Escape: Behind-the-scenes gossip

• It took producers between a week and a month to prep the crash sites ahead of filming each episode.
• The mangled vehicles left on location were chosen loosely based on real life crashes..
• Before filming the engineers were kept away from each other and Ant so that the first time the met was at the crash site. They were only referred to as numbers, producers didn't use their real names, and were often blindfolded so they never managed to pick up any information that could help them before being transported to the crash site.
• In each location Ant and the engineers were given a supply of water and basic food rations to keep them alive during their battle to build an escape vehicle. Everything else, including shelter and sanitation, they had to deal with themselves.
• Once Ant and the engineers were dumped on the crash site they had no interaction with producers, who filmed the show like a wildlife documentary, working from a base camp hundreds of meters away from the site.
• The Ep 1 crash site was so realistic, the local military carried out a fly-by to investigate.
• During the early phase of development of the series, the contributors weren’t going to be expert engineers – the question had been raised about whether it would really be a challenge for people who were experts in their field.

Escape starts Sunday 1st October at 8pm on Channel 4