Tropika Island Of Treasure
Season 7 SABC3 (*193) 19:30 Reality
Want a peek inside the treasure chest? Tropika Island Of Treasure (2008-current) director and head of post production Lars Schwinges (of Cardova Productions) gave tvplus an inside look at how the game is made and played…
How long did the shoot take? The 11 episodes were shot in the Seychelles over 12 days. With eight cameras, that’s over 120 hours of footage and post production on each episode took approximately three weeks to complete. Which games caused the most confusion?
Strangely enough it was the easiest one to setup – the dice puzzle in episode 4 (on 17 April) really took over an hour to complete. That’s eight hours of footage from the eight cameras… [Laughs] How did you shoot the contestants’ “talk
ing head” moments? Where possible, we tried to shoot the diary comments directly after challenges so that things were still fresh. We kept notes of storyline points as they unfolded during the challenges and made sure to ask about these during the diary moments. Once you start seeing the contestants as characters, it’s easy to keep the narrative. And if you could coach the contestants to do something in front of the camera, what would it be? To speak in present tense in the diary moments! [Laughs] We needed them to speak that way so that their comments cut with the action. Some contestants really struggled and needed constant prompting, even after a week of doing it every day.
NB! Check out facebook.com/tvplus on Wednesday 24 May to see our interview with fab Tropika Island Of Treasure host Minnie Dlamini and to find out lots more from Lars!