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What NOT To Do In Your Amazing Race Canada Application Video

amazing race canada season four applications

amazing race canada season four applications

The casting deadline for The Amazing Race Canada’s fourth season is fast approaching — you’ve got until Monday, November 23 at 11:59 p.m. ET!

All Canadian citizens or permanent residents 19 years or older (as of April 1, 2016) can apply. The central portion to the application process involves creating a short video for a submissions that shows producers who the hopeful contestants are as a team. Why they want to race together and why they think they can win. Producers receive an overwhelming number of videos each season and begin to whittle it down — last season had 12 teams, while season 2 had 11 and season one had 9. The show then shoots in spring for roughly 28 days.

We caught up with senior producer Mike Bickerton to find out what are the Amazing Race Canada hopefuls shouldn’t do in their application video:

THIS ISN’T JACKASS

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“There’s so much stuff that people do that’s unbelievable. There was this one pair of friends (season two or three) and they were just kind of doing weird daredevil stunts for their entire video. They were throwing lit firecrackers at each other’s backs or kicking soccer balls at each other’s bodies. That was their whole video. Just showing off how hardcore they were. If you’re thinking of doing one of those “Don’t try this at home” type videos, it’s probably not safe bet.”

BE YOURSELF

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“The thing we always want them to do is to be themselves. It never helps the process when they think they know what we are looking for and they try to fit into a mold of someone that they’re never going to be. When we eventually meet the teams in person, we can definitely figure out that the one guy isn’t a five language-speaking tap dancer! There are certain things where just being yourself is enough, and this is one of them.”

NO PHOTO MONTAGES

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“Photo montages are not necessarily helpful. The casting videos are usually around three minutes long and some people will send in three full minutes of their holiday travel photos. Most of them time they don’t even bother identifying who they are in the photos. There’ll be a bunch of group shots and we just have to figure out which face appears the most often. Photo montages are a “No, thank you.” iMovie has really changed the way that people are able to put together their photo montages. I’ve sat through enough of my parents vacation photos, I don’t need to do it when trying to pick teams for the race.”

WE WANT TO KNOW YOU — NOT WHERE YOU’RE FROM

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“It doesn’t help when people run around and show us where they live. It doesn’t usually help because the show is going to take teams all across the country and the world. We’re just really interested in seeing and hearing people sitting down and talking about each other. When you stand next to the highway in your hometown or by the beautiful bridge, all we hear is traffic or wind and it distracts us from who you really are and why you want to run in the race.”

DON’T BE BORING

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“I don’t know the nicest way to say it, but don’t be boring! The racers are the ones that narrate the entire show. They are the ones that explain the challenge and every location. The people that are talking really quietly in a soft monotone voice, that doesn’t help us imagine when they start running the race. Boring doesn’t make for great TV, but the same time we don’t need Jackass daredevils that are going to throw lit firecrackers at each other.”

BE DIFFERENT

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Viewers loved Brent and Sean in season three, just like they did Sukhi and Jinder in season two.

“What makes those teams stand out is that they were memorable. They were themselves and they could tell a story in a really entertaining way. We need to find a team that is as entertaining as Brent and Sean were, but they won’t be a pair of brothers from a small town in Nova Scotia. They have to be different. The best part about Brent and Sean is that they were so authentically themselves and that’s what people want to see again. It’s a tall order to find someone else that is going to be as entertaining as those two… They were rhyming off one-liners in the middle of those challenges and they might it right to the very end, I couldn’t have been any prouder of those two.”

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The Amazing Race Canada returns for a fourth season next year on CTV. Click here to read an interview with season two winners Gino and Jesse Montani.

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