In case you haven’t been reading, this is sort of part of a series. So, if you want to hear about how I got hired on AGT, you can start with this post.
It has been an interesting experience to go through all my old photos looking for things to post with these entires. If you’d asked me what I remembered about my summer with AGT, I would’ve said that I remembered how much of a struggle it was.
I remember how hot it was. I remember how different it was from the road, and how hard it was to be a well-liked PA and get in with the cool kids production crowd on the summer shoot (which I don’t think I ever really did).
I remember how constantly tired I was from never having a super stable living situation during the entire summer.
(The first place I subletted I’m pretty sure was a drug dealer’s apartment. The second one was totally infested with cockroaches (ew). I was just hopping around to places close enough that I wouldn’t have to drive, and doing my best to stay with friends in between.)
I remember how chaotic it could be with the ever-changing schedules (which never seemed to be communicated to every one – so sometimes you’d think you needed to take someone to rehearsal just to get yelled at because why weren’t you taking them to an interview), how on edge it could get sometimes with live television.
I guess that was maybe the main thing if I had to try to boil it down. On the road, people were in a new city having fun, taping ahead for the summer.
In L.A., it was hot, definitely not vacation, and it was live TV. So, the air on set was a bit more stressful, I think.
Unfortunately (and maybe this speaks to my personality in a bad way), I would’ve started to list the negative things before the positive things, if you’d asked me about my experience.
However, having looked through these pictures lately, I’ve had a lot of awww moments wondering “What’s that person doing now?”
Luckily, I was assigned to contestants. Even though sometimes things could be crazy, sometimes they were the complete opposite. I felt that the summer was pretty much the definition of hurry up and wait.
Sometimes the wait part of that would go on for many hours. I know I just finished talked about how important it is to use downtime to learn, but in the summer there didn’t seem to be as much room to shadow people – and a lot of that had already been done on the road anyway.
Plus, on the road it wasn’t downtime while my boss was holed up with the script where I really could go try to do something. Here, I was supposed to be with contestants.
Even if it was fun and games time, I still did sort of have to keep an eye on everybody and make sure they were comfy and such (and where they were supposed to be). I mean, that was kind of what I was being paid to do…
(Coincidentally, looking out for them and trying to keep them in a good mood meant I got to relax and play games too. Isn’t that nice?)
I was amazed at how much fun they could have. If it were me, I think I might’ve been too nervous to let loose. But, really it felt like one big happy summer camp as opposed to some big competition.
As far as what I did for the actual work part of it (in case anyone out there is really curious), I had to rotate contestants through hair and make-up before each show, and try to get the timing right of how to keep the chairs full and never run into someones rehearsal time.
Plus, I worked with the kids again, making sure they got their school in. (I actually even helped someone with Physics homework, which made me feel really smart and happy.)
Everyone was assigned different stuff to do. There were driver PAs, office PAs, etc. But I think contestant PA was the best assignment.
And I’ll finish this out tomorrow.