A man who spent three years living in a treehouse that he built in Red River Gorge and then started a treehouse village is being featured on nationwide TV.
Django Kroner and The Canopy Crew are in a pilot for a new TV show on the channel Animal Planet.
Just about six months ago, Cincinnati native Django Kroner gave us a tour of the beginnings of a treehouse village he’s building on private property in Red River Gorge .
To get to the treehouse named The Observatory, there are 200 steps to climb and the treehouse is about as high as a five-story building
A production company noticed on social media one of the treehouses Django designed and asked if they could videotape a build. That process evolved and this month, Django and his staff at The Canopy Crew are being featured on Animal Planet.
He says the shoot includes the building of a treehouse and the adventures and shenanigans along the way.
"Everybody sees treehouses and they love em’. They can imagine living in them and that makes you feel excited and stuff. This actually goes into how we built it, how we came up with the ideas to design it. It shows you a lot of the nitty gritty details about how do you get thousands of pounds of wood way up into the sky."
Django says The Canopy Crew, consisting of 12 guys build treehouses that are geared toward experiencing the canopy. He thinks viewers will be captivated by the adventurous, high-up, unique treehouse featured in the pilot program and how the crew designs and builds.
" We’re also all rock climbers, paragliders, space jumpers, so we all have a very adventurous background and we kind of incorporate that into our company lifestyle so there will be elements of that brought into the show as well."
Kroner says parts of the treehouse, built for a private owner in the pilot, are higher up than anything The Canopy Crew has done before. Even the camera crew was surprised by some of the technical aspects and treehouse assembly.
"They were in disbelief about a lot of stuff. We’re all climbers so we’re used to being really high up and doing strange body positioning to get our job done. I think that’s something the camera men hadn’t quite seen before. It was challenging for them to get into position."
The pilot show of “Canopy Kings” airs Friday September 22 at 10p.m. on Animal Planet. If ratings are high enough Django says it will get greenlighted into a full season of shows.
