, or at least how Rick Steves series is produced. Of course the economics for a far more expensive program such as Globe Trekker is different, as are the programs on the Discovery Travel Channel and the Fine Living Network, which are mostly work for hire commissions
Keep in mind that Rick Steves main business is not producing travel programs. The programs are really infocommercials for his other business, a twenty million dollar a year tour business and guidebooks. If the budget is the lowest in the industry it's for good reason. He knows the income the program can generate and has adjusted his budget accordingly.

Why All Travel Shows Should Shoot in Hi-Definition?

In five years digital TV will be the standard worldwide. Already it is the standard in Japan.
In the united States the FCC mandate requires all television manufacturers to equip their products, except those smaller than 13 inches, with digital television (DTV) tuners by 2007. Digital tuners allow TVs to receive digital broadcasts from over-the-air signals, that is, when not hooked up to cable or satellite. The FCC claims that implementing its rule is necessary for all TV sets to be digitally compatible, thereby facilitating the transition from analog to digital signals and allowing consumers to watch TV in digital mode.
That means that all programs currently produced in standard definition analog format will have a limited shelf life, possibly less than five years, maybe as little as two years. This is bad news for travel television producers such as Globe Trekker, who has over one hundred hours of travel programmer in their inventory. The value of this huge library may be seriously diminished.
This is good news for all travel program producers who now produce in HI-Definition today, as their programs will have evergreen status.
Up until last year there was only one way to produce in Hi- Definition, the expense way with uncompressed hi-definition and using camera such as the $100,000 Sony HD-Cam.
Now several inexpensive HDV cameras are on the market, from Sony and JVC and soon from Panasonic and the going has been rocky up until now with their acceptance by networks such as the Discovery Travel Channel although that seems about to change.
When the first camera came to market the JY-HD10U. a one CCD chip with the progressive 720/30P (MPEG2) standard the engineers of the network forbid it's use, claiming that this highly compressed Hi Definition was not of sufficient quality to
go up on the satellite and would produce artifacts, the word for tiny markings on the screen caused by missing pixels.
When Sony came out with HVRZIU 3CCD 1080i camera and now the amazingly compact HDR-HC1 with a CMOS imaging chip, the engineers also complained about artifacts and banned any footage from this camera as a deliverable.
Of course I suspect that many producers use these HDV camera at times and convert (upconverted?) to Sony HD-Cam, the required deliverable, just as in the past they shot in DV and DVCAM and transferred to Digibeta format as the required deliveable. Can the engineer's spot the difference? Maybe? Do the programmers take this in consideration? Probably only if the content and technical quality are not up to standard ie poor focus, exposures, color correction, etc.
Is there a reason for the networks reluctance to accept HDV camera originated footage? Is it possible this is about raising the barrier to entry, as it use to be with the AVID for editing before FCP became widespread?
The barrier to entry has just gotten considerably lower with all these inexpensive broadcast quality cameras.
Are the networks afraid of being flooded with thousands of "amateur" filmmakers and having to deal with all this rather than relying on it's exclusive cadre of well funded and well equipped albeit often with legacy equipment, producers?
It's really difficult to know and this prejudice against HDV may be changing. One of the first programs that Pat Younger greenlighted when he took his position in the Travel Channel was "Five Takes Europe", shoot with the HVRZIU and the Panasonic AG-DVX100A, a mini DV 24p camera. The footage was all converted to a common DV standard and the program broadcast in standard definition and the standard 4:3 aspect ratio.
Anthony Bourdain's "No reservations" was also shoot with the Panasonic AG-DVX100A.
Both look great, no artifacts that I can see.
Is DV and HDV now an acceptable format for the Discovery Travel Channel?
It seems that it is, and that the producers have won out over the engineers or who ever is behind the prohibition of new video formats such as DV and HDV

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