Gettin' Ready To Roll

Posted by Suzanne Blais on 3 October 2009 | 0 Comments

If you're reading this blog post, you're going to get some insider information.

This episode contains a lot of information on how to get around town, because we were getting ready for the Alternative Transportation Road Rally-- the second Family vs. Family Challenge.  I designed it to challenge the teams to use the bus system, their bikes, and other forms of transportation in order to reduce their impacts, but I couldn't throw them into that Challenge without giving them some tools first. So we recruited some folks to come and help both the families learn more about options -- and got a lot of the content for Episode Two (thank you, Ellen and Charlie and Kirsten).

However, the insider scoop is this ....it wasn't the second challenge. The Alternative Transportation Road Rally was actually the third Family vs. Family Challenge. When we got into editing it became clear that the ATRR was more immediately compelling in lots of ways. It took the families out into the community, the challenge really forced them to face some of their fears, and try new things as a group. I wanted to focus on those elements earlier in the series, so we flip flopped the challenges. It posed some issues as far keeping track of who was ahead...but I'm hoping that it all still makes sense for the viewers.

And because the ATRR was such a big event for the famlies, we realized pretty early that it needed to be by itself. We knew we couldn't cut it down much more than we did, so that meant we needed to move it to Episode Three and that gave us plenty of opportunity to focus on getting the teams ready, along with the hilarious trip to the starting line. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed Episode Two, and maybe learned a few things about getting around in this area...maybe even you'll get inspired to dust off your bike or add a bus ride to your commute.

Thanks for watching!

Suzanne