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Outlasting the FormatAS 91251 · Media Studies

Base Camp

Pack Your Ten

Alone's published gear list, and the choice every contestant makes before they are dropped. Ten items. No swapping once you are out there.
Time
6–10 minutes
Drills
Why constraint makes a format

Every location the show has used is a different problem. Pick one — it decides what your ten items are worth before you have chosen any of them.

What this is actually teaching

The constraint is the format

Nothing dramatic happens in Alone because the wilderness is dramatic. It happens because a producer wrote a rule limiting you to ten items, and every hard decision afterwards flows from that rule. Change the number to twenty and there is no show.

A model, not a documentary

The gear list and locations are real. The simulation is not — it is a rough teaching model with invented numbers, and a real contestant's skill matters far more than any of this. Do not cite your day count in an essay.

The line-and-hooks problem

Fishing line and hooks are two separate items on the list, and one is worthless without the other. Most people discover this the hard way. It is the neatest illustration in the whole unit of what a load-bearing convention is: remove one piece and the whole structure it supported disappears.

Bring to class

The website hands learning back to the classroom here. Don't write your answers below — be ready to discuss.

  • Debate: Is the ten-item rule an authenticity device, or a drama device pretending to be one?
  • Compare: Survivor gives contestants almost nothing and then hands out rewards; Alone gives them ten things and then nothing. What does each choice do to the story?
  • Find evidence for: Every load-bearing convention in this genre is really a constraint that producers chose.
  • Teacher activity: TODO: teacher to set.

The Alone text hub →