Author Topic: The Studio Audience and You  (Read 3332 times)

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Offline gamesurf

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The Studio Audience and You
« on: July 30, 2023, 05:42:21 PM »
*cue cheesy 80's edutainment video music*

With tapings reopening to the public, Prizes asked me to write some tips and tricks for audience members. While getting picked certainly can add to the experience, not getting picked shouldn’t ever take away from it. You can be a great audience member 100% of the time!

Some tips and tricks to get the most out of your studio experience:

PACE YOURSELF. Don’t lose your voice before entering the studio! You’re in for a long day, especially if you are trying to do two tapings in one day. (More on that later.)

You definitely want to be pumped up, especially before Hannah’s interview and immediately before entering the studio, but nobody can be at 10/10 energy levels for five hours without it taking a toll on their body. You want your voice to last until the end of the episode (or even both episodes!) Drink plenty of water and bring appropriate snacks for the line. I brought plenty of bottled water and granola bars and, of course, beef jerky.

In the preshow I try to substitute waving my arms and smiling instead of yelling as much as possible so I have something left in the tank to sustain me through a taping. Sometimes I do this during a taping if my voice is shot. It looks great on camera. You can also fake it and mime yelling, the camera can’t tell.

• Use the bathroom before taping, even if you think you don’t need to. This goes along with “drink enough water so that you need to go to the bathroom.” Make sure your physical needs are met before entering the studio. You will be in there for a while. The inaugural taping took two hours. Once inside it will be very difficult to leave.

• Don’t bring pen and paper. This is a new tip for S52. I had intended to bring a notepad to write down my bids for George’s in-studio showcase bidding game, as he had done in the past, but after hearing the new page spiel I will no longer be doing this. If you do have something to take notes on, don’t bring it out during the taping. If you intend to go to multiple shows, do not break it out between tapings. This is because…

Nobody from the 8:00 or 11:45 tapings will be admitted into the 2:30 tapings. The third taping of the day may reuse some prizes from the first two tapings. We were told by Standards and Practices that it would be a fairness issue for people who had seen the prizes so recently to compete against people who were seeing them for the first time. This seems to be standard operating procedure going forward this season.

We want to honor this. If you have tickets to the third taping, don’t attend or contact anyone from the first two tapings. After leaving the first two tapings do not do anything to make them suspect you are trying to give somebody in the third taping any sort of advantage. If you have questions, be upfront and ask and follow the instructions of staff at all times. We want golden-road.net members to be an asset to the producers and not something the show is concerned about.

If you intend to do both the 8:00 taping and 11:45 taping right after each other, let OCA know. You will be able to get in assuming the 8:00 taping finishes on time and there is space available at the 11:45 one.

In Studio

George will come out and warm you up. He will go through the basics: help people bid and keep shouting advice for all four contestants. They love it when you stand up, feel free to stand at any point during the show except for the top of the show and the Come On Downs.

(The one exception: every time I’ve been at a taping where the first PG is won, the crowd is on their feet applauding the win when they launch into the second act Come On Down.)

As an audience member, you may think that your #1 goal is to help the contestants win. That’s not quite 100% accurate… Your #1 goal as an audience member is to make great TV.

The two starring roles should go to the contestant onstage and Drew. The audience is the most important supporting role. You want to be a wonderful audience member without usurping the roles of the two stars.

If you are reading this, you are probably much more familiar with games and prices and hidden rules than your median viewer. You’re in a unique position to help somebody win! The production staff absolutely wants you to shout out prices and advice, and there are few things more satisfying than bending the crowd to your will and helping give away something fantastic.

But keep in mind they want to see and hear from a wide variety of people in the audience. One person getting the attention of everyone over and over doesn’t look good on camera.

I would suggest against:
  • Yelling out advice before Drew gets a chance to explain the game. You may know how to play the game, but the audience at home doesn’t, and you need to give them a chance to catch up.
  • Yelling advice during moments of silence. My rule of thumb would be “don’t yell anything unless your intent is to cue the rest of the audience to begin yelling things too.”
  • Yelling out advice during George’s prize descriptions. It will get edited out anyway. George’s copy needs to be heard on the air without distractions. Hand motions to the contestant are probably okay during this time as long as they don’t whip the crowd into a frenzy.
If you jump the gun too often a production assistant might come and ask you to tone it down a bit.

DO:
  • Get into it! The bigger and more animated your motions are, the easier it will be to spot you on camera!
  • Be decisive! If you’re clear and confident, (even when you have no idea what the actual answer was), you will look good on camera.
  • Be willing to be wrong. Nobody bats 1.000 in studio. Eventually, a contestant will take your advice and it will be wrong and lose and you will feel slightly bad. It happens. The important thing is you tried. Don’t let that dissuade you from yelling things out.
  • Read the room of the crowd. A good audience member is one that inspires other audience members to follow their lead, but you don’t want to make yourself the main character too frequently.

And in general… HAVE FUN!!! You're there to see Price live as it happens, which is always a special treat. You get to help make the magic of TV, no matter with hands, voice, anything and everything. As much fun as the show is to watch on TV, watching it live is definitely much better.

If you have the opportunity to see a taping... DO IT! I still can't recommend it enough. There's really nothing in TV like it.
Quote from: Bill Todman
"The sign of a good game, is when you don't have to explain it every day. The key is not simplicity, but apparent simplicity. Password looks like any idiot could have made it up, but we have 14 of our people working on that show. There is a great complexity behind the screen. It requires great work to keep it simple."

Offline Prizes

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Re: The Studio Audience and You
« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2023, 09:05:23 PM »
This is awesome, thanks gamesurf! Stickied because I imagine this post will apply for genuinely decades. Just like our pre-show recording, as George alluded to.

The true reason behind this post probably won't apply to you if you're reading this, but in case it does, may as well have it out there. After all, it felt like it had the potential to be of impact during the taping we saw, and it absolutely applies again if we get a massive superfan gathering: If you're gesturing, yelling, etc. keep it to the following people: Those in your row*, directly behind your row, and the row directly in front of you, not including on-stage. And from there, those you could reasonably have a conversation with by distance at a dinner. As for on-stage, of course, that is always encouraged, provided it's at the right time, as described above.

I've always thought that's fair etiquette once seats return as they have: Get your equivalent S50-51 pod of sorts on board, and that's as far as your message intentionally sends. This refers to specifically your message being sent from you, since those people can then send it forward, back, and/or on stage as well, but then that's their choice and it's not directly from you.

*Granted, my row was with three people directly in front of George's podium, so that limited things in a good way. But you get the idea, I kept it confined there.
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Re: The Studio Audience and You
« Reply #2 on: December 23, 2023, 04:08:51 AM »
If you have questions, be upfront and ask and follow the instructions of staff at all times. We want golden-road.net members to be an asset to the producers and not something the show is concerned about.

Bumping this up-- that's great advice for anyone who goes to a taping where it is now at Haven; better to know exactly what to do and steer it on an even keel than fly ahead foolishly and crash and burn later.