A Long Day With High Pay

As several of you already know, I won some money on 1 VS 100.

My call time was 8am, so I knew that meant we might start taping by 10 or 11. There was a nice craft services spread, and people chit-chatted and talked about their "specialty" casting. My first episode will air on December 25th, and it's an X-mas themed episode, so people were cast accordingly. Since I won some money -just over $4,400- I don't want to get any more specific than that if, by some miracle, somebody from the show saw this blog.
My contract says if I give anything away publicly I could be sued for $1,000,000. I'm not worried about them suing me because that's sort of retarded. I AM concerned that they wouldn't give me my winnings.

Anyways, on with the show;

About 11:00 we (the 100 people in the mob) heard a lawyer from Standards and Practices give us a talk to help us not get tossed off the show for looking like we're cheating, or actually cheating.
By 11:30 we were lead into the studio to take our places on the giant stadium-style set that holds the mob. Somewhere in the studio there must also be racks of meat, as the studio was effing freezing. Also, if you've seen the show and think the people in the mob look like they're sitting, you're wrong. The podiums come up to low chest level on a 5'11" guy. There's a little half-seat that sticks out of the back of your nook, but there is a ledge that houses the lighting behind you and it's more uncomfortable to sit on the ledge for a few minutes than it is to just stand all day.

All day means different things to different contestants. 1 hour of this game show take about 4 hours to shoot. If you've seen the show, you know that as mob members get a question wrong, they're out of the game, but have to sit there the rest of the show. Those mob members are lead out of the studio at the end of the taping of that episode, and replacement mob members are lead in. 3 or 4 hours after THAT, we got our first break. It was about 6:00 or so.

We had about 25 minutes to sit down and eat a cold burrito from the craft services table. It was not a good burrito.

By 6:30 we were standing back on the set in our spots. Thank God too, because it was another 30 minutes or so before we were ready to shoot. Since there are so many "contestants" in the mob, they're treated like extras. But only when being treated like an extra is bad. If the treatment of an extra is good like guaranteed meals, breaks, and double-double overtime after 12 hours, then the contestants are considered "contestants".

During this segment, however it all became very worthwhile. I don't think I should discuss specific questions, contestants, or details, but in this segment of taping, I won the cashola.

What is probably safe to tell is the timing. See, the mob has 10 seconds to answer the question. The main contestant doesn't get all day, but they can deliberate for a good 90 seconds, I'd say.
I answered a question that was about a show I've watched for over 10 years, and it was a super-easy question for those that have seen the show. I punched in my answer, and then the woman started "talking it out"*.

She was convincing herself of the wrong answer. If she picked it, I knew I'd won pretty big (for my side of the game anyway). She punched in the wrong answer, and it was torture. See, she punches in, and now the show has to build the drama. The mob can't give away anything or it will screw up the taping. There was a good 2 minutes between her locking in her answer and the reveal of the right answer on the big screen. It was a long two minutes.

When the big board light up the correct answer, the mob went apeshit. It was awesome. 60 seconds later I felt like a piece of crap because the contestant was crying. I felt pretty bad for a little while. Now I just think she should watch more TV.

We stopped taping the last episode just after 11pm. There had been several batches of mob replacements throughout the day, but I didn't know just how many until I filled out my paperwork for my winnings.

Winning mob members were lead to a little area to fill out a W9 for the money. The woman in charge passed out the forms and the clipboards as she called out names. When she got to mine she said it, and then kept looking at the clipboard and flipping back and forth to another page behind it.

Woman: Um, you have a form here for the early show as well.

Me: OK.

Woman: You've been here since 8 am?

Me: Yeah.

She passed me the clipboard and called another producer on her walkie-talkie, and I heard my name. For a second, I thought I did something wrong and wasn't getting my money. I thought maybe I was supposed to fill something out earlier, or I was in an area I wasn't supposed to be in, or God knows what.

When I turned in my paperwork on the way out, a producer pulled me to the side. He told me they went though about 340 mob members that day, and that I was the only person from the first 100 that made it through the whole day. Evidentially, I'd answered over 20 questions right that day. He told me there was a possibility I could be called back someday for a "champions of the mob" episode or something like that at some point in the future.

I strongly suggest anybody try out for this show. Most of my friends are pretty pop-culture savvy. I'd say that about 75% of the questions are pop culture, 10% are math word problems, and maybe 15% are actual literate questions about history, geography or art.

So for about 15 hours of work, I pulled in $4,400. I thought this was really good, working out to be $293.00 an hour. Then I realized my uncle makes that every day.

Soon...soon shall the Kingdom of Yates rise...