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00:00Every season of Game Changer there's at least one episode that really tests the
00:06limits of the production team. This was the one this season. I do feel a little
00:11like Icarus with this show. One day I'll burn up and fall into the ocean. When we
00:16were in pre-pro meetings for this episode I just was nervous that it
00:20wouldn't work. I will also happily admit that I was wrong. When I was reading the
00:24script, beat the buzzer, I was like okay this is gonna be like 75% of our entire
00:28lift as a props department is this one episode. This one's gonna, this one's
00:33gonna hurt a little. This one's gonna be really tough. It was super involved. There
00:37were so many functions we had to figure out, like mechanisms that actually had to
00:41work. As soon as we read it we're like okay this is when you can kind of like
00:44get excited and have ideas and get creative. What are you gonna do when this
00:48breaks? Let me guess. We dance for you to buzz in. Like your little court jesters. I'm happy to dance.
00:55The original pitch that I think we were excited about was this idea like podium
00:59pandemonium right? Where it's like all these different podiums. And we thought
01:02well what if we rent out a cool manor, a big mansion, and we set these things up in
01:07various rooms. I also loved the idea of really simple trivia. And the question is
01:13not do you know the answer to this, you absolutely do know the answer to this. You
01:17just can't find the means of buzzing it to answer. What thick? The Titanic.
01:23Beat the buzzer was a very interesting one because anytime we leave the stage and we
01:32are filming elsewhere that means we now lose that space for production. This is
01:36also a practical workspace for the crew that's trying to make the show. If we
01:41want to shoot in a parking lot that means that those valuable parking spaces are
01:46not usable. It presents real we'll call them logistical adventures that we all
01:53get to go on as a game-changer production team. We really stretched I think the
01:58limits of what we can stage in our humble studio because we had 24 different
02:06buzzers, some involving guest talent, that we had to find ways to kind of hide in
02:11every little corner of our stage.
02:14Looking for a buzzer, are you?
02:17Yeah.
02:18Oh my god!
02:22We reached out to a few people to build these buzzers and wire them and code them
02:26and we learned it is very difficult to make things wireless in a stage. We ended up
02:33with I want to say 24 working buzzers and we have one remote that controls all of
02:41them and to activate them Ash presses the button and so we have a list of each
02:46buzzer and their location is connected to the numbers. In order to make sure we
02:51captured every single buzzer being pushed, not only did we have the hidden
02:55cameras but we had a designated follow camera on every contestant. We had over 20
03:00cameras for this episode very quickly in that game. Some of them weren't even
03:04waiting like I remember Becca was just bolting from the podium as soon as she
03:08could even read the question herself. And each contestant had a PA that was
03:12following them around and they were all walking me like updates. There was this
03:16like military level of communication going on who should talk when and how and
03:23what the like kind of chain of command for all that was. On top of
03:26activating she also needs to know when someone presses a buzzer so that way she
03:31knows to make the sound. And we had like codes where we were like okay don't say
03:35anything until you say buzzer hit. Go back to the stage a buzzer's been found
03:39because we didn't want players to continue working on their puzzles when it
03:42was time for them to go back to their podiums. Me and Ash are tucked behind a
03:45couple of flags just like watching people run by and we're like okay okay okay hold for
03:51that one hold for them okay. It was this very elaborate rigging electronic setup for
03:56all of these buzzers everywhere. It's a lot of beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
04:00beep beep beep all day long of just okay activate all right sound every time they
04:06reset we get maybe two seconds to be like all right calibrate. Oh!
04:14I painted those Russian nesting sams myself approximating his likeness on two little
04:29dolls made a tiny buzzer to go in the top it's the same type of buzzer as the
04:33lapel buzzer. There was a long moment where I was interacting with Rekha directly
04:38wearing that pin and she did not see it at all she did finally and she was the one to
04:44push it but that was a really gratifying moment for me as a puzzle
04:47maker. I had the idea of putting the buzzer inside a book. Press me by Richard
05:03buzzer. So we had to get like a seven inch thick book. It arrived and we're like okay
05:10no problem like just cut out all the pages and I quickly discovered that that
05:14was so complicated and time-consuming so it took me like two straight days. And the
05:19contestant has to dig through a bunch of book titles. They're like a Rolodex and
05:24you look for your book title and you say hey I want this book. I had a lot of fun
05:28writing those titles. I think there's like a hundred. The couple making out I don't
05:36know how that even occurred to me. What about something that would just make them
05:39kind of uncomfortable or have to encounter some sort of like social
05:43boundary and figure out how to navigate it. The dorm room scene is especially
05:48funny because I think an actual couple was hired for that. Their job was like you
05:52know to make out be all over each other to prevent the contestant from reaching the
05:56buzzer. The game goes on and we look at the monitor and they're like they're still
06:00all over each other. They're having so much fun and we're like do they know that
06:06they don't need to do that. Somebody's done this right. The QR code buzzer was
06:11extremely fun. We worked with a very talented programmer Madian on those
06:15dreaming up what those captures could possibly be. The one that we ended up
06:20cutting because it was too hard was click on only the pairs of left-handed
06:26scissors.
06:30Oh wow! That's a buzz! For the solar panel buzzer I got to make a miniature set which
06:37is my first miniature I've ever done. Just put tiny pieces of grass on a foam
06:42board and put a tiny cow, a tiny sheep and then eventually a buzzer. There's tiny
06:48little solar panels and then there's an actual solar panel block that you can use
06:53to charge your phone. So it's my like phone charger now. My phone just like sits in this
06:59grass field and is charged by the sun. D20 hit me up.
07:03Oh my god!
07:08We built an entire mirror maze in the studio just for this one bit that is maybe 15 seconds long.
07:19And I think we built it in three days which is actually really impressive if you
07:24know anything about building mirror mazes which I did not and now I do. Then I
07:29walked in and thinking that it wasn't gonna work on me immediately crashed head
07:36first into one of the mirrors. Clearly it worked! The illusion was complete. We got to
07:42take a lot of fun selfies in there. We built frames around some portions of the maze that
07:54were basically windows that had two-way mirrors so that cameras would be on the other side of it.
07:59I guess it's kind of like a one-stop shop you can really order one item from them and
08:04then you kind of don't get the order from them again. I hear that they're so popular that they
08:07sell out of their inventory quickly. I'm a glutton for this collection of talent
08:12meaning the talent from The Seven. I think that as far as Dimension 20 to Game
08:16Changer crossovers is concerned, that energy, that sort of chaotic energy is
08:22perfect for our show. I go off a Eurocentric map thank you very much!
08:27Oh and everybody loves to brag about that!
08:31Game Changer episodes are always a lot of work for somebody. The question is is it
08:37a lot of work for me? Is it a lot of work for the art team? Is it a lot of work for the
08:41cast? This episode was a lot of work for the art team and the cast as well as the
08:48PAs and the crew. For me? Ooh a cakewalk!