Canadian Comedy Tour Films Travel Show in BC
How We Produced a Micro-Budget Travel Documentary Series with a 3-Person Crew in Canada during Winter
Canada's biggest comedy tour teamed up with Zest Media Productions to create a doc-style TV series that blends both comedy and travel. Over the course of six weeks during winter in 2025, we followed the Snowed In Comedy Tour across five uniquely Canadian towns in British Columbia, producing a five-episode travel documentary series from the ground up.
Here's a look at the show — and an honest, behind-the-scenes account of how we made it happen with a tight budget and an even tighter crew.
The Snowed In Comedy Tour has been making Canadians laugh since 2009. Each year performing 70+ shows a year - coast to coast. The same four veteran stand-up comedians loading into vans, hitting sold-out theatres from Vancouver Island to Nova Scotia, and doing it all over again the next night. It's one of the most relentless touring schedules in Canadian comedy — and until now, almost none of it had ever been captured on camera.
Paul Myrehaug is seen being interviewed by series director, Damonde Tschritter
That changed when Tour founder and Executive Producer, Dan Quinn, approached us with an idea: bring a camera crew on the road and document what actually happens between shows. No scripts. No safety net. Just four comedians, a handful of wild BC locations, and a small crew trying to keep up.
The result is Snowed In Comedy Tour: The Travel Series — a five-episode debut season filmed across some of British Columbia's most jaw-dropping and wonderfully offbeat destinations. The show originally aired on Chek TV on October 11, 2025, and is currently viewable on their online streaming platform, Chek+.
The full series is now available on YouTube as well and features all four of the tour’s headlining acts - Dan Quinn, Erica Sigurdson, Pete Zedlacher, and Paul Myrehaug.
Episode 1 — Smithers: The Backcountry
The series premiere kicks off in Smithers, BC — a unique mountain town of 5000 residents, located in Northwestern British Columbia. To those familiar, it’s known for its charming European feel, endless outdoor adventures, and impressive arts scene.
When asked to describe Smithers, Paul Myrehaug replies in a filmed interview by saying, “You know how Austin is like a ‘Keep it Weird’ place? Smithers is the ‘Keep it Weird’ of the North. It is fantastic.” It's a long haul to get there (the tour makes a 10-hour drive north from Kamloops), but it's been a fixture on the schedule for years, and for good reason.
The Snowed In Comedy performers posing for a photo with fans in Smithers, BC
Viewers are introduced to all four headliners — Erica Sigurdson, Pete Zedlacher, Paul Myrehaug, and tour founder Dan Quinn — through a mix of sit-down interviews and fly-on-the-wall moments that quickly establish the dynamic. These are four people who genuinely enjoy each other's company, and it shows.
Dan kicks off the day before sunrise, heading into the backcountry with a pair of longtime fans for a snowmobile adventure. The machines are harder to handle than they look, the terrain is unforgiving, and a small snow slide on the mountain triggers a real avalanche scare. Luckily, he walks away unscathed.
Back in town, Paul takes on a shopping mission — sourcing sausages for the evening campfire — which leads to one of the episode's funniest detours. He also attempts to sweet-talk a local car dealership into letting him take their most expensive truck on the lot out for a spin.
The sit-down interviews give the episode its heart. Dan opens up about a health concern he's been quietly carrying — possible spinal stenosis, a condition that runs in his family — with a candour that catches you off guard. It's one of the more honest moments in the series.
The day ends with a nighttime sleigh ride, Paul's Lithuanian sausages over a campfire, and the kind of easy, unhurried conversation that only happens when funny people have nowhere else to be.
The Nimble Crew Behind the Snowed In Comedy Tour Travel Show
The main engine of this project depended on four people. Here's who they were and what they actually did:
Dan Quinn (Executive Producer / Line Producer / Talent): Drove the project forward creatively and logistically from the top — and then performed as a headliner every single night. He managed communications with all things related to locations, schedules, and travel. A producer who also stars in the show. It's a lot.
Damonde Tschritter (Director): Brought the creative vision and kept the production on track. He led the sit-down interviews and directed segments captured in the field.
Gabe Roy (DP / Camera / Audio / Drone / DIT / Grip / Editor): Handled primary camera, audio monitoring, drone operations, and all late-night DIT work — offloading, organizing, and backing up footage after every shoot day. Also researched and built the entire gear kit. He also led the editing process of the show from assembly to final delivery.
Bram Treissman (Camera / Audio / Drone / Problem-Solver/ Assistant Editor): Second camera operator and the person you want beside you when things go sideways. Technically sharp, endlessly resourceful, and the kind of filmmaker who figures things out on the ground in real time.
Episode 2 — Courtenay: The Competitive Side is Showing
The tour makes its way to Courtenay on Vancouver Island — a ferry ride from Vancouver and a welcome change of scenery. Where Smithers was rugged and remote, Courtenay is mild and beachfront, the kind of place where you can golf and ski on the same day. The episode leans into that energy, and what emerges is probably the funniest, most competitive 22 minutes of the season.
Camera operator, Bram Treissman filming in Courtenay, BC
The centrepiece is a golf match between Dan and Paul that turns out to be as much a psychological duel as an athletic one. Both are evenly matched on the course, but their approaches couldn't be more different. Dan narrates his own game in real time, hole by hole, shot by shot. Paul pretends not to let it get to him. By the back nine, a bonus consequence has been added: the loser goes bungee jumping in Whistler. The match is close, tense, and genuinely funny to watch unfold across the episode — and by the end, someone is very unhappy with the result.
The competitive thread runs through everything else too. Erica and Paul head to Wip Climbing, a nearby indoor climbing gym, and immediately turn it into a race. Pete, meanwhile, takes a solo visit to the local natural history museum — and delivers what might generously be called an unofficial tour, riffing his way through prehistoric fossils with the confidence of someone who has done zero research.
Film gear laid out in one of the many hotel rooms
Woven between all of it is a more reflective side of the episode. Paul opens up in his sit-down about a years-long battle with chronic fatigue that quietly derailed his life before he found his way out through running and training. It's an unexpectedly candid moment. And then there's Erica — who made the mistake of letting the Courtenay crowd vote on whether she had to cold plunge in the Pacific Ocean in five-degree weather. Alongside fellow comedian, Darcy Michael, she does it. Barely.
The episode closes on a moment that reframes everything that came before it. Dan introduces the audience to Eddy, a local Courtenay man with special needs who has been coming to his shows since 2009. Over the years a quiet tradition formed: Dan saves a few minutes at the end of each Courtenay show for Eddy to call out his favourite bit. Eddy knows the material better than Dan does, and he holds him to it. It's a small thing, but it's the kind of moment that reminds you what this tour is actually about.
How to Choose Camera Gear for a Small Crew Documentary Production
Operating with a smaller budget and a skeleton crew is a real challenge. You don't have the time, the human capacity, or all the equipment you'd want — but you're forced to make do. For filmmakers like us at Zest Media Productions, these scrappy productions are more exciting than scary. They require creativity, intention, and serious planning to pull off successfully. The first step is getting clear on exactly what your project needs.
What we needed:
A compact kit. With a jam-packed filming schedule and a tiny crew, we needed gear that could be quickly packed and unpacked as we moved from hotel room to hotel room.
Manageable file sizes. Without a dedicated DIT, it was up to us — the camera crew — to offload, organize, and back up footage at the end of every shoot day. Manageable file sizes were critical if sleep was ever going to be in the cards.
High-quality footage. An obvious one, but we weren't willing to sacrifice image quality simply for convenience.
Low-light performance. Winter in Canada doesn't offer much in the way of daylight. For a largely exterior, run-and-gun project like this, we needed cameras and lenses that could perform in challenging light conditions.
The tools we used:
Cameras
Panasonic Lumix S5 — Our workhorse. Compact body, manageable file sizes, and 4K 10-bit 4:2:2 LOG footage. The dual-native ISO at 640 and 4000, in-body stabilization, and beautiful colour science made it the right call for the bulk of the project.
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K — Brought in for action-heavy segments where we needed minimal rolling shutter and RAW image quality. The file sizes are significantly larger, but for the specific moments it was deployed, the image latitude was worth it.
GoPro Hero 13 Black — Our mount camera for situations that called for it, including the golf cart shot in Episode 2. Compact, reliable, and easy to rig up fast.
Lenses
We kept the lens kit tight — fast zooms that covered wide to long without needing a bag full of primes. Critical when you're moving quickly and don't have time to swap glass.
Drones
DJI Air 3S — Our primary drone for landscape and aerial coverage.
DJI Mini 3 Pro — Deployed when a sub-250g micro-drone was the smarter call, whether for tight spaces or locations with weight restrictions.
Episode 3 — Whistler: Face Your Fears
If Smithers is the tour's best-kept secret and Courtenay is its sleepy island gem, Whistler is the crown jewel — and the gang knows it. Beautiful, expensive, and a little intimidating, it's the kind of place that makes you want to do something you probably shouldn't. Appropriately, this is the episode where everyone gets pushed furthest outside their comfort zone.
Behind-the-scenes of an interview setup with Pete Zedlacher
Dan and Pete kick things off by riding the Whistler Sliding Centre's bobsled track — the same 2010 Olympic venue that holds the record for the fastest track in the world. After a brief run-in with Olympic bobsledders, Jesse Lumsden and Helen Upperton, the two comics are piloted down the mountain at breakneck speeds, with the bruises to prove it. Paul, meanwhile, is paying his debt from Courtenay. Having lost the golf match, he owes Dan a bungee jump over an icy canyon at Whistler Bungee — and spends most of the walk to the platform dreaming up reasons to turn back.
Running parallel to the adrenaline is a shopping challenge between Erica and Paul — both confessed overspenders — who've agreed to a strict $100 weekly budget for the tour. Whistler, with its luxury boutiques and eye-watering price tags, is about the worst possible testing ground for this experiment. Erica's approach to the budget is creative, to put it generously.
The whole group reunites for a hike along the Train Wreck trail — named for the actual derailed train cars that have become one of Whistler's more unusual landmarks. Pete and Paul show up in jeans, mock the crampons Dan brought, and the trail has a way of settling that argument fairly quickly. Pete's wife Melody has joined the tour for this stop, and the episode pauses for a genuinely warm moment as Pete talks about how they first met — at a Snowed In show — and the whirlwind that followed.
Dan closes the day with a snowboard lesson from a pair of local pro riders on Blackcomb - Tosh Krauskopf and Toan Krauskopf. Finally, the episode wraps at Vallea Lumina — Whistler's after-dark immersive forest walk, complete with light installations and a mystery to solve. The gang wanders through it stone cold sober, which they quickly agree was an oversight.
How to License Music, Sound Effects, and Motion Graphics for a Micro-Budget TV Show
For a documentary-style TV series, you'll need a deep library of options — background music, foley, sound effects, and animated graphic elements. On a micro-budget project, you likely won't have a dedicated composer, sound designer, or motion graphics artist. That was certainly the case for us.
One of the most important tools we used to bring this series together was Envato Elements. Under one subscription, we were able to source royalty-free music without PRO restrictions — critical if your content is headed to broadcast or streaming, where performing rights licensing can become a costly and complicated issue — along with a wide variety of sound effects and all the motion graphic assets we needed to elevate the production value.
For small crews working on a tight budget, it's one of the best value subscriptions in post-production.
Episode 4 — Nelson: It’s Legal Now
Nelson, BC has always played by its own rules. A hippie enclave nestled in the middle of the Kootenays, it built its identity on draft dodgers, counter-culture, and a longstanding relationship with BC's most infamous crop (long before anyone made it legal). It's quirky, independent, and beloved by everyone on the tour. It also happens to be the perfect backdrop for what turns out to be the most colourful episode of the season.
Camera operator, Bram Treissman capturing shots at Woody Nelson in Nelson, BC
The town sets the tone immediately. Pete and Dan spend the day exploring a local licensed cannabis facility, Woody Nelson - a full-scale, surprisingly sophisticated grow operation that's a far cry from what either of them expected. The tour is eye-opening in the most literal sense, and what unfolds as the day continues is, let's say, a natural extension of that visit. Their subsequent shopping trip through Nelson's independent boutiques takes on a distinctly unhurried quality. Whether Pete is able to hold it together in a sock store is something you'll have to watch for yourself.
While that's happening, Erica and Paul are deep in their own challenge — heading to the local thrift store to pick out each other's outfits for that night's show. The ground rules are simple: it has to fit, and you have to wear it on stage. Paul's enthusiasm for the task is immediate and suspicious. Erica's approach is more measured, though no less chaotic. The results make it to the Nelson stage, and the audience has opinions.
Erica also gets a moment entirely her own this episode. Her sit-down interview is one of the most honest of the series — she reflects on the early years of her comedy career, navigating financial instability as a type-one diabetic with no safety net, and the quiet, stubborn certainty that kept her going anyway. It's the kind of story that reframes everything you think you know about what it takes to build a life in this industry.
She also visits Nelson's iconic firehall — the oldest operating fire hall in BC, and recognizable to anyone who's seen the Steve Martin film Roxanne, which was filmed right there on location. Erica gets a full tour, tries on the gear, and discovers that firefighting is significantly harder than it looks.
How to Record Professional Audio Without a Dedicated Sound Person
On a run-and-gun documentary shoot with four performers and a three-person crew, a dedicated sound department simply wasn't in the cards. We needed a wireless audio solution that could keep up with the pace of production, perform reliably in unpredictable outdoor environments, and not require a specialist to operate. What we landed on exceeded every expectation.
What we needed:
Four simultaneous lav mics on talent. With all four comedians mic'd at all times, we needed a system that could handle four channels cleanly without a sound person babysitting levels.
Long range and reliable performance. The majority of our filming happened outdoors in the field — snowmobiling, hiking, skiing, cold plunges. We needed something that wouldn't drop out when talent was 50 metres away.
Long battery life. Shoot days were long and resetting for battery swaps mid-adventure wasn't an option.
Timecode jamming. With two cameras rolling simultaneously, manually syncing audio in post across a five-episode series would have cost us hours. We needed a system that could jam timecode directly to both cameras.
32-bit float recording. In unpredictable environments where monitoring levels constantly isn't possible, 32-bit float gives you a safety net — you can recover audio in post that would otherwise be lost to clipping or noise.
The tools we used:
Wireless Audio
2× Røde Wireless Pro sets — four transmitters, two receivers, and arguably the most impressive piece of kit on the entire shoot. For under $500 CAD per set, each unit gave us an extraordinary amount of capability. Here's what we were running simultaneously on every single take: Each camera operator ran a receiver directly into camera, jamming timecode on one channel while recording clean audio on another — all while monitoring levels through the camera in real time. At the same time, each transmitter was independently recording 32-bit float audio internally as a backup. That's timecode sync, primary audio, and a safety backup, all captured automatically, with zero dedicated sound person required.
The interface was intuitive and highly customizable — you could even select which specific camera you were operating to optimize the settings accordingly. The transmitters charged in their cases between setups, which on a production like this, where downtime is scarce, was a genuinely meaningful detail. It's hard to overstate how much this technology has evolved. What once required a sound recordist, a mixer, a separate timecode unit, and a dedicated audio recorder can now be handled by a single compact wireless system that fits in your jacket pocket. For small crews working in the field, this is a game changer.
Shotgun Mic and Recorder
Røde NTG4+ — Our go-to for sit-down interviews and the occasional field moment that called for a boom. The built-in rechargeable battery means no phantom power required — a practical advantage when you're working fast and don't always have a mixer on hand.
Tascam DR-60D Mark II — An older piece of kit, but an incredibly reliable one. An affordable workhorse with a low noise floor and clean preamps that punches well above its price point. Paired with the NTG4+, it delivered broadcast-quality interview audio consistently throughout the series.
Episode 5 — Revelstoke: Never Too Old To Learn
The final episode of season one takes place in Revelstoke a town the gang describes as Whistler twenty-five years ago — a genuine mountain town built around Canada's steepest and most challenging ski hill, and just enough of Nelson's hippie spirit to keep things interesting. It's a place the tour clearly loves to stop.
Camera operator, Bram Treissman capturing close-up shots in Revelstoke, BC
Erica takes on her first-ever snowboard lesson at the Revelstoke Mountain Resort, arriving fully committed in gear and attitude, which — as anyone who's tried snowboarding for the first time knows — only gets you so far. Pete heads indoors to Big Eddy Glass Works, where he attempts to make a whiskey glass from molten sand under the guidance of a remarkably patient instructor. The process is more technically demanding than it looks, the terminology provides endless material, and whatever Pete produces by the end is charming in its own way. Paul, meanwhile, gets to spend time somewhere he's clearly been waiting to visit for a long time — the Revelstoke Railway Museum, which he describes, without a hint of irony, as his ‘Graceland’.
The episode also makes room for the smaller, more personal moments that give the series its warmth. Paul heads out for a cross-country ski at the Revelstoke Nordic Ski Club with his sister Danielle, who has made the trip to Revelstoke to join him — as she has for several years running. The two of them have a dynamic that's immediately charming: she's been pushing him onto double black diamonds since they were kids, and not much has changed. Back indoors, Paul and Erica continue their ongoing fitness rivalry at the gym, which escalates, as it always does, into something more competitive than either of them will officially admit.
And then there's Pete's sit-down — quietly the most affecting moment of the entire season. He opens up about one of the hardest stretches of his life: his divorce, his mother's cancer diagnosis, and her passing, all arriving at once. What he shares about the night he had to leave for a comedy taping the very next day, and what happened on the drive there, is the kind of story that stays with you. It's a reminder of what this show, and this work, actually means to the people doing it.
The episode — and the season — closes with the tour preparing to film its annual TV special. Six weeks of shows, night after night, refining and sharpening every line, every pause, every punchline. Now it all comes down to one night, in front of a sold-out crowd in Kelowna. The cameras are up, the mics are live, and after everything this season has thrown at them, they're ready. To see how it turned out, you can visit their YouTube channel to watch the 2025 Snowed In Comedy Tour stand-up comedy specials.
Ready to Bring Your Story to Life on Camera?
Whether you're a brand, a touring act, or a content creator with a story worth telling, producing a travel documentary series or branded TV show in Canada is more achievable than you might think — with the right production partner.
At Zest Media Productions, we specialize in documentary-style video production, travel series, and live event filming across British Columbia and beyond. From pre-production planning to post-production editing, we've built our reputation on delivering high-quality content on lean budgets — without compromising the creative.
If you've been thinking about producing a documentary series, a branded travel show, or a live performance special in Canada, we'd love to hear about it.
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