Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
I’ll admit it, I was a fan of the first reality shows I ever saw which came from Japan. Contestants were given really bizarre challenges like being given a paddle boat shaped like a swan and asked to navigate from Osaka to Yokohama in the open ocean. Or fathers asked to perform a bizarre task like typing the lyrics to a song in a given time limit when they’d never touched a keyboard in their life before. Fun to watch because there was the element of human struggle combined with a really bizarre task.
In more recent years shows like Survivor, American Idol and America’s Got Talent started popping up and producer used slightly different techniques to create an audience for their shows. The creation of celebrity, the use of hype and sensationalism and the building of a great product for TV – reality shows went Hollywood! As an entertainer I certainly understand the techniques used to make the shows appear interesting, but never fully bought into it.
Then in November I got an email from the associated casting director for “America’s Got Talent” with an inquiry as to whether I’d like to submit myself for auditions for Season 4. I was a bit skeptical as to whether I really wanted to be involved with something like this and as I know a guy who was involved in the show last year I thought I’d fire off a quick email to get his thoughts…
Me – Got the an email today from Americas Got Talent and am not entirely sure what I think about this as an ‘Opportunity.’
There are pros and cons to this I think and before doing anything I wanted to get your take on your experience with the show last year.
Worth your time? A waste of time?
This is the response I got…
Doing this “talent show” is a real crap shoot. They may make you look very good or very bad, and I mean they when I say they. The editing on this show can really kill you. I saw acts that did very well in the audition but when the show aired the editing made them look like crap. The producers are in total control of how you look. They will edit audience reaction shots that are not even from your show, which could be good or bad. One thing you need to know is that if you do not have something that is totally unique and can showcase in 90 seconds, I would think twice about it. Even at 90 seconds they can edit that down to 20 or 30 seconds if they want to make you look really lame. The music acts do well on this show because they can fit into the 90 second audition slot nicely but the variety acts and comedy based acts have a lot harder time making that work. I strongly suggest that you look at some of last years acts on the NBC web site and see what worked and what didn’t. My human puppet bit worked well in the 90 second slot and looked unique to the judges compared to all the other vent acts that auditioned. That’s the only thing that I do that I think gave me a chance to get through. My goal was to get 5 minutes and that’s exactly what I got. It was a 50/50 chance of getting that and having them making me look like shit.
In the end I opted not to follow up on this chance to be on TV because I didn’t feel like what I do was going to be well showcased on the show. I also took a moment to look at myself as a product that could be turned into a story for Television and realized that I come from a bit too normal of a background to make for really interesting TV. I’m happily married, I’ve got two kids that I love, I work regularly and have made a successful career out of performing even if I’ve never reached ‘Star Status’ I do feel like I’ve reached a level of fame and respect with in the industry that I’m really happy with. There seemed to be more to loose than there was to gain. Add to that the fact that rumor has it that David Hasselhoff has a thing against jugglers and I decided not to shoot myself in the foot on this one.
