Last week was Reading Week.  While many students take the week as an opportunity to spend their parents money on cheap vacations down south, I believe I have spent every Reading Week I’ve ever had working.  This year was no exception, except that I didn’t get paid for it.  Unless you consider experience payment.  And I do.  So I did.  I guess. Get paid. What? Gah.

What I’m trying to say is… I spent half of my reading week working/interning as a Production Assistant on a pilot for what will hopefully become a television show for the Comedy Network starring stand-up comedian Tim Steeves.

The whole experience was really quite interesting as the only experience I’ve ever had with television, apart from watching copious amounts of it as a child and teen, was going to a taping of The Ron James Show earlier this year, and taking a tour of NBC Studios when I visited New York a few years back.  It was neat to get to see the inside of the CTV Masonic Temple, to see the place go from an empty stage and space, into the Tim Steeves project – an idea that’s gone as far as it possibly can before actually making it onto television.

They did teach us about the process of pitching television pilots at Humber, but there’s no doubt something more tangible about working on the real deal.

Over the week, my tasks included:

• several coffee runs
• discussing the huge importance of Twitter in our day-to-day lives
• waiting
• sitting
• salivating over deli corned beef sandwiches (and pickles… oh HEAVENS, those pickles…)
• standing-in for the host/panelists on the stage for the camera-operators (FUN!)
• assembling IKEA chairs
• coffee runs
• sitting
• waiting
• drinking water
• sitting
• waiting
• seat-filling during the taping
• recycling stuff
• hanging out with the Luke, Rachel & Eli.
• escorting guests to the Green Room …

(Huzzah for Canadian talent!)

 

What an ultimately thrilling experience!  It’s funny how even sitting and waiting are made that much more exciting when you’re in a TV studio.

This little taste of DOING TV Comedy was delicious and I hunger for more.  Much much more.

Chomp chomp.