Casting was difficult. You have to find people at a good place in their life. They have to take 50 days out of their life. They knew it was going to be tough and so they weeded out the usual sort of characters that might be in these shows. Normally you would have some fail and that would be part of the entertainment.
From an Organization viewpoint there was a central hub in London (run 24×7 by Lucy). There was a support truck that followed the “contestants” and hosted all the gear used to make the show.
The contestants were not purely in a race, they were encouraged to do recreational things, a bucket list event. One group were at @shymbulakskiresort ski resort, interesting in a couple of ways. The contestants really did not like the cold and gave a life changing story about how their treatment for sickle cell anemia.
Interesting for me (nothing to do with the show or Panel) was the resort is featured in a video by the improbable but excellent Rival Irish Dance Studio:
This is in Kazakhstan. While I’m distracted 🙂 Los Angeles DP Valentina Vee was born in Kazakhstan. In an interview by Jason Levine (Adobe Evangelist) he made a point that Valentina was from Kazakhstan. Valentina looked surprised that would be worth mentioning but if you look at the video from the Show it was very European. I think Jason had something much more primitive in mind.
[Back on track]