It all start­ed with an adren­a­line-pump­ing zip line over the turquoise wa­ters of Mac­queripe Bay back in 2018. Now two years lat­er, the world is get­ting an­oth­er chance to see T&T's cul­tur­al and en­vi­ron­men­tal splen­dour on CBS's re­al­i­ty game show, The Amaz­ing Race. 

Sea­son 32 of the long-run­ning show will pre­miere on Oc­to­ber 14. Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon an­nounced that episode 1 which was shot in T&T, will fea­ture the cul­tur­al as­pects such as steel pan, car­ni­val cos­tumes and goat rac­ing in lo­ca­tions that in­clude Ex­o­dus Pan Yard, Ny­lon Pool, Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park, Cas­tara and the Buc­coo Goat Rac­ing Fa­cil­i­ty.

In a vir­tu­al me­dia con­fer­ence on Tues­day, Gopee-Scoon said the pro­duc­tion crew shot the scenes in No­vem­ber 2018, em­ploy­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 310 lo­cals and spent $1,915,000 film­ing on lo­ca­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to en­ter­tain­ment mag­a­zine, E-On­line, The Amaz­ing Race av­er­ages about 10 mil­lion view­ers per sea­son.

Gopee-Scoon said this means the beau­ty and cul­ture that T&T has to of­fer will be seen by this large au­di­ence. "In this vein, I am ex­tend­ing an in­vi­ta­tion to every­one at home and abroad to view this episode, which will un­doubt­ed­ly have a pro­found im­pact on our na­tion­al pride. I would like to em­pha­size that this in­ter­na­tion­al film pro­duc­tion is not a one-off or iso­lat­ed event. In fact, The Amaz­ing Race was among thir­ty-five (35) film pro­duc­tions of vary­ing gen­res, sizes and bud­gets shot in Trinidad & To­ba­go in the fis­cal years, 2019 and 2020, spend­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly $18,900,000 and em­ploy­ing 629 lo­cals."

"Some of the more promi­nent pro­duc­tions filmed dur­ing this pe­ri­od in­clude Ains­ley’s Kitchen, which aired on Jan­u­ary 2019 and Love and Hip Hop At­lanta, which aired in May 2019," Gopee Scoon said.

She al­so an­nounced that five ma­jor pro­duc­tions com­menced dis­cus­sions with FilmTT and sig­nalled their in­ter­est to film here in 2021, with an over­all es­ti­mat­ed pro­ject­ed spend of over $78,000,000. 

If you are not fa­mil­iar with The Amaz­ing Race, Lor­raine O'Con­nor, di­rec­tor of Rid­dum Pro­duc­tions, who part­nered with the CBS pro­duc­tion team, ex­plained that 12 cou­ples de­part the US to trav­el to un­known des­ti­na­tions. They must com­plete chal­lenges thrown at them along the way. Each cou­ple has their cam­era op­er­a­tor and an au­dio per­son who does not leave their side. Af­ter each des­ti­na­tion, a cou­ple is elim­i­nat­ed and the win­ning cou­ple wins US$1 mil­lion.

It was O'Con­nor and her lo­ca­tions man­ag­er Princess Donelan who sold T&T's mag­ic to CBS. She re­called it was 3.30 in the af­ter­noon, and af­ter ex­plor­ing co­coa es­tates, pa­n­yards, Moko Jumbies in San Fer­nan­do, dou­bles in Debe and the Gas­pa­ree Caves, she and Donelan were about to zi­pline for the very first time. They were both ter­ri­fied but chin up as the CBS pro­duc­er was keen about try­ing the zi­pline to con­sid­er in­clud­ing the chal­lenge in The Amaz­ing Race.

"We were not go­ing to give him even the slight­est rea­son not to con­sid­er Trinidad & To­ba­go as the per­fect des­ti­na­tion to start this very an­tic­i­pat­ed sea­son," O'Con­nor said.

From there, it led to an ex­plo­ration of To­ba­go and a week af­ter the ad­ven­ture end­ed, the show's pro­duc­ers called with news that ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er Bertram Van Mun­ster want­ed to in­clude Trinidad & To­ba­go in the pre­miere episode. With Rid­dums Pro­duc­tion as the lo­cal fa­cil­i­ta­tion com­pa­ny part­ner­ing with Leslie Ann Wills Caton, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Fix­er­Films, the crew shot Episode One on No­vem­ber 11, 2018. Rid­dums Pro­duc­tions em­ployed over 300 lo­cal sup­pli­ers in ar­eas of trans­porta­tion, dec­o­ra­tion, ac­com­mo­da­tion, cater­ing, print­ing, mu­si­cians and per­form­ers. O'Con­nor said this gave the in­dus­try a much-need­ed boost.

FilmTT Chair­man Dionne Mc Nicols Stephen­son said suc­cess­es like this con­tributes to at­tract­ing more in­ter­na­tion­al pro­duc­tions to film in T&T. Mc Nicols Stephen­son said FilmTT is im­prov­ing the rel­e­vant reg­u­la­to­ry con­di­tions that help to en­sure sus­tained lev­els of pro­duc­tion and for­eign ex­change gen­er­a­tion.

"And this is typ­i­cal of film pro­duc­tion. It has the po­ten­tial to add to the econ­o­my in al­most every sec­tor, rev­enue that would not have oth­er­wise ex­ist­ed. It is for this rea­son that we con­tin­ue to work to­wards sus­tained lev­els of film pro­duc­tion of both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al, even in this COVID-19 re­al­i­ty. We are li­ais­ing with and learn­ing from our in­ter­na­tion­al coun­ter­parts as we de­vel­op sys­tems through which we can con­tin­ue pro­duc­tion in light of the present re­al­i­ties," Mc Nicols Stephen­son said.

As the gov­ern­ment's  Na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment Strat­e­gy/Vi­sion 2030 iden­ti­fies the cre­ative in­dus­tries as one of the new and emerg­ing eco­nom­ic sec­tors that can pro­vide nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties, Gopee Scoon said FilmTT, an agency un­der the aegis of her Min­istry, is spear­head­ing ef­forts to un­der­take film des­ti­na­tion mar­ket­ing to at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al film pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies. She said the ul­ti­mate ob­jec­tive is to show­case T&T as a pre­mier lo­ca­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al pro­duc­tions.