Donna had some time off work and was able to come down and take some behind the scenes shots (which if you know me, are always my favorite). You really don't know what the future holds so these pictures are worth their weight in gold. Hmmm, how much do digital pictures actually weigh? Anyway, over the next two weeks we're gonna try and give you an idea of what the shooting day is actually like. In one word: exhausting.

Because of more delays, I was unable to have the first finalist round's winner (confusing huh?) for this show so I had to throw out the entire format of the previous episodes and just have fun. I had thought of a "Wii" themed episode the moment I got the console, and now was the chance to bring it to life... The fun of the day was trying to think of what each character would look like after 6 hours of tennis.

Disheveled and beaten, with Spencer still looking pretty as ever as he got fanned. The whole crew was in on it, throwing out ideas and having a ball. It's so fun working with a news crew. Compared to what they normally cover, this is quite fun. No offense to President Ford, but after 5 days of covering that...

...watching goofy characters hit each other with "Wiimotes" is a welcomed change. I think we all have the feeling of:  "We get paid for this!!!" all day and it's a wonderful sentiment to share. I've been on sets where the crew is so bored they want to punch themselves in the face...

...of course I can't speak for them, but I assume they do not want to punch me in the face. Ya never know though.

 

Heh, that monitor shot rules. I really hope this never ends. That on some level I'm on set every week creating. It's ridiculously addicting.

Back to the show, our poor host couldn't understand what was taking so long. What is usually 4 minutes had turned into 4 hours and he had nothing but a cell phone to get answers. I always get a kick out of screwing with what the audience sees as "static" in the episode. In most setups, the host is usually very passive so this is quite fun.

Man, these shots are great...

 

Gary all dressed up with new bling pulling his cornrows through his headband (that still had make-up on it from 2001) so as to look as if he'd been playing all day... on the left you can see Tyson taking off the wig, while I'm editing on my laptop.

The timing of the tennis game was more than challenging. I made a "tick-tock" on my audio script and then tried to just remember the order on-set. Sometimes I think I'm gonna have a mental meltdown while recording, but somehow I pulled it off. Of course it makes no sense as it's 3 against 1, but we can blame that on 4tvs magic...

Unfortunately, the camera battery went out and we weren't able to get any shots of Spencer, but hopefully next week we can. I also want to get more shots of the actual set-up of the studio. It's always fun to see the proximity of everything. TV makes it look so sprawling, and it's anything but. Leave it to me to erase TV magic right?