”We're two guys from Finland, Riku with the mike and Tunna behind the camera. We're on a global odyssey to learn about the most bizarre traditions on earth and to uncover the secrets this planet holds. We believe that the best way to travel is to step outside your comfort zone that's where you find the real culture. Theres just the two of us, lifelong travellers in the strangest destinations of the world. No crew, no security, no limits.”
This is how the main authors and journals Riku Rantala and Tuomas Milanoff introduce themself and their mission in travel documentary television series Madventures. In a nutshell Madventures is a Finnish series about travelling and lifestyle around it. But furthermore it's showing cultural differences and global & local phenomenons. Madventures started as a gonzo journal style travel series on a finnish broadcast but ended up to Travel Channel as international broadcast. On 2009 National Geographic Society bought license to series and show is released on this spring.
How did this production team of just two guys managed to make so simple idea as international success and even profession for themselves?
The first season was made on fast schedule to show what's the idea and episodes were shot on during the journey just to get money to cover the costs of the trip. The premiere of the series was in 2002 and like it was planned, it was a breakthrough.The first season was concentrating more to travelling, backpacker lifestyle, hints and own experiences. Locations of the journey were usually out from basic tourist resorts and the series had also different sections e.g. interviews and cooking and fictional features that made traveling more interesting to the point of ”basic” followers. When finance side was secured, second season was more planned and included more journalist material.
The first two seasons were made only for Finnish audience. On the third season Finnish was replaced with English and the style of the series was also changed from free traveling and lifestyle to show ” the most bizarre traditions on earth and to uncover the secrets this planet holds”.
There was more and more people getting into individual traveling and Madventures took everything out from their popularity. Already during second season they launched online shop for by-products and their own homepages was accompanied traveller board stranded.to. Straded.to is still vivid travel forum where people not only talk about Madventures and traveling in general but also search company for trip, share tips for the cheapest flights and offers. Also authors of series are participating to discussion.
The best part of the board is location information. As they have said the most updated information from locations is easiest to get online and often other travellers are the best source. Straded.to is working on this way pretty well as it is devided to sections by continents and countries. Users can share and get the most recent info and usually they know writers as reliable from the community.
Besides their own homepage, forum, blog and twitter & facebook they represented on different finnish media and made co-operation with several news and travel agencies. For example:
In 2006 Madventures made ”Travel School” video series to Kilroy Travels and co-operation followed by Madventures blog during the shooting of third season. In 2008 they also took part to produsage site on Helsingin Sanomat( the biggest newspaper in Finland)) webpage with their own section to ”Oma Kaupunki” (own city) site. Oma Kapunki is free ”where to go, what to do in Helsinki” -site in where users can add their own locations and events.
More they were show,n more popular they got. After second season, in 2006, Madventures was already having a ”cult” reputation especially among young people. Fans were translating and making subtitled videos from episodes and the best parts of seasons to Youtube. In fact even the official DVD release of the first season is still without subtitles so it seems that the authors wouldn't mind about this.
The style of the series and phrases and manners which Riku and Tunna were repeating were to be phenomenon of their own. There was more and more videos, clips and parodies made to youtube inspired by the series. The fan-productions vary from inside jokes and total parody to amateur tourist videos and quite a professional style travelogues but they all still own a lot to the original Madventures.
Whether those repeated parts were intentional or not, they turned to be successful way to get series more popular.
The interesting part on this kind of new media phenomenon is that Madventures episodes are on their own having many popular culture references. One of the many are episodes in U.S referring to Fear and Loth in Las Vegas and praising Hunter S. Thompson, who is known as creator of Gonzo journalism. They also made up some of their own fictional characters. One of the most discussed was Coco ( ”true traveller” ) who later turned to be Tunna's brother, but during the season it was difficult to realize was he real person or not. They used him also when doing ”Travel School” for Kilroy Travels.
On the other way Riku and Tunna had cameo roles on a finnish adults animation series ”Pasila” in 2008. In the episode the main character tries to escape the rat race to Goa and meets Riku and Tunna at the airport.
In 2007 Madventures extended from digital to print media: they released a travel guide Madventures: Kansanvälisen seikkailijan opas (”Guide for international adventurist”). The book differed from traditional travel guides on way that it barely contained any info about destinations. It is more a guide to individual traveller from planning the trip to reverse cultural shock. It also contains behind the scenes and background stories from the two first season. The guide was awarded with ”The Travel Book of the Year” -prize in Finland.
Already during the first season Madventures caused discussion on boards and also on magazines. Especially part focusing to different cuisines and food cultures caused some sensations. Recently they released a cooking book ”Mad Cook - Kulinaristinen seikkailukirja” (”Book of Culinary Adventures”) and the new spin-off series ”Mad Cook” is broadcasted this spring in finnish television. Mad Cook products are again something else than just traditional cooking. Both book and series are about experimental cooking inspired by traveling but also revealing politics, history, ecologic and ethic questions of food and eating.
It seems that Riku and Tunna are getting all the time new ideas originated from Madventures: the most recent one is to launch pop-up restaurant inspired by travelling and making of "Mad Cook". They are hosting a new brunch event every Saturday of this May in Helsinki. It's success before it even began: all the events are already sold out!
I think neither of the guys couldn't think where this one filmed backpacker trip would get them later, but already almost 10 years of Madventures have made travelling as their profession. They are often interviewed when ever finnish media is writing about travelling or cultural differences and also nowadays food, which seems to be one of the most discussed topic of recent years. How did they do it? It's a project of creating interesting characters, mixing fact and fiction, referring to popular culture works and hiding hints to get fans more interested, using media to stay updated, using many different media (old and new) to get increasing amount of different types of audience.... In the end it wasn't so simple and have taken a lot of effort, but they have not only became "Specialists of travelling, as Helsingin Sanomat was calling them, but also media specialists.
No comments:
Post a Comment