JUNE-JULY 2026 - Naked and Afraid, Seven Weeks Filming in Bulgaria for Discovery Channel

This was a new one for me. Seven weeks in Bulgaria filming Naked and Afraid for the Discovery Channel and Battle Back Productions.

A friend had got me involved in the production, and the only person I knew on the crew was sound recordist Stephen Crawley, who I'd worked with once before on a Ben Fogle TV show. Stephen's a Cockney living in Glasgow, so pretty much an honorary Scotsman. The rest of the main production team were mostly Americans, so it was going to be a whole new bunch of people to work with.

We flew out to Bulgaria and met up with Liz, the production manager, and Haley, one of the producers, for dinner on our first evening. We decided to try some local Bulgarian food and ordered a whole selection of dishes, including pig's liver cooked in butter and pig's ears. The liver was absolutely delicious, probably the best thing we ordered that evening, and that wasn't just my opinion, everyone agreed.

The first thing that struck us was the heat. Coming from Scotland, both Stephen and I found Bulgaria pretty hot. Haley, coming from California, probably didn't think much of it, but it took us about three or four days to get used to working in those temperatures. There was certainly a lot of sweating going on in the beginning.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you too much about the actual filming because of NDAs, so the photographs here are mainly of the crew, the landscapes and some of our time in Bulgaria. No photographs of the cast or their locations, I'm afraid (and definitely not naked!).

For anyone who's never seen Naked and Afraid, the basic idea is that contestants are dropped into remote wilderness locations, completely naked, and have to survive for a set number of days with very limited tools. They need to find water, build shelters, make fires and somehow find enough food to keep themselves going.

Quite a few people have asked me if it's some sort of dating show. It's not. It's very much a survival show.

Another question people ask is why they're naked in the first place. I hadn't really thought too much about that myself until I started filming it, but you soon realise how much harder everything becomes without clothes.

Even something as simple as walking through the woods becomes difficult without shoes. There are thorns, sharp branches, insects and all sorts of things that can catch you in places you'd rather they didn't. Being completely naked also makes people feel much more vulnerable, especially when they're sleeping outdoors surrounded by creepy crawlies and whatever else might be wandering about in the night. It adds another level of difficulty to an already tough survival challenge, and certainly makes things more interesting.

I'd actually never heard of the programme before getting the job. I watched several episodes before heading out and found them surprisingly addictive. You get such a mixture of characters, and it's almost impossible to predict in the first few days who's going to make it through to the end. It's definitely worth a watch.

Kirk Watson with survival experts Martin and Momchil at 4:30 a.m., waiting for sunrise over a canyon in Bulgaria

Getting Started

The first few days were a bit of a learning curve for me. I started as a camera assistant, which involved quite a bit more than the usual camera assisting duties.

Alongside the main Sony FX6 cameras, we had GoPros, infrared night-vision cameras and remote trap cameras to deal with. I'd worked with GoPros plenty of times before, but the infrared night-vision equipment was new to me. Also lots of drone flying and I had my Mavic 4 Pro with me for that.

Stephen, on the other hand, had been working in television for so long that he'd actually used some of the rather old sound equipment we were working with, so he was already familiar with that side of things.

A lot of the camera and sound setups are quite specific to Naked and Afraid. The programme has a particular way of being filmed, so it was really just a case of getting your head around those systems and learning how everything fitted together.

I enjoy a challenge, and learning new equipment and different ways of working is one of the things that keeps the job interesting. Every production does things slightly differently, and it's always good to come away having learned something new.

Once you've done the setups a few times, everything becomes pretty straightforward and you soon get into a routine. The Sony FX6 was familiar territory, as I own one myself and it's my main camera back home. There was lots of drone filming too and I had my Mavic 4 pro with me for this:)

I also moved up from camera assistant to Shooting Producer/Director during the production, which was a great opportunity and something I really enjoyed.

Austin, a Canadian camera operator who lives near Sheffield, joined us as a camera assistant, and we ended up with a really good little team that worked well together.

Filming Naked People in the Wilderness

One of the more unusual things about the job was, obviously, filming people wandering around completely naked.

On the first day of a challenge, when the contestants take their clothes off and head off into the wilderness, it does feel a little strange pointing a camera at them. It's not exactly something you do on most filming jobs.

But what's interesting is how quickly that feeling disappears. After a few days, you don't really notice the nudity at all. You're just talking to people, following what they're doing and filming their experiences. They just happen to have no clothes on.

A lot of the daily activities can be quite repetitive. Collecting firewood, finding water, working on shelters and trying to find something to eat. From a camera perspective, the challenge is finding interesting and different ways of filming those same activities day after day.

You don't want every sequence of somebody collecting firewood to look exactly like the previous one, so you're constantly thinking about different angles, compositions and ways of telling the story.

Another interesting thing about filming Naked and Afraid is how little interaction we actually have with the contestants. They're completely on their own at night, and during the day we're obviously there filming them. For the first couple of days, we chat to them a bit, mainly to get to know them, but after that we try to step back and leave them in their own little survival bubble.

We follow them around with the cameras, but we don't really speak to them, point things out or interfere with what they're doing. We're just quietly observing whatever happens. It can actually be quite peaceful and almost meditative at times, particularly when there's not much happening or the contestants decide to have a little sleep in the middle of the day. You're just sitting quietly in the wilderness, listening to the sounds of nature and waiting to see what happens next. It's quite an unusual way of working, but one I really enjoyed.

That's actually one of the things I enjoyed about the job. You're out in the wilderness, filming real people dealing with whatever comes their way, and you never quite know what's going to happen next.

The Bulgarian Crew and Wildlife

We were lucky to have a brilliant team of Bulgarian fixers and local crew helping us throughout the production.

Naked and Afraid production crew in Bulgaria, including Producer Haley, Production Manager Liz, sound recordist Stephen, lead fixer Yavor, survival expert Martin, Camera Operator Austin and Kirk Watson.

Yavor was our main fixer for much of the shoot, and we also had Traian, Alex and Mariam, who was great fun and looked a bit like a Viking. There were quite a few others involved too, including Victoria and the rest of the medical team.

We also had our wilderness experts, who are an important part of every Naked and Afraid production. Momchil was our main survival expert, a really good guy and great fun to work with. He was joined by Martin, a younger survival expert who was also part of the team.

The Bulgarian crew were fantastic, and they made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable.

Stephen, Alex, Kirk Watson, Nikki and Momchil carrying filming equipment through the Bulgarian forest during production of Naked and Afraid for Discovery Channel.

The locations themselves were pretty impressive. We were working in some very remote parts of Bulgaria, well away from towns and villages. Which makes sense, really. You don't particularly want members of the public wandering through the middle of a scene involving a bunch of naked contestants trying to survive in the woods.

There was plenty of wildlife around too. I reckon I saw a snake almost every single day I was there, along with countless spiders and all sorts of other creepy crawlies. Some of the landscapes were beautiful, and it was fascinating spending so much time in parts of Bulgaria that most visitors probably never get to see.

Behind-the-scenes selfie of production manager Liz, producer Hayley, camera operator Kirk Watson and survival expert Momchil during filming of Naked and Afraid in Bulgaria.

Seven Weeks in Bulgaria

We were working six days a week, with one day off, for the seven weeks I was there. It's quite a long stint on one production, especially when you're working outdoors in the heat every day.

But you soon get into a routine, and the weeks start flying by.

One of the best things about working on a production for that length of time is getting to know everyone properly. You spend so much time together that the crew becomes a little family, and we had a really good bunch of people on this one.

Looking back, it was a brilliant experience. I arrived knowing very little about the programme, had a fair bit of new equipment to learn, and ended up spending much of the shoot working as a Shooting PD.

It was something completely different from my usual filming work, and that's one of the things I love about this job. You never quite know where the next production is going to take you or what you'll end up doing.

Seven weeks filming naked people in the Bulgarian wilderness certainly wasn't something I'd expected to be doing this year, but I'm very glad I did. Hopefully I'll get invited back to film some more next year. Stephen and I are certainly both very keen to do it all again.

Stephen and me