A touching Mythbusters family portrait: Jamie Hyneman (L), Adam Savage (R), and (what’s left of) the original Buster.
(Editor’s note: We have a guest blogger this week, KQED’s Michael Kadel who accompanied us on a visit to our explosive San Francisco neighbors, the Mythbusters.)
Once one strays from Public Broadcasting into the abyss of cable TV, it’s easy to find one’s self without any thoughtful, science-based content in sight. For fans of NOVA and KQED’s QUEST, there is one little island of knowledge in the sea of commercial programming, the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters. I recently got the chance to visit the set and talk to Jamie and Adam about myth busting.
M5, Jamie Hyneman’s company and the warehouse and build-set for MythBusters, is truly a sight to behold. The walls and ceilings are festooned with creations from both the show and from Jamie’s years of prototyping and special effects work. The pneumatic shark hangs from the ceiling above a more recent piece – the windshield from this season’s Soda Cup Killer. Moving away from the back wall of the warehouse I saw the remote controlled tank treads from the “improved” 7Up vending machine, the duct tape boat, and the jetpack from way back in episode 32. Beyond the cool factor of being on the set of one of my favorite shows, what really struck me was the engineering prowess and innate understanding of physics that Jamie and his co-host Adam Savage possess. They were nice enough to talk to Craig Rosa and I during their lunch break from filming the show.
I asked them if the Bay Area was a good place to film the MythBusters, and as with most things, there is an upside and a downside. California is very particular about what can be set on fire, spilled, exploded, or shot into pieces, and as a result quite a bit of paperwork can stand between an idea and an segment actually coming to fruition.