Unscripted
Alone
Re-recording mixer Kevin O’Leary delivers an authentic
wilderness survival experience.
by Jennifer Walden
No sound mixer. No camera crew. Not a soul around. Just man versus nature, and ultimately, man versus himself. That’s the premise
of HISTORY’s survival competition series, Alone,
in which 10 individuals compete to see who can
survive alone the longest and win the $500,000
prize. Not only do contestants need to survive
the wilds of the Canadian Pacific coast by finding drinkable water and consistent food sources
while establishing a base camp to protect themselves against the elements and the wildlife, but
they also need to capture it all for the viewers
at home — entirely on their own. Alone Seasons
1 and 2 were both filmed on Vancouver Island,
British Columbia, while the newest installment,
Season 3, was filmed in Patagonia, located at the
southern end of South America.
The contestants may be expert survival-
ists, but they’re novice camera operators. Each
contestant is trained on how to work the GoPro
cameras and handheld cameras in his or her kit,
but when battling the environmental and physi-
ological challenges, operating a camera can seem
secondary to simply surviving. The audio tracks
contestants record can be as rough as their situ-
ations. Needless to say, a show filmed without
a production crew means the post-production
teams have their work cut out for them.
Emmy award–winning re-recording mixer
Kevin O’Leary was in charge of turning the raw
recordings into a polished final soundtrack for
Alone Season 2. “You’re dealing with people who
are not in a controlled environment and who are
not used to working cameras or recording themselves,” attests O’Leary.
The only sound O’Leary works with on Alone
are the sounds that the contestants capture with
their camera mics. There are no lav tracks, and
definitely no ADR. “The big challenge for me is
getting everything sounding consistent and in-
