I watched a recent interview of Terry Grant, Mantracker, the other day.
After that I realised that about half of each episode was re-shot??
I already knew that they re-did shots of moments that hadn't been clear or they didn't have good footage of.
Logical in one sense, it's a tv show after all and has to look juicy.
But realising that every frontal and side view has been shot after the actual chase changes how I perceive it all.
As Terry says, they don't change anything, but by re-doing it things automatically change.
One big difference would be that the prey aren't scared anymore. They've already spent time with Terry during dinner, they know they've either lost or won etc.
Watching a few episodes again, paying attention, I could tell that half -at least- isn't original footage.
Once the ending we were shown was even not what had actually happened?? The outcome remained the same but it had happened totally differently?
The reason was that Terry was setting his one remaining prey up to only go in one direction. He'd orchestrated this with his guide Phil.
Or he thought he did as it turned out that his cameraman had shut off his microphone so Phil didn't know. The whole thing went sour, the prey won. Yet what we were shown is that Phil is chasing after him, trying to rope him but misses.
While in actual fact Phil wasn't even there?!
This being at the end of the chase, they would've had to improvise and come up with something but still, knowing that now I feel I'm being conned, hihi.
Another good example of a mix of original and filmed again later...
The capture of the Blinkhorn brothers.
The best ever capture as far as I'm concerned. But much of what is shown is stable close-up footage, which isn't the original.
In between you see short flashes of the original footage of the capture, but this is from quite far away and wobbly (handheld cam).
So even though they try to keep it the same as how it actually happened, much of it I now feel is fake. Seeing him give his death stare to a prey was exciting. Now I know, since it's a stable frontal view, that it was shot later on.
It's the same with the frontal and most side footage of the prey.
Kinda disappointing although I do understand the reason why. But having at least half of each episode re-done later... Disappointing.
A bit like having watched "the making of Jurassic World". Watching the movie after that is never the same again, hihi.
Edited by
SparklingCrystal 💖💎
on Mon 02/23/26 03:05 AM