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Taping
Experience
Liat's story
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924 TOI Barbados (2nd part of the season finale)
Note: If you would like to use this for your site, please e-mail
us (Liat N. and Mindy VR) to ask for permission. Thanks!
On
Friday, April 4, 2003, I woke up at 6:45, thinking that the only
thing I would be doing at the WB that day was taking a VIP studio
tour. Our tour started at 8:30. While we were waiting to
go through security, we met two people that told us that they would
be going to that day's Friends taping; it was their fifth
time. This made me extremely jealous. I kept thinking about
how much I wanted to go to that day's taping, and how close I was to
the cast. When the tour ended, around 11, our tour guide took us
back to the WB store where my friend, Mindy, and I took pictures of
the Friends clothes on display.
Meanwhile my mom overheard someone saying that seats for the taping
had opened up. People thought that this would be the last
taping of the show ever, but when they found out there was a tenth
season, they probably decided to go to that season's finale.
My mom asked about these openings, and the woman at the counter made
a call to someone else.
The minutes between the time I knew I might get tickets and the time
I got them were hell. My heart was pounding, I tried concentrating
on the different Bugs Bunny dolls they had on display to calm me
down, although it didn't work. A couple minutes later, a woman came
in from her office on the lot and told us that we had 3 seats for
the taping. At this point, I was beyond ecstatic. I
started jumping up and down with Mindy and crying. It takes a
lot to make me cry, so you can imagine that this was pretty major
for me (as it would be for any other loyal fan of the show :p).
I calmed myself down for a few minutes to listen to everything the
woman told us: when to come to get checked in, where to go to get
checked in, phone numbers to call if there were problems, and a map
of the surrounding restaurants so we could get lunch before the
taping. After all this was said, Mindy and I walked out of the
building, totally oblivious to the rules that normal people weren't
allowed on the lot without a WB employee. I was crying again at that
point :p.
We were taken back to where the VIP tour had started and went back
to the car. The people we had met earlier that day were parked right
next to us, and we bumped into them there again. They told us
"We heard you�'re going to the taping. Congratulations!".
They then told us about a small Mexican restaurant that they go to
before tapings. We (Mindy and I, my mom had to go somewhere
before the taping) took their advice and went there; I don�'t know
how I ate three quarters of a quesadilla and nachos with my heart
racing and all other bodily functions stopped. We finished our
meal with just under two hours to spare until we had to be at the
check-in place.
We went down the street a bit to take a picture of the big
"Friends" picture on the wall of the studios.
These pictures turned out a bit crooked because I was still shaking
when I took them. :p We had nothing else to do, so we went back to
the waiting area for the WB VIP tour to wait to check-in. We
bumped into the "five taping" couple again.
The guy sat down on a bench next to us and I asked him what his
connection was. He told me he knew Scott Silveri. They
then left after a minute or two. I don't know how we passed the time
until we checked in. I know I was busy obsessing over the fact
that in a few hours my dream would come true.
At around 1:45 my mom came back from running errands and we were
able to check in. Our names weren't on the list, probably because of
the short notice, but a nice woman said that she'd trust us when we
told her our contact. We were 17th, 18th, and 19th in line,
just a random thing that I noticed. We waited in line for
about 15 minutes, and then we were taken through security.
After this we waited to go into the studio for what seemed to be an
hour. I have no idea how long it actually was. I had
missed the episode, 918, that had aired the night before, but
luckily the people in line behind us were talking about it so I
caught up a little there.
We were finally taken farther into the lot, and we were lined up
next to Stage 24 for about 5 minutes. I was so eager to go in
at this point. We finally went into the studio after
"surrendering" our cell phones and other things
like that. We walked up a staircase into the audience area and
were taken to our seats, 4th row, basically in the center. I
was disappointed to see that none of the regular sets were up
(Central Perk, the apartments); they weren't there. The
Friends had traveled to Barbados for a reason that I won't say here,
you'll have to read the spoiler for that.
When I sat down I started looking around. Above me there was
high ceiling, with wooden beams going all over the place as well as
some other technical things. I spotted David Crane at the back
of the audience area talking to some people, and I recognized them
as the people who were in front of us in line. During the
taping itself they were wandering around on the set talking to
people.
More people arrived, and finally all the seats were full. It
definitely didn't seem like 300 people. It seemed more like 100.
There were two college groups there: Ithaca and USC (University of
Southern California). There was some rivalry between them
sometimes. :p
Jim Bentley, the guy who entertains everyone between takes and
stuff, was wandering around the set and I recognized him. I
also recognized the prop lady from TOW That Goes Behind The Scenes.
The sets were pretty void of people, except there were some girls
(people about my and Mindy's age) sorting through the scripts on one
of the sets. Eventually Jim Bentley started talking and was
getting us all excited. He told us that they would be serving
pizza soon, I think it was about 3:30 by then. But then again,
I was so excited so I had no sense of time. They showed a
rough cut of 922, and all of 923 to get us caught up while we were
eating the pizza (which had too much sauce :p).
When we were all caught up, the cast came out!! Up till then I
wasn't as excited as I thought I'd be, probably because the regular
sets weren't there. Everyone was standing up, and we were in the
fourth row, so we couldn't see that well. I was constantly
straining my neck to see the action.
The first person I saw was Matt LeBlanc, he looked pretty much the
same as on tv. Although he did look a bit taller maybe.
Then I saw David Schwimmer who, as some of you know, is my favorite
cast member. It didn't hit me at first, but when it did I
could not believe that my favorite actor was right there, just feet
away from me. It was completely surreal. Unfortunately,
with everyone standing up and blocking my view, I couldn't see the
rest of the cast that well. That was ok though because I saw
them throughout the taping.
When everyone sat down, I saw Lisa Kudrow walking across
the set, she's the person who was the most different to me.
Onscreen she doesn't look as pretty as in person...many people have
said this and it's definitely true. While she was walking
across the set, people started "wooing" and
clapping. She turned around and looked up at the audience.
Jim explained to her that we liked her walk. ;) The first scene was
shot in a place we couldn't see, so we had to watch the action on
the monitors. The second scene was on the opposite side of us,
also a place we couldn't see. The whole cast was in this
scene. I saw Jennifer and Courteney walking to the set.
Jennifer is a bit shorter than I thought she was, and Courteney was
a lot smaller.
Matthew was also walking around, and some person yelled out
"Matthew Perry!" which made him look up to the
audience. During this scene all I could see was David's hair
because a camera was blocking him, but I was happy about being able
to see that much anyway.
The rest of the set was way off to the side, so I couldn't see
anything. :p Between scenes Jim Bentley made us clap and
"find the beat" of the songs that were playing.
He would pass out autographed pictures of the cast, t-shirts, and
hackey sacks, it didn't seem as much as other tapings that I heard
about. It took us a while to get something. We were very close
to him, and we kept yelling and clapping and kinda dancing in place,
but he didn't give us anything.
Mindy really wanted a t-shirt and she was being really loud and
active to get it, but he still didn't give her one. I decided
it didn't make sense for me to get a Friends t-shirt, because I was
already wearing the one I had bought in LA in July. To help
Mindy get one, I pointed to her all the time and even the people in
the row in front of us started pointing to her too to help her get a
shirt. Despite our efforts, we were still prize-less.
Jim told us if we had any talents we wanted to share, we could get
his attention, perform our talent, and get a prize. This one
boy, about 11 or 12 years old, eventually stood up and said his
talent was that he had webbed toes. Mindy shouted, "that's
not a talent, that's a freak". Jim heard
this and repeated it on the microphone because he thought it was
amusing.
Throughout the taping Jim would do various magic tricks, such as
pulling a bunny out of a hat, making us think it was real, and then
throwing it on the ground, to our shock. It was a fake bunny,
of course. He also pulled audience members up to make them
sing. There was an older black guy who wasn't very active, so
he made him stand up and dance. The guy got more into it than
Jim had thought he would, and it was a bit homosexual</mary>.
:p
I decided to go to the bathroom while they were changing from one
set to another, and while I was gone Mindy had gotten a red and
white hackey sack. She also told me that they threw some props
up into the audience and whoever caught them got to keep them.
They weren't thrown in our part of the audience though, so I wasn't
that disappointed.
Through the course of the evening I got 2 autographed pictures (one
for our friend who would really love to be with us, but wasn��t on
the trip), and an orange and white hackey sack. Mindy got a
hackey sack and an autographed picture of her own, but no t-shirt.
We did interact with the actors a little bit. Lisa was walking
across the stage and Mindy yelled out her name, so Lisa looked up at
us, waved and smiled. David wasn't on the stage when that
happened, but I decided that I would not leave without David
acknowledging me. So the next time he was on the stage in
front of us we yelled out his name, he looked up at us, waved,
smiled, and gave us the peace sign. I *think* I waved back,
but I was so excited that I don't remember what I was doing, only
what he was. I was so happy after that, I felt very complete.
Even now, a week and 2 days after the taping, I'm still constantly
playing that moment over in my head, along with any other parts of
the taping I can remember. By the time they were taping the
last scene or the second to last scene, it was already 11:38, a
random time that I remember from looking at my watch.
We were definitely not as energetic as the beginning of the
taping. We weren't clapping as hard or dancing as much.
The music between scenes began to get on our nerves a little bit, it
was too loud and fast for midnight. There was even a person
who was sleeping.
We got out of the stage at 12:30ish, about 9 hours after we got in.
We walked back to the VIP tour waiting area and waited for my dad to
pick us up. I think this is where Mindy and my "Friends
hangover" started. We were so tired that we laughed at
everything. Some funny things came out of our post-taping
experiences.
Later we would always stutter, something that I'm still doing more
than a week after. The next night at the hotel we were taking
the elevators down to the parking garage and walking back into the
hotel through the lobby. Then we would walk back to the
parking garage and take the elevators back up to the lobby, laughing
uncontrollably on the way up and down. That's just something
weird that happened to us because of our "hangover".
I
hope this gave you a good experience of what it's like to attend a
taping, even though some things were probably exclusive to us. We
both agree that it was the best time of our lives, and we still
can't believe our enormous luck in getting into the taping. Thanks
for reading!
Lara's story
[e-mail]
904
- TOW The Sharks
On
August 28, me, my dad and my sister went to Los Angeles to attend
the tapping of the fourth episode (TOW The Sharks) of the 9 season.
I got the tickets because my dad has a friend here in Brazil that
knows a woman in LA that is friends with Courteney, so she goes on
tappings all the time, and this friend asked my mom what we wanted
for our 15th birthday (me and my twin sister), and she, out of the
blue said that what we really wanted was to go watch the
taping (and she said that without knowing the connection to friends).
So, after months trying my dad manage to take us in August, but he
did that without telling me, he didn�t wanted us to get all excited
if it wasn't for sure.
So he finally told us in July and that�s all i could think about!
Anyway, the taping was suppose to be on the August 30, wich would
give me a day to enjoy LA, but they decided to tape on August
29 (a few ours after I arrived there)! We had time to
take a shower and eat something.
Then we went to Warner�s parking lot to check in and wait (we also
took a picture in front of the outdoor) and they finally got us
trough security, they took my camera etc and a woman took us to our
seats (2nd row, between central perk and monica�s place) I was so
excited!!!!
The most exciding part was when the guy said "ARE U READY TO
MEET THE STARS OF FRIENDS???" and they came in, but Jen wasn�t
there, she was filming Bruce Almighty. They looked really nice and Matt
was passing by the audience so I called him, and he looked and waved
at me!
It sounds silly but I was so happy! That was for sure the best day
of my life! They made us leave really fast and when we were on the
street the whole cast passed by us in their cars, including Matthew
in his convertible and talking on his cell!!!
We got little balls, pencils, cups and the next day we went to Courteney�s
friend home and she gave us a signed picture of Courteney with our
name�s on it! Thanks for reading!
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