“Lights, Camera, Action” is no longer saved exclusively for big-time directors. The phrase can now be heard from students with any film aspirations.Web sites like YouTube allow students outside Hollywood’s elitist inner circle to broadcast shows to a mass audiences.Video codecs, like RealVideo Engine, began the development of online videos in the late ’90s. They were expensive and inefficient, said Stacey Simmons, director of LSU Center for Computation and Technology.”But YouTube changed the game along with cheaper video cameras and webcams,” Simmons said.   Josh Pereira, mass communication freshman, directed and produced his own version of the CBS TV show “Survivor,” complete with wilderness abandonment and mind-bending physical challenges.Two seasons of “Survivor Bush” were filmed. The first is on YouTube, and the second will air on YouTube in November. The first season received more than 1,200 hits.”The effect is the same,” Pereira said. “The ideas are just as big, and the drama is just as real as the actual show. It’s just on a smaller budget.”He decided to produce the show on a much larger scale after getting the feel of the show and interest from peers.The second season of the show was filmed last June at Oak Alley Farm in Bush, La., hence the show’s title “Survivor Bush: Hidden Oaks.” Sixteen contestants with varying personalities and backgrounds were separated into two tribes and stranded in the wilderness with little to no provisions for five days. The tribes took part in both mental and physical challenges, Pereira said. The contestants were voted off the show by their teammates one-by-one five times a day. The final rounds are “every man for himself,” Pereira said.  The first prize winner received $250, and the second prize received $70.”The challenge is to outwit, outplay and outlast the other contestants,” Pereira said. Challenges included a rugby-like game, water lines and balancing tests while answering trivia questions.”We were in survivor mode,” said Maury Williams, kinesiology freshman and “Survivor Bush” contestant. “You didn’t know who you could trust.”The show’s $5,000 to $10,000 budget consisted of cameras, film, food and props, but communal efforts from the cast and crew helped minimized the expenses to $400, Pereira said.Pereira’s friend donated the property for a week, and each participant donated food and film. Pereira said he used four basic handheld cameras, a wireless microphone, the editing program Premiere Pro CS4 and a laptop to produce the show.No script was used for “Survivor Bush,” and the struggle and hardships portrayed are all real, Pereira said.”People’s conceptions of reality TV are askew, thanks to VH1 and other shows,” Pereira said. “But this is real. The cast was constantly paranoid, hungry and tired. The only people they had to take it out on were each other.”The 1999 film “The Blair Witch Project” spearheaded homemade movies, said Ricky Blackwood, an English professor who teaches a course on literary traditions and themes.  “Internet has made public distribution uncontrollable by anyone,” Blackwood said. “No one can tell you that you can’t do it and that is the revolution.”—Contact Lindsay Nunez at [email protected]