Discovery executives presiding over the start of day two of press tour seemed to think it was heroics and drama that made “Naked and Afraid” have the biggest premiere of any Discovery Channel series ever.
After all, what else could it be?
The producers and a few (fully clothed) participants sang the praises of the show at the second day of the TV Critics summer press tour in Beverly Hills Wednesday, which not only kickstarted the naked trend among reality shows (“Naked Dating” is coming this month), it also singlehandedly revolutionized the pixilation business. Naked TV means a blur business boom.
“We have, actually, a group of probably six graphic artists that we take all every effect shot,” says executive producer Jay Renfroe. “I mean, we always pull for them to put clothes on them, but they you know, to make some kind of clothes, but most of them don’t.
The half dozen pixilators are extremely busy, Renfroe says. “So we have graphic artists that actually sit and go frame by frame by frame by frame to create the blurs.”
“They could have made my blurred spot bigger,” joked participant Justin Bullard. “That would be cool.”
But maybe he wasn’t joking.
“Justin is right,” Renfroe says. “A lot of the guys do request larger blurs.”
The main problem about being naked for 21 days in the wild is not embarrassment. In fact, people don’t lose weight before they’re on the show to look better. “I gained some weight before I went out, gained about 10 pounds,” Contestant Dani Julien says, who adds that she “went to the tanning booth so that I wouldn’t get sunburnt when I got out there.”
Said competitor Jeff Zausch, “being barefoot, that was one of the worst parts of the entire challenge for me. It was absolutely horrible, walking around in the deserts of Madagascar with no shoes. And so that’s something, you know. We all tried walking around barefoot, hiking barefoot to get our feet prepared.”
The current season of “Naked and Afraid” airs Saturdays at 10 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.