Fox’s Adventure Reality Series ‘Extracted’ Leverages ‘Insane’ Tech to Achieve Maximum Drama
The thrill of Fox’s new reality competition series “Extracted” (premiering February 10 at 8 p.m. ET) is in its clever combination of two genre tropes: Watching regular people test their limits and watching regular people fight the temptation (or not!) to acquiesce to our baser instincts.
The premise is simple (and frankly horrifying, depending on how much you trust your friends and family): 12 people without survivalist experience are dropped off in the Canadian wilderness with just the clothes on their backs and must make do until they complete tests to earn supplies. Back in HQ, each contestant has two pit crew members who watch their progress over surveillance cameras. Only they have the power to say when the time has come to extract the survivalist — and they must compete with other pit crews for the opportunity to send supplies to their survivalist.
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The results are thrillingly tense as concerned friends and family worry over their loved ones — or exercise tough love. “It’s getting tough to watch,” several people in HQ say about seeing what’s allowed to unfold at various camps. How much torment are the pit crews willing to put their amateur survivalists through to win a grand prize of $250,000?
All the decisions that pit crews make are mediated by monitoring the survivalists — and unlike other survival reality series, there are no camera crews shadowing players in the wilderness. Instead, an extensive technical infrastructure provides a bird’s eye view of what’s happening in the middle of nowhere over three weeks of filming, including 8 miles of fiber integration, 176 cameras, and 100 audio feeds.
”That side of it is insane, and it is groundbreaking,” head of extraction Megan Hine told IndieWire of the tech. “I’ve been working behind the scenes on adventure survival shows for over 20 years now, and this is the first time that I’ve seen this on this scale, and it was so exciting. It was pioneering technology. During the initial phases, there was a lot of issues with the tech and having to play it by ear and sort of trial and error. Because we were operating as the seasons were changing, we had heat initially and then the temperatures dropped, so you’ve got to have [weatherproof] technology. We’ve got miles and miles of cable and WiFi, and we’re trying to beam information back to headquarters, which is over five miles away. There were literally 176 cameras filming 24/7.”
That blanket approach not only provided the editors with a near-overwhelming amount of footage to assemble, but it also allowed pit crews and those working behind the scenes the chance to drop in on one of the contestants at any time. (The survivalists are also equipped with go-pros to record, say, their struggles to build a fire.) The survivalists are essentially cut off from everyone; HQ can see and hear them, but they cannot see or hear anyone else.
The extensive technology utilized on “Extracted” extended to the health of the survivalists, too. They really are out in the wild without heat or protection (at least until they create their own), and everyone involved in making the show knew that it was up to them to maintain a level of care.
“They had wearables on, so a couple of times a day, they’d press a button on their wearable and upload all their data into the cloud and would get beamed down to headquarters,” Hine said. “We could then look at their heart rates, their body temperature, all of these stats. It was interesting watching them over the period of time, how their bodies adapted or didn’t. The families had access to this data as well, which was also part of their decision-making process on how far they pushed their survivalist.”
The safeguards are all in place throughout “Extracted,” which takes a bit of the human concern out of watching it. But the nearly invisible surveillance-style approach to capturing the survivalists seems to help both them and their pit crews (who must live and sleep at HQ) forget that they will be broadcast on national TV, allowing for some raw moments of petulance, fear, and questionable choices.
And as Hine pointed out, even those involved in producing the show were getting drawn into the unfolding human dramas. “You’re like, ‘What the heck are you doing? What is going through your head — is anything going through your head?'” she said with a laugh. “You know when you’ve got a good show going when you’ve got the producers watching the show on all these live monitors, and then that person achieves something or fails, and it all just erupts. And seeing the crew going along on that rollercoaster as well.”
To say nothing of the dramas happening in HQ, as the survivalist’s teams either comply with the greater good or focus on winning at the expense of the others. Why does one family send two knives to their survivalist, thus depriving another of a knife? Because it fits in the box.
”That’s what’s so great about the concept because these are essentially everyday people,” Hine said. “And as the viewer watching, you genuinely could be one of those people. So it’s very easy to look in from the outside and be like, ‘Why have you packed two knives? What are you thinking about?’ This is what I like, is that you can interact with your family at home and run that scenario and say, ‘You’ve got 20 seconds: What are you going to pack?'”
Watching it unfold on TV is great entertainment — but whether or not playing it out in a hypothetical with the people on your couch does as well depends entirely on with whom you’re watching.
“Extracted” premieres new episodes on Fox every Monday before they stream the next day on Hulu.
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