Lights, Camera, Action

Do you remember last Tuesday, when I said that you would have to stay tuned for another busy weekend?  The weekend got started on Thursday when we all went to the National Christmas Tree lighting.  It was pretty cool seeing the First Family, Common and Maroon 5 (just to name a few), but it was freezing!  Thank goodness for hand warmers!

Anyway, the tree lighting, although fun, wasn’t the big news.  The real surprise I was alluding to was that Justin and I are going to be on TV!  We got selected for one of my favorite TV shows!  I’m super excited and I can’t wait to have a super cool memory of the experience.  The bad news is that I can’t tell you what TV show it is (although many of you who know me probably know which one it is).  I will definitely do full “behind the scenes” blog entries for each day after the show airs, but until then, I will try to give you some tidbits of what I can say, without giving it away. 

First up, what to wear.  The casting director had specific instructions on what to wear.  Some of the guidelines include the following:  no bright/intense colors, no small prints or polka dots, darker, solid colors are preferred (e.g.:  forest green, jade, burgundy, rust, royal purple, etc.).  I got a little stressed out deciding on what to wear. Justin didn’t have a problem picking out what to wear.  He just wore his usual variations of blue sweaters and/or blue button downs. 

Next, make up.  Unfortunately, they did not provide a hair or make-up person.  **Hint** This show is a quasi-reality TV show, so I understand that they want to see the real-ness of people. However, this girl REALLY wasn’t going to be on national television without professional assistance.   I ended up going on Craigslist and looked up make-up artists, finding two to help me make my television debut (one of the artists couldn’t make it one day, so she referred me to another artist)!

What do you think of their work? I liked it and it definitely wasn’t something that I could do myself. 



The Before



I’m so vain, and yes this song is about me

Mike and Mike getting, er….mic’ed up…LOL!

Filming a “reality” TV show is a lot harder than I thought.  As an avid reality TV watcher, I thought a camera and boom mic followed you around as you ran amok, doing whatever it is that you do (challenges in the rainforest, traveling around the world, gym/tan/laundry…).  I found out that starring in a reality TV show requires a lot of patience on the part of everyone—the producer, the audio person, the cameraman and the participants, to make sure everything is right.  We got used to answering questions and doing things over and over again, in order to get the right shot and/or sound.  On my part, I had a difficult time doing the interview portions in present tense, which required several takes.  Hahaha…oh well, at least I wasn’t speaking in the third person!  Anyways, we finished filming about half of our episode and they’ll probably be coming back in a month or so to film the rest.  By that time, I’ll definitely know what to expect!