February, 2007

This is kind of an interesting story. At the time, I was living in San Francisco, and just getting an apartment in Irvine. Word came to me that the Discovery Channel was casting for a new show called "Prototype This!". I submitted my CV and a picture of myself, and they called me down for a reading. Not really a traditional reading, as there was no script. They just wanted to do some on camera tests.

R2 wasn't finished yet, but I had a few components that I had built that I was proud of, so I loaded up the Sandcrawler and headed to downtown Los Angeles.

They were doing the casting as this CRAZY buiding, right off the railroad tracks. This was the belly of the beast, to be sure. Probably one of the worst places in LA you could possible go. This is the type of neighborhood that Jack Bauer avoids.

As you may have guessed, I did not get the gig. I have no idea how fierce the competition was, but it didn't pan out. Without trying to sound too much like I'm licking my wounds, it was probably for the best. The show was to film in San Francisco, and by this point in time, I was quite happy to get out of there. Knowing how TV shows have a habit of paying very poorly, and working you for 12 hours a day, six days a week, it became an unattractive prospect. But hey, I'm sure some good may have come out of it had it gone the distance.

At the time of this writing, the show has not aired yet, nor have I heard any press about it.

Here's the famous LA skyline, just off in the distance. Kind of illustrates how close I was to downtown. For reference, I'm about two blocks away from "The Brewery", home to super director Ted Smith.

And here's the "facility" where we did the casting. I guess some local LA band rehearses there.