Back to School

Hey everyone! Well right now I'm in Oregon visiting with Leo and Jenny so that means I am not in LA any more and am headed back to school. I do have some more pics of LA to put up but I'll do that when I get back to school. I thank you all for being with me on this journey and will keep trying to update even while I'm at school. I am going to be living with 5 other guys in a house right next to campus so I'll get some pictures of it so you all know where I'm living. Thanks for the comments and hopefully I can keep this blog a little interesting. I know I can't keep up with Jamie! She's doin a great job with her blog of the boys. School starts August 28th but I'm heading up to Seattle to stay with a friend until I head over to school. I'll head over to Idaho this coming Wednesday so I can have some time to unpack and rearrange for our new house. Later.

Sailing

Well yesterday, Saturday, myself, my friends Adam and Josiah went sailing with our director, Bob Loudin, and his partner, Steve. Bob has directed many gameshows in particular The New Hollywood Squares. Both him and Steve are nice guys and they took us out on their 42 foot sailboat out of Long Beach. We cruised around the coast for a couple hours, had lunch, then went back. It was a fun experience.





This is Bob, the director of our show.



This is Adam, on the left, and Josiah, on the right.





Here is everyone just hanging out on the boat.





Long Beach off in the distance.







This is just my reflection from an air intake pipe on their boat. Thought it was a fun pic to share.

Team Anal

So here are some pics of what I actually do during the taping of the shows. This is the producers table where Adam, Rodney, Dallas, Joanna, Stephanie, Josiah, Marne, and myself sit. It's very cramped.



This is me enabling, reseting, and locking out the contestants. It is a simple 4 button switcher. I also have my own preview monitor and noise cancelling headphones so I can hear just the contestants and the host, Ty.



This is my number pad that I punch in the numbers for the final round like, 16 across or 54 down. I hit the numbers and then either the accross button or the down button. It's very stressful cause if I screw up or am too slow we have to stop and sometimes start from the beginning.



This is Dallas, on the left, he works for the Griffin Group and is a producer for the show. We work with him a lot; his desk is right next to ours and is always joking around with us. He likes to push me around in the office and lock me in the supply closet or the binders room; luckily I use my sheer strength to force the door open. But in all seriousness, he's a great guy and as I keep saying, reminds me of Ian in his great work mentality and mannerisms.



This last picture is of Ty Treadway, our host, talking with one of our producers, Joanna. Ty is a great guy, he comes over all the time and talks with us and jokes around. Joanna and Stephanie are two producers and they are great; so friendly and fun. It's a joy to work with great people!

Fisher BBQ

This was an event that we went to this last Saturday. It was the J.L. Fisher BBQ. J.L. Fisher is a dolly company that supplies the film industry with dollys. There are two main dolly companies, J.L. Fisher and Leonard/Chapman. So we got to tour the factory and test out all of their equipment. It was a lot of fun! We have a Fisher dolly at school so we have some experience with them anyway. They had free breakfast and lunch which was awesome.







This was a Fisher dolly and film camera setup on a circular track and we got to push eachother around on it and use the camera.





We went on a tour of the factory, which was hosted by Jimmy Fisher, J.L. Fisher's son. He is in charge of the business now and knows everything about how to make the dolly. They make 95% of the dolly at there headquarters, they showed us some of the stages of development for it. It was a great experience.

Our Office

These pics are of our production office which is right next door to our stage. Scattered all throughout the office's are these large pictures of Merv Griffin and notable people he had on his show. Some people I know and some I don't; I know Ronald Reagan and his wife is one pic and Pat Sajac and Vana are another and another one is Alex Trebec. Sorry for the spelling if they're wrong. But the two desks pushed together are our desks, Myself, Rodney, Adam, and Josiah. The one on the left is really Adam's and we moved over another desk and just crowd around the two. Sorry Adam! Before our desk is the recepciontists desk and the desk after ours is Dallas'. He works for the Merv Griffin Group and I think is some sort of a producer for this show. Great guy; very funny. As I said, reminds me a lot of Ian. He has ran with the bulls about 7 times and on his sixth time, he was saving a guy from a bull attack and the bull pierced Dallas' arm with his horn. He showed us videos and he has a killer scar.






This is usually how it is around 7ish when Rodney and I get to work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; empty. We have to get here early to hand out show binders to producers, executive producers, research, our computer company, and any other important people. So I have a key to Fort Knox as we call the show material room. So Rodney and I just sit around until people come and we sign out their binders and hand them to them. Pretty easy.







Up above our desks we put a sign, as you can see, saying "no fun zone." We are probably the most fun people at work so we try to be real serious when people notice it.





This last pic is of one of the shredders that I use. There are two: Jeremy and R2D2. When the week is done with or when research has confidential material that needs to be shredded then I plop down and start shredding. At the end of the week we usually have a lot to shred cause we have to shred about 270 packets of show material and then the 15 research binders which are really big. So that keeps me busy.

Playing the game

These two pics are of myself and Rodney. He is pretending to be the host and I am one of the contestants. We get to do pratice shows for the cameramen to make sure they have everything down. We basically run through the entire show with us interns as the contestants. I get to click the buzzers; they're so much fun!

Lights, Cameras, Action

Well out game show has 7 cameras. We have one section that focus on the contestants and the others have the host and one is a jib (basically a camera at the end of a long counter-balanced beam that can swing around). I have met most of the cameramen and they have all worked on very interesting shows.


These are the contestant cameras. The cameramen brought their own pillows to sit on in their chairs and one actually has his laptop perched on another chair so he can watch movies or surf the web while he is shooting. They have the luxury life. They are neat people; some work for Family Feud, Judge Judy, and many other TV shows.


These are the two cameras that get the host and a wide shot of the whole stage; then there is the jib. The bald guy, Keith, is the jib operator; great guy. He worked on Fresh Prince of Belaire, very neat.


Then this last pic is of the stage lit up and the jib making a move, flying across the stage. It's very cool to be apart of. During one show he forgot about one of the columns and slammed into it. It was the one right next to me. Oops!