Over the past few days, there have been a lot of allusions to come crazy stuff going on. I figured it would be selfish to hide all th e stressed-out hilarity for any longer.
Tuesday afternoon, we got an unsolicited phone call from the Food Network show “Cupcake Wars”. They said they’ve known about us for a while (!!!), and once they saw the Chicken n’ Waffles on Food & Wine, they had to contact us. Honestly, there are no words to describe how shocked we were- it’s not just the opportunity of a lifetime for our fledgling little company, it would be FOUR FREAKING DAYS IN LA. Matt and I haven’t been on a vacation since our honeymoon four years ago, and I don’t think I’ve been on a plane in close to 10. I know that we’ll be working the whole time we’re out there, but we’ll get to stay in a nice hotel that probably going to have some dope-ass mini soaps, and I totally live for that stuff.
That’s when they drop the bomb on us: even though THEY called US, we still need to sumbit an audition video. And that video is going to be presented to the producers in 36 hours. Now, we’re in production for 24 of those hours, and subtracting time for sleeping, that leaves us with about 10 hours to shoot this video, beginning the second we hang up the phone.
Issue one: we can’t get into our kitchen that night, and even if we could, it’s so small we probably couldn’t get any usable footage there. There’s no time to go do exterior shots or “scenes”, and even if there was, we don’t know how to edit and wouldn’t have the time if we did. We resign ourselves to the fact that unlike all the gimmicky audition videos you see out there, we’re going to have a straight through, no cuts video of us sitting on the couch answering their questions. Not exciting stuff, but hey, they DID call us, so we can keep our fingers crossed.
Issue two: We don’t have a digital video camera. We start sending out Facebook messages and making phone calls, but no one can help us until the weekend. I know my dad has one, but every time I call him, he starts screaming at my about how he’s shampooing the carpets and can’t hear me. I tell him to turn off the shampooer, but he can’t hear that suggestion.
Later, my dad agrees to let us use his video camera, but we can’t go over til around 8. Now we’re down to three hours. How hard can it be to self-direct a piece that can possibly make our break your career?
And THIS is when I get the best phone call of my life. My best friend, Broadway actor Telly Leung, who spends 99% of his life on the road and away from me (sad panda), just got in on the red-eye from San Diego. Aside from being one of the best song-and-dance men in the world, he’s also an amazing editor, posting video blogs from his tours around the world. He’s got a thousand auditions and meetings this week before he gets on another plane for California this weekend, but he has four hours where he can come help us out on Wednesday, and some time where he should be sleeping that he will gladly sacrifice.
Next day, Telly comes and meets up with Matt, the sitter and the kids while I’m off baking. He sits down with his MacBook and headphones and gets to work, and I swear to God guys, he’s like a sorcerer. We were all worried there was no way this video would be done by noon on Friday, but after only 3 hours I get a message on my Blackberry with the first 2 minutes all edited and sexy looking. I was completely floored.
And then 10 minutes later, I get a call saying that our two year old, Toby, knocked a full cup of coffee on the MacBook and fried the whole effing thing.
Telly has some sort of external drive that’s constantly backing everything up, so he’s confident the file is safe, but without a computer he can’t access it, much less finish it.
We spend the next 24 hours frantically trying to find someone who can video edit (the amazing Rob Blatt of Hey Brooklyn was going to heroically pull an all-nighter to help us out). We’re trying to find a way to extract the info and get it over there. And worst off, I’m trying to find a way to replace his billion dollar computer, since it has all the work he needs for his business trip to California on it.
And this is when he proves that he is without question the most amazing person in the entire world.
Now if someone had destroyed my $2000 computer, I’d be pissed. PISSED. Telly? His reaction is “Accidents happen. Kids. What are you going to do?”. He tries to get his MacBook fixed but they say it won’t be ready before his business trip. Then he buys ANOTHER MacBook, but still sends the other one for repairs so his mom will finally have a nice computer to work on. Seriously. This guy is the best guy EVER.
After running around to meetings all day, buying a new Mac, and all the other stuff he has to do, he STILL finishes the whole thing by 8pm, and it looks amazing. It’ll be in the next post, because I still can’t figure out how to insert videos or images into my blog posts.
When you watch the video, one of the questions we had to answer is what will we do with the money if we win. Scratch everything we say. The first thing we’re doing is taking Telly away for a nice long weekend, and buying him a new MacBook.
