Behind the Scenes Georgia Outdoors

Hello there, Georgia Outdoors fans. Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of Georgia Outdoors? Ever woken up in the middle of the night and wondered to yourself, "just HOW DO they make that award winning outdoors show, anyway?" Sure you have, we all have!

Well now all your deepest questions can be answered. I'm Andrew Marshall (your friendly neighborhood Associate Producer) here to take you on your very own photographic tour of day in the life of Georgia Outdoors. Buckle up, folks. It's going to be a wild ride! (Okay...moderately wild. Well, actually, not very wild at all. But interesting. )


We'll start out at my desk...always one step away from total disaster. Notice my highly advanced and patented "sticky note" organizational system.


Production Assistant Lauren Baker and I like to print out pictures and have people around the office color them. We award prizes to the best entry.


Speaking of Lauren, there she is now, doing one of the most important jobs on the show. When tapes come back in from the field, they must be logged and transcribed. This process is basically watching the footage very carefully and entering into the computer the content of every tape. Every shot on the tape must be logged, every spoken word must be typed and filed. I'll be honest, it's a tedious process, but absolutely essential to making the show. More about that later.


Lauren also has a highly advanced sticky note filing system.


Our tape library. Every tape we've shot in the last seven year or so is here. All of these tapes are entered into the computer. If we want a shot of, say, a beaver riding a unicycle, we can search the tape directory, find the number, find the corresponding tape in the library, and then use it for a show.

This coffee machine is the grease that makes the gears of Georgia Outdoors turn smoothly. On days when there is no coffee, not a lot of work gets done. I happen to be the only member of the Georgia Outdoors crew not addicted to the stuff, but I have my own vices...


...such as the secret candy stash owned by co-worker Jenny.


If coffee is the grease that helps the gears turn, then Jenny's secret candy stash is the fuel that makes the engine run. Without this stash, there would be no Georgia Outdoors.


There is Brandon Arnold, our producer, writing a script. Script writing for documentary style television is different than writing a script for fiction. It's kind of a reverse process, like sculpting. You start out with massive amounts of material and gradually shape it into what you want it to be. This is where all the hard work done in the "logging and transcribing" phase comes in handy. Think of it as someone laying out all your sculpting tools for you so that you know exactly where they are and how to use them.


That's Clifford, the Georgia Outdoors van. Guess why we call him Clifford?


Clifford is kind of like our mascot.


Once the tapes have been shot, logged, and transcribed, and the script has been written, it's time for the editing process. Amy is one of our editors. Look at her, hard at work!


Brandon dispenses his bountiful wisdom to Amy during editing.


After the show is complete, the entire crew puts on camouflage hats and dances a jig.

Okay, not really. I'm not actually sure why this was going on when I walked in with a camera, but I took a picture of it anyway.

Well I hope you enjoyed your little tour. Come back later for some "in the field" photographs. Location shoots are the other half of what we do and I must say, they make for much better photographs!

--Andrew Marshall, Associate Producer, Georgia Outdoors