My brief venture into the world of reality tv production began with a simple casting email and entailed hours of creating home videos, several 6am Skype interview sessions, and ultimately ended with rejection from the Discovery Channel. In case you read too fast, The Discovery channel (not to mention countless British casting agents) have seen my home, heard Ian and me talk about what we love about it, and then formed an opinion about what they saw. The fact that they turned us down is less important than the fact that they found us worth looking into- this experience alone is already far more exposure to the world of tv than I ever expected from my life. My summary of the experience? Pretty dang bemusing.

Called alternatively “Homestead Living”, “Homestead Rescue” and “Off Grid Living”, this tv show is explained as a home improvement show with a simple living twist. Recruiters were looking for eight households around the country with people that were beginning to live a homestead or off grid lifestyle and were becoming overwhelmed with the experience and needed some expert help. Each episode of the show would feature a homestead being visited by “homestead experts” that would give the struggling family advice and help them to make some necessary changes and improvements that would make them better able to succeed with their new lifestyle. Improvements could be anything from installing solar panels to building better fences, and it would be paid for by the show. If you could deal with the publicity, this show had the potential to be a fantastic opportunity for homesteaders.

My involvement began when a California production studio found my contact information from this blog and sent me an email asking if I would be interested in applying for the show. I try to live with the mentality that it’s best to say yes in these situations, so I figured there was nothing to lose by spending a free evening filling out the application. Most unexpectedly, I landed an interview. After a pleasant phone interview with a recruiter, she told me that our homestead fit what the show was looking for and that she would recommend us highly to her boss. A few days later she emailed me a number to call in order to schedule the second interview. And then she ghosted me. Either all applicants were told they were great fits regardless of the company’s true opinions or the recruiter had second thoughts about me, but I never heard from her again. For over two weeks I contacted her office daily, leaving voice mails and emails without ever getting a response. Eventually accepting this was just a frustrating way of being told we were no longer candidates for the show, I moved on with my life.

I would have forgotten about the whole experience but three weeks later I was contacted by a different production company for the SAME SHOW. This company was based in the UK and had no idea I had already been contacted, interviewed and apparently turned down for the very show they were casting. Thankfully, this information didn’t prevent them from scheduling a new interview with me that resulted in far more positive results. The second time must have been the charm because this second company worked intensively with me for several weeks.

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

%