BuzzFeed Unsolved: The Making of the Final Investigation

this is the first time in a long time i feel nervous right now i'm really nervous for some reason oh yeah yeah okay all right whenever i get emotional in case just sitting there just like they're there take a breath buddy i'm good unsolved supernatural season seven sally house story take one and tom and mark [Music] hey there demons it's me your boy there's definitely a force at play there though and what is that gravity [Music] timmy i'm very scared but if you could throw this ball back i won't be as scared oh my god that's the biggest lie i've ever heard turn it on [Music] what the [ __ ] you've out dumbed yourself holy water inside here [Music] all right annabelle it's you and me now and there's no hiding just you and the shamester what i gathered from reading about her was basically just respect her i will say i do not respect you tell us your name apple tater i think we're ready to rock and roll you look like an idiot [Music] as you know i'll only do one demonic investigation per season but seeing as how this is the last season i figured why not end this series with the demon i started it with and i'm not referring to you by the way oh i'm referring to sally house this week on the series finale of buzzfeed unsolved supernatural we investigate the one place i vowed i would never return as part of our ongoing investigation into the question are ghosts real my name is ryan bergara i am uh the creator of this show and i'm the host of this show i'm it's papa and it's mama oh i guess shane would be its mama my name is shane midday i'm a co-host of buzzfeed unsolved it feels very good to be on the last season i would say that a return to the sally house at this particular point in time very much feels like a benchmark going to the sally house with a behind-the-scenes crew it's really crazy to think that's where we are now and that we're given the opportunity to really close this thing out right because it's truly a bookend of where we started and where we are now i think the show is special where it works because there is something for everybody in the show so if you're not a fan of horror but you love comedy or if you're a fan of comedy you don't like horror this kind of bridges the gap between those two interests it also does the same for skeptics and believers like we are diametrically opposed when it comes to ghosts and anything paranormal we're able to express that in a way where it's still clear that we not only like each other but we respect each other still and i think that is mirrored in the audience as well let's try it one more time we can play out some more banter if there's more to play out but okay sounds good take a ghost home with us and trap it in your little rib cage i'm happy to i tried to put annabelle well i thought this was going to be a harder pitch i thought you were going to i don't think i'm going to say that that's not exactly where i was hoping [Laughter] katie leblanc i think she might care a little more than i do which i've been told i care a little too much which has been detrimental to my health physically and mentally this show has been a team effort from the beginning and it feels weird for it to be just me and him saying goodbye i think it would be nice if we had the people who were in the trenches with us making this be able to also say goodbye us in our strange sect of ninjas would love to thank all of you guys for supporting unsolved for as long as you have i guess we'll see you next time it's been great guys see you later bye bye that's a wrap on the unsolved set picture wrap officially [Applause] this show isn't just you know me sitting behind a computer and then you know it comes out on youtube it's like an entire army of people they're just as much a part of the show's success as shane and i are what do you need me to help you tear down if you need me to help you tear down yeah just the lights even if you could like lower the ones in the back yep pop cards i'm stealing props from the set don't tell anybody if somebody doesn't take this this will go in the trash i know this is the map that's on the desk i'm gonna frame it the last day on set here i actually remember when they had we had meetings to make a set the fact that we were having even a set design meeting was like crazy to me um and i remember seeing like the initial designs of this office i actually think shane was with me when we saw it for the first time and we were i mean truly blown away by how much detail elena had put into this we do have a lot of work to do right now we weren't kind of tackled by our emotions in this moment but i imagine after the sally house that's going to be a different story you might even see shane um his eyes well up we'll see we'll see you might see some emotion from the big guy [Applause] it is odd to know that when i walk out of the door it's not gonna be here and i think that'll take a couple days for that to set in maybe it'll happen in the middle of the road and i'll just start weeping in my hotel room i don't know ryan interview take one unsolved dog i'm matt and i'm making this documentary can you tell me about the creation of unsolved what is it born from it came from a more organic place than people might think because i used to commute to work with brent bennett who was the original co-host of unsolved and we would have arguments about true crime cases and ghosts and demons and stuff like that all the time in the car i know that sounds like it's made up and it's a weird thing to talk about in a work commute but for whatever reason that topic came up quite a bit so we would argue about that from those conversations i kind of realized that nobody was exploring those two topics and so i decided it would be fun if we covered a true crime case we just recorded ourselves talking about it i would tell brent the story and then he would react and see how that format would work the first topic was the somerton man which was that random mystery man that was found on the beach in australia and that was that and then my boss at the time liked the format the suggestion came to maybe we should put ourselves on video as well and actually go to a place where i guess a true crime case occurred and so we went to uh the elisa lamb spot in downtown the stay on vane which it's called now it used to be called the caesar hotel i joined for the illuminati episode when brent um rest in peace ryan why shane [Laughter] brent told me he didn't want to do it anymore i was on the roof i remember this i walked downstairs you were on the roof staring out at the skyline alone as you often did and then i walked downstairs and i was like well i gotta find a new co-host sat down and jane was just sitting there and i was like hey man can i talk to you for a second i was already going into like here's what you need to do before he even said yes he was like oh yeah sure that sounds good we did a series called test friends together and we were already friends before unsolved because of that series and we had sat next or around each other for a long time even back to when we were interns i already knew we had like a natural like report so he just was like the natural next person to ask was there ever concerned about the duo not work no i had some strong confidence going into it that it was gonna just work i guess there was like a little part of me thinking that like oh man i hope they don't start you know blasting shane in the comments or something that didn't really happen i do have to say a lot of comments were like as if nothing had happened i don't know if people even realized it was a different white guy there's probably a pretty chunky middle to the venn diagram that is me and brent yes it is yeah yeah i mean i think you're a little bit more of a dick than he is but you know true i think in different ways i think that works actually no that's that's true brent does have his his ability he's a dick too we're just three dicks matt and i are gonna ride together the airport it's gonna be real fun it's gonna be very long tj march bank absolute unit he's just an enormous safety blanket for the shoot and also still cares about the creative because a lot of times first ads they're very much on the logistics of a shoot not always do they care about the vision of the project but tj actually cares we carry a lot of stuff and we just pack this bag as much as we can because you never know what we would need i would say the trickiest part about shooting in solve is probably keeping the gear like working can you let me know how many batteries you need as well we definitely need more double a's if this is all we got or maybe not it's only one investigation good on sound is that enough for you 64.32 yeah i mean usually i have i have a couple 16s but that's that's fine with me if that's what we want to do it's one episode yeah exactly one goes in the main sound and one goes in the evp so that's fine these are plenty big this is all we have with us we don't have anybody who can bring us gear so we always want to make sure that we have everything everything works also because imagine if a freaking ghost shows up and our equipment's not working that's the worst i mean that is the whole point of the show regardless if you believe or not we want to make sure our gear is working if and when something actually crosses frame [Music] he made it how does the first trip contrast with the second trip i mean this time we're seasoned pros because when we went there the first time i was a little nervous we were scared children we didn't know what to do we didn't know we didn't have any gadgets and gizmos no it's also like it's a spooky gizmos wait gazmos gazmos mo's and gidgets i'm not excited i actually lost sleep over it last night so i can only imagine it's gonna be like when i'm there five years ago let's be careful everyone there are other people on this train this time going back with actual equipment and a crew we got the gear it really felt like we were gonna give it a proper ghost hunt yeah we had a plan [Music] we were standing in this spot five years ago and being back here is already stressing me out let's get it over with you're not excited to go toe-to-toe with sally we already did it we whooped her ass and now she wants revenge we'll see back in kansas you're back baby back in kansas i had a big coffee this morning so i'm real revved up last time i was here was in fact uh to go to the sally house i'm excited to get another crack at it going back to the sally house back to the birthplace of uh the internet and buzzfeed's bastard child which is this show here we go you're out of your mind rock and roll buckaroo at this point by the way the company buzzfeed does not really know what to do with this show it's done pretty well you know it's it's a series now people recognize it as a series which was huge but from there they didn't really know what to do with it because it wasn't pulling in like mega mega numbers at that point but it was doing well so it's like they couldn't say no to making more but they didn't know how to like utilize it from a business standpoint everyone would say that this is the most evidence you've ever had on film some would say that i would argue that we've had greater pieces of evidence in other places but i will say that this is it's either the most scared i've ever been in my life or tied for the most scared i've ever been in my life my concept of reality was breaking when i was at this place last time i definitely would be less afraid i think i'm gonna assume that she recognizes me even though i have a beard now she'll clock you yeah she will i hope she does and then she'll pop up on camera and then we'll wrap this up nicely in a nice little ghost hunting i love it i'd love nothing more we weren't really sure like i said and they were also thinking of selling the entire franchise to tv the idea was yes they were gonna have me help pitch the series but i was never guaranteed that i would be in it or hosting it still in fact i was pretty sure that if it went to tv i would have been recast or something like that and so what happened was they decided they didn't want to throw the ip away and they wanted to try and make it work on buzzfeed but they didn't know how that would work because to that point there was no business model built around series they fired up this idea of a full-length 40 something minute episode of unsolved it was made very clear to me through discussion that if this shoot didn't work out if this episode did not work then the series would no longer continue essentially so i i had those stakes writing on my shoulders going into this 45 minute episode where we were traveling and hunting ghosts for the first time and i was just going to learn how to do it on the fly that was very stressful but i'm glad it worked out the fact that we are back here is really cool it's kind of a benchmark you know definitely a comparison to where we were then and now even in our personal lives last schedule lizzy that's amazing glad everyone's making a mock everybody yeah oh devin just got one too i didn't know that that's amazing i didn't even see it a lot goes into making an episode of unsolved surprisingly a lot more is in the runway than the actual shoot itself so the way that we make true crime and supernatural is similar but also kind of different and veer off in a way and mostly it's research because true crime is far more research heavy than supernatural is also supernatural involves travel and locations when i'm planning out the season trying to figure out what places we're actually going to visit or what cases we're going to cover there are a couple things that i'm usually looking for like is this place going to be visually interesting is there enough of a story here to support an entire episode then everybody comes to the brainstorm and we all kind of just talk over what ideas would be good for this season so let's actually say 10 15 in case you might need a little extra i doubt we're going to but you know better safe than sorry a lot of time there's a lot of places that just don't want to be associated with ghosts at all it's mostly places that already have like an established lore and story about them and then i'll like just give them a call or an email and then from there it's kind of just like talking to the people at the location and seeing if it's like interesting enough to make an episode well then do we just want to do a full hour for the nursery in general and like if we come in at 45 minutes we're we're great we're golden all right we have take pictures of the bear right are one of you sleeping in the bedroom tonight yeah i think probably one of us being the nursery one of us will be in the living room got it research plays a huge part in this show they provide all the information to be able to write the script we choose the episodes and in the past i would write then a script based off of that research but as time went on we brought on a writer who wrote for a lot of the seasons named garrett warner he wrote a lot of the scripts based off research and then i would give notes on his script and we would fine tune it from there this most recent season liza palmer wrote the scripts and she did a great job and then we go to location [Music] let me film you filming oh gosh film you filming me filming you yeah that's it inception baby it was definitely bizarre to go back to kansas and finish this out at the place we started it at i was just kind of awestruck at the fact that we're here to close out the series that i didn't think was possible the last time i was looking at these fields we're missing an entire case of cards that when we patched the gear i noticed and i said we have this case but we should have another case i can call walmart and see if they have them devin and most recently on this last season lizzy have been a very integral part of the team that we couldn't do the show without matt luckily had a bunch for his gopro that he's not actually using amazing so this should be this should be able to be enough to get us through are you good the other tricky part about shooting the show is that the location is never exactly how we think it's going to be because we don't get a scout we don't get to go and see these places ahead of time before we schedule the shoot the day that we shoot is the first day that we're at the location mark matt and i are going to head in to do b-roll we're going to start in the basement after we're done you can come in set up static we're going to go right to the nursery after we're done you can come in and set up the sound copy will you just text me when you're out yeah i will so i was in there i was filming katie and mark they're probably in there and there was a whisper okay am i allowed to be here and it was a myth my role in unsolved was as a producer and mostly i just kept people on budget on time and safe i did a lot of coordinating with the locations and like talking to the location owners on set doesn't this is why you're indispensable on these things because you have the vision i did not like that i was not thrilled no you're never thrilled i was like mark is that you her presence i think is important because her more so than ryan seems to be attuned to some sort of spiritual realm i don't know if her mother was struck by lightning when she was pregnant or what a lot of times we'll go to places and she'll sort of just be like i don't like this i'm picking up on some vibes here devon's been there for a very long time she's been on the show much longer than me and knows the show intimately and in ways almost nobody else does and how it works chair most of the crew doesn't believe in ghosts and i typically can walk into a place and be like the energy in here is weird what if a ton of stuff happens tonight even if it's not explainable it would be great is there a part of you that thinks he doesn't believe as much when it comes down to it i think he does believe as much as he did at the beginning possibly more because he does believe that he's caught you know good stuff on film would that change i mean it's not gonna change you at all yeah here's the things like the basis of all that there's no correlation it is pseudoscience like by definition i think that's another part is the show introduces nuance to it like not every speck of dust you see is an orb i don't want to watch a show that's just a skeptic being like you know what's not real all this i'd be like this is [ __ ] boring i want to watch a show where he gets big old saucer plate eyes and looks like he's going to poop himself and i get to chuckle about it that's funny i thought you wouldn't fall asleep to some skeptic like skeptics it would be so boring sally's just in there licking her traps she's just waiting she's looking out the window oh they're back the boys are back five years old how do you think you as a duo have changed since that i mean we certainly understand each other more we understand each other's tendencies i think we became friends in the first place because we just clicked so well together yeah we have a lot of the same interests on just about everything except our belief in the paranormal we're pretty simpatico also we get into two chairs just pushing behind us our butts we just sit down like i have so much to tell you guys that we got so much to catch up i was loving if we walked in and just became the haunted man yeah she's just like oh my god so much has happened over these past five years you guys look different it makes it easier for them to compare us than versus now too yeah oh yeah they're wearing the same thing they could see it like still hunky hunkier less hunky still hey cool boys still sexy the ghoul hunks can you talk about the bugaras and the shania bugar is somebody who is open to the existence of ghosts or anything in the paranormal like aliens cryptids things like that i think ghoul atheists would be a shania yes would you consider yourself a shania or a bugara i mean you know shaniak i don't think i'm either a shania or a bugar i am more open to being like that's not a ghost or an explanation probably leaning more towards bugara i'm a tige i wanna be a bugara but i think inherently i'm more of a shania every time i've shot very spooky things happening i felt nothing i want there to be ghosts so that we have a good show and that's what i that's what i'm worried about i'm like i want to scare the [ __ ] out of ryan because that is good for content i think the two opposing parties have made unsolved what it is because despite having a different belief system they still get along and respect each other there's a fun friendly back and forth and banter that kind of mirrors what we have in the show yeah it's like batman and joker and i was going to say this like i'm batman you're like joker i guess we're both kind of like the joker i guess we're both joker whatever it takes let's go catch a demon you generally feel like you you know how something's going to be when you go to a place and you have expectations built out for what the experience is going to be like but actually going boots on the ground there it was weird it was really weird because it was a battle it was a battle to try and treat this like any other episode and that you know we got a job to do but also acknowledge that it isn't just any other episode this is the end we got crazy ryan already he spooked i could tell it's fun to get paid to go to a building that is supposed to be haunted and walk around with cameras and be like are there ghosts here like i don't know it's a good time it's grueling and tiring but i don't think any of us would do it if it weren't a real hoot cut feeling it oh man this is so surreal isn't it weird i think the trickiest thing about filming in those places honestly is the conditions that you're in you're also like completely filming this in the dark can you film yourself on osmo yeah okay then cover ryan and film yourself on osmo all right let's do it here we go all right unsolved supernatural sally house nursery take one and common mark i do a lot of camera work so if the episode looks good it's probably me if i were the cameraman for unsolved i would be whining i see the sweat forming on his shirt when we shoot and it'll just be at the end of a shoot he'll be like oh that was a rough one like he just keeps it all in he just keeps his head down and trucks through man mark celestino he's definitely the best camera operator i've ever worked with okay i'm sorry you you know that's true come on no yeah for sure for sure mark is a much much much much much much better cameraman than i am i was not the best a.d but i filled in for mark and tj when necessary started out on some of the studio stuff and then traveled with them on a number of occasions with this show just the nature of the show and how fast it moves when we're at these places you need to have a certain eye of being able to catch a shot really quick and also be able to move quickly in case something happens and mark has this skill like nobody i've ever seen i won't get going on this room in the next five to ten minutes okay for a long time tj and i were often working in each other's stead if he wasn't available i would hop in and do his job so it wasn't often that we shot together but when we did sparks flew baby love this plan love this show love this crew what a nice teenager's being do you remember shane and i shane and ryan can you say our names if you remember us [Music] i'm gonna ask you again how old are you sally do you think there's any part of that nature coming from a frustration in not capturing something i don't know that he's ever frustrated by not capturing something he's always been very upfront about locations we've been to where he's like i didn't think that place was haunted i think he wants to get good evidence desperately all right we have three minutes left to show yourself to show us you're here but whatever i mean to be fair a lot of places we go to we do kind of start quiet oftentimes it'll start with the serious questions and then sort of devolve as things go are you born in on way you're talking to ryan bergara you piece of [ __ ] yeah that's right we're gonna lock your ass in the basement you know what i'm not wanted anymore this room is clear well it's cut all right that's good everyone's beating is everyone paying attention i'm rolling thank you unsolved supernatural sally house living room take one i got it in time oh my god you so when you said you're rolling i feel like the crew itself really makes unsolved kind of a special project just because we all genuinely like enjoy each other everyone involved has been really really on top of it i love everybody on the unsolved cruise so much i don't know what it is with the crew unsolved is strange because you do arrive in a place and then you can't shoot till the next night so everyone gets to sleep in or you spend the day you go get lunch you walk around town a bit maybe that bonds people it's not a particularly fun show to shoot because the hours are late being as tight as it is is a testament to just how well everybody gets along people should know that none of us do this for the money we all do this because we really like the show we really like each other and i think we all feel a sense of pride when it goes up and i think we all enjoy actually watching the episodes that we make i've shot a lot of things on a lot of different shows and never have i met a crew that is this close and i think that closeness comes from nature of traveling together a lot and going to all these different places and having these different experiences but also when you're up until 3 a.m in a really really dark

room sometimes it's freezing cold you kind of create a bond oh man this is really bringing back a [ __ ] flashback this is is crazy especially because i was sitting down right here this is the moment you've all been waiting for all right um let's get going all right sally this is it this is your moment this is what you wanted to do this is your bread and butter it's a two-way street i could ask and push and hope that they come back to shoot with shane and i as much as i want but they still have to say yes and so i've never taken that for granted that it's a tough shoot and yet these people still are coming back that makes me feel good because it makes me feel like okay at least i know i'm not a total prick or something like because they wouldn't do that if i was like a total [ __ ] so like i could take solace in that little part right there but i'm just very thankful that people have been willing to ride out this crazy storm for as long as we have you could probably sign this right yeah yeah it's a guest book you are a guest in this spooky home seeing people writing about us in the guest book at the sally house really kind of crystallizes that perspective you know people actually watch this show i think a lot of times when you're creating something you get so caught up wanting to make it as good as it could possibly be that you forget the what the show can mean to people moments like the sally house where you see it like in writing and you see people that have come from other parts of the world to visit there because they saw you there that makes it a little bit easier to take in where you're like oh wow there is a one-to-one connection i've had with somebody we had fun you know pals walking around spooky houses it's a dream come true here i want you to react to this this is still from the first pilot yes i was talking to father thompson talking to father thomas this is before you went to the sally house what's the difference between the two people i exited this house last time under very rare excruciating circumstances so we'll see if those could be replicated tonight i hope not honestly i just see a very young person very ambitious but doesn't really know what to do about that ambition so he's just kind of throwing [ __ ] at the wall the waiting that's the worst part yeah i'm scared everything i will say for as much as i push you and as much as i torture you when mark and i are in those places alone i don't love it i feel very normal when we're shooting and that when i get tossed in these places alone i now have to basically lay in the bed that i made is there you are shane that's yours can we just have a group photo yeah we should definitely get a group photo tomorrow morning there it is outside of sally house fyi all right everybody outside be there at 6 50 and then bye see you later all right we're leaving them in the house bye guys [Music] all right unsolved supernatural sally house exit and take one common mark uh a weight's been lifted yeah at this point now anything we would use we would use either underneath the monologue or if you want if you do want to say anything this is the time and this is it can we get mcdonald's i guess that kind of makes sense to take in the series when you are just completely sleep deprived and exhausted yeah i am glad that you all came out here to see the end of this you have any any last thoughts here as we put the series out to see you know one heck of a ride we did it we did it yeah adios sally for good this time suck my balls it means everything to be able to say goodbye that was part of the reason of just this whole last season even happening in transparency we this the season wasn't supposed to really happen it was supposed to be the end kinda last season there just was no way that i shane or anybody who works in the show was gonna say no to the opportunity to say goodbye that was like one of the major things that i wanted to have in place if we were gonna do another season because i don't think it's very often that a show that people enjoy is able to really say goodbye we also very much care about this content and we care that you care and this is our way of saying thank you three two one go [Applause] this whole last season to me felt like a giant thank you card and feel like i closed things on good terms and you could look towards the future there's been an absolute pleasure and uh last night i had the thought of like oh tomorrow morning i'm gonna have to wrap out this series and i'm not sure what i'm gonna say so i'm gonna keep it short and simple you guys have been incredible it's been an honor and a pleasure to be part of the show and with that i say ladies and gentlemen that is a series wrap on buzzfeed unsolved congratulations [Applause] i never would have imagined being where i'm at right now when i first started the show i really didn't think it was going to be anything i didn't think anyone was going to watch it there's still a part of me that very much feels like that scared 25 year old kid that just doesn't know what the rest of his life is gonna look like and this show gave me a bit of a road map i know obviously there's so much more life to live and you don't know what's gonna happen but i have a better idea and i think that's because of this show because i think when you're like in this business and especially if you're a young person it's really tough to not know what's coming next so the fact that it's ending now and setting me up for what's coming next is um it's crazy what does unsolved mean to you it's changed my life it's meant a different path for me gave us the opportunity to create stuff that we were all so passionate about unsolved to me first and foremost means friendships the relationships i created with this show are incredible even though like we'll all go off and already going off and doing our own things the friendships are still there we're still gonna be hanging out and getting beers and whatever being there for the last episode was like a really great experience and not one that i thought i would be able to do the show itself has meant a lot to me both like personally and professionally main goal of mine when i like decided that i wanted to do entertainment or make content was like i just wanted to make content that like made people happy and i feel like we did that and i'm just like happy that i got to be a part of that and that makes me feel like really fulfilled unsolved holds a really special place in my heart because a lot of the times i get hired on things and it becomes a job and it becomes something that i do for the check and that was never ever the case with unsolved it was an exciting opportunity even if they didn't pay me i would have done it everybody cares about the show everybody's passionate about it you don't often get to work with crews like this being able to say goodbye to it or being able to celebrate it it's goodbye with a documentary is just a really wonderful gift i've always made stuff about stuff that we are genuinely very curious about and very passionate about that curiosity is just a desire to sort of explore take deep dives and unsolved is sort of the physical extension of that it's fun to explore the unknown that's what it's been to me it is strange to think about how long we have been doing this show like when i started this show i was like a child i was like 25 years old and i'm a 30 year old man now that's five years that's a long time to spend with anything it's like one of the longer relationships in my life not only with you know the crew and the actual content itself but like with the audience it's a very personal thing it's so strange to know that there's like a group of people that are in the room with me but also in rooms everywhere around the world that have kind of grown up with me like literally people started watching the show when they were in like high school or college and now they're adults and we've kind of just grown together everything i'm very proud of and i wouldn't have done it any different if i had the chance there's something about the unsolved fans the dedication the intensity is just on another level that's everything right that's to be able to know that you're able to impact people's lives like that is everything so thank you you made me sad thanks for that mostly anybody could do what we do but it's dependent upon our wonderful fan base also like when we started doing the post mortems i think that really showed what a special community it was because i think in the way we interact on the show ryan and i obviously have opposing beliefs when it comes to all this but at the end of the day we're still butts us being able to bridge that gap has informed the fan base and turned it into a very wonderful community you know thank you i don't think you could quite grasp how much of a difference this show has made in my life personally i know the show must mean a lot to you whoever is watching this and that it's been a big part of your life but i could promise you the effect that you have all had on me has been if not more the same that perhaps i've had on you and i've treasured that relationship and i've been really thankful for the opportunity to to make content for you and to make this show for you it's hard for me to kind of grasp it that it's ending right now in this moment all i feel is just gratitude and appreciation for everything that you've allowed me to do yeah i mean this is the best years of my life thank you truly thank you [Music] you

2021-11-26 19:48

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