INTERVIEW: Learn the behind-the-scenes secrets of ‘Life Below Zero’

Photo: Sue Aikens assesses the snow on her roof on Life Below Zero. Photo courtesy of BBC Worldwide/Patrick Fox / Provided by Nat Geo Pressroom with permission.

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The only thing tougher than living a life below zero is trying to document that life.

That’s precisely the challenge for the behind-the-scenes crew of the hit reality series Life Below Zero on Nat Geo, which has new episodes premiering Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Following the hour of cutting-edge television are episodes of the new spin-off series, Life Below Zero: Next Generation.

One of the chief curators of this Alaskan content is Joseph Litzinger, executive producer for the series. He oversees the show and ensures the stories of these individuals living in the Arctic are thrilling, original and worth the inherent risk of sending a camera crew to the far reaches of the planet to find these tucked-away narratives.

“It is kind of amazing,” Litzinger said in a recent phone interview. “It’s sort of the nature of working in reality [television]. You go from show to show; you never know what’s going to work, what’s not going to work, and when we first started this show there were 13 other Alaska shows on the air. It was eight years ago. So I started diving deep. I was like, OK, this will be another show. Then I’ll go on to the next show, but pretty quickly saw from the footage that we were getting back … and from the people who were on the show, including Sue [Aikens], that we had something special. And I’m thrilled that the audience responded and continues to respond to it.”

While other Alaska shows have come and gone, Life Below Zero continues to persevere — come frozen hell or high river waters. Aikens is one of the most popular voices on the show. She has been living at Kavik River Camp for more than two decades and almost instantly became a social media favorite on the series. Her life is an isolated one, except when she has clients or when the film crews come knocking.

“There are certain aspects that the crews are used to, but the nature of the show and the nature of Alaska is that it’s ever-changing, both with climate change and just the lives of the people that we follow,” the executive producer said. “We need to be prepared obviously for any sort of thing that could happen or go wrong from a safety standpoint, but also anything that could happen that the cast is doing when it comes to weather or animals. You can’t really predict or count on anything, but what has gotten easier is we’ve gotten to know the cast. They’ve gotten to know us.”

A few of the original cast members of Life Below Zero are still on the show, and new families have also joined the mix, in addition to many more voices on Next Generation. For Litzinger, the best cast members are those who don’t fit the usual model of a reality television star.

“The nature of this show is that the people who are on it don’t typically watch television or know a lot about the construct of how to make a TV show, and so we have actually found that the best Life Below Zero characters initially start off by refusing to be on the show or any television in general,” he said with a laugh. “The cast, especially when we first met them, had limited communication out in the middle of nowhere and limited ways of being a part of society, and it’s sort of this desire to be isolated and alone that calls them to Alaska, that called us to them.”

Although Litzinger’s team sends the camera operators to the northern parts of Alaska, he typically stays in a less extreme location. A couple times a year he will head up to the production offices in Anchorage, Alaska, where the crews are sent from, but most of his time is back in the Lower 48, working with the story team and editors to craft the footage coming from up north.

For Litzinger, this job is a fulfillment of a dream he has had since he was a child.

“I’ve always loved television,” he said. “My favorite thing in the world was to get the TV Guide. … Much to my parents’ chagrin, I’d grab it literally from the mail, take a highlighter and highlight all of the different shows and stuff that I wanted to watch for the upcoming week. I sort of translated that into film school, and then moved out to L.A. about 20 years ago, and tried to look for any job, did what a lot of people do, come out here and live on a friend’s couch. At the time, somebody was like, ‘Do you want to work in this new thing called reality television?’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘It’s like documentaries, but on TV.’ ‘Sounds good. I’ll do it.’ And so for the past 20 years I’ve been working in unscripted nonfiction television.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Life Below Zero, executive produced by Joseph Litzinger, airs new episodes Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on National Geographic. Life Below Zero is produced by BBC Studios Los Angeles for National Geographic. Click here for more information.

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