5 Cities, 10 Days to Produce Barstool Vs America

We’ve been changing time zones for branded content all over the country and changing sets for a new series exploring how technology can further benefit industries at a stage in Brooklyn. 

Lets get right to the details. 

ASL took on one of our biggest challenges to date with Barstool Vs. America. We produced a reality competition show for Barstool that was part Double Dare, part Real World/Road Rules Challenge and part America Ninja Warrior. The 5 episode series was filmed over 10 days and spanned five cities. ASL handled multiple aspects of brining this to life from building the obstacles, to renting the RVs the contestants traveled in, to merchandise, to production and even booking an alligator.

The journey took us from Dallas to Panama City Beach to Nashville to Chicago and wrapped in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Each shoot day consisted of two events. In the morning, the Barstool personalities paired up with fans known as Stoolies to compete in games such as mechanical bull riding or axe throwing. Scouting these locations was key to knowing the best places and angles within each place to film. Our traveling team arrived a day early in each city to make sure we knew exactly where and how we were going to film every challenge. The bigger challenges of each shoot day were obstacle courses that we custom built for each city (picture above). We were shipping Truss’s, custom High Noon props and slime all over the country which were major components of the obstacles. 

The final obstacle course was the most challenging part of our entire production as it was a combination of every obstacle course throughout the show and was the largest, and therefore, most difficult to cover. We added a 24-foot triangle jib for this shoot and had the jib running along 175 feet of track which took four hours and a 6 person team to level and run all along the beach. We also brought in 10 additional camera operators, and extra camera assistants and data managers, to make sure we had it covered from every angle. 

Barstool Vs America was one of the largest undertakings in ASL history and despite the different locations, logistics, the traveling crew, the local crews, company moves, RVs, hotel rooms, AirBNBs, obstacle course builds and heat waves, we are really proud of the entire cast and crew and couldn’t be happier with how the shows turned out.

Make sure you click the picture above to watch the first episode and watch the rest of them too because they are great tv!

On the same day we were filming the Barstool Vs America finale at the Jersey Shore, half the ASL team was at a studio in Brooklyn for a really cool project with the CEO of Accenture. We filmed three independent scenes for a new series that included lots of props, wardrobe and set design. Our first set featured a home laundry room look. Our second set utilized green screen and multiple wardrobe changes to denote the clothing styles of different decades and we wrapped it all up with a Castaway like deserted island scene. 

It took a real team effort to create the different sets, lighting designs and character looks but we pulled it all together with just a little bit of… Take a look at some pictures of the different sets and character looks above to see what we’re talking about and keep an eye out for the series on LinkedIn and beyond coming soon.