After a couple months here at MTV, I had the exciting opportunity to work the taping for the FNMTV Holiday Special.  Needless to say, it was a little different from the usual day at the office.  My main mission for the evening was to watch over Secondhand Serenade and make sure that he was comfortable.  After arriving at Boardner’s in Hollywood I was just waiting for “the calm before the storm” since I didn’t know what was in store for me once Secondhand Serenade arrived at the 6:30 call time. 

Before Secondhand Serenade arrived I watched Pete Wentz go through rehearsal as crews prepped the stage.  The guests for the show that night were Miley Cyrus, Metro Station, and Secondhand Serenade.  The guest DJ was Travis McCoy from Gym Class Heroes.  The Game also premiered a video that night.

Before the show began they had all of the artists hang out upstairs.  Being up there with all of the artists allowed for a good experience to observe how they all act in their natural element and see their personalities when not in front of a camera.  As the show progressed throughout the night each artist would go downstairs as it came to their segment in the show.  But upstairs I became aware of a few things.  First, no matter how famous Miley Cyrus is, she is still only 16 years old.  Second, Travis McCoy likes to have a good time while playing music and drinking from his plastic red cup.  And while hanging out with Secondhand Serenade I got to know a little about him and all of the iPhone applications that he introduced me to; some of which I ended up downloading!   For the most part everybody was pretty much just hanging out and watching what was being taped and commenting on it as they anticipated their segment to come up. 

There were two performances that night.  The first was Travis McCoy freestyling a holiday song (which took a few).  The second was held outside on the small patio stage and Fall Out Boy performed their new single “I Don’t Care” and as they began playing it a small crowd rushed up to the stage. 

One of my highlights was at the end of the night when Pete Wentz had to shoot the intro to the show outside of the entrance to Boardner’s.  This consisted of Pete walking up to the venue’s front doors which had a decorated Christmas tree next to it.  What you don’t see on camera is somebody throwing handfuls of fake snow in Pete’s direction.  They did a few takes of this where Pete reacted in different manners.  Watching Pete’s reaction range from grabbing the fake box of snow and throwing it back at the man who was “making it snow” to grabbing the Christmas tree and slamming it to the ground.  Then finally grabbing the tree and throwing it against the building and then grabbing ornaments and throwing them all around definitely brought the night to an entertaining end. 

Overall this was a very cool experience that exceeded my previously unknown expectations of what I thought would happen that night.  This was also an amazing introduction to what it’s like to work for MTV and what goes into putting a show together.  I don’t ever see myself living the “rock star” life but this was definitely a little taste of what goes on backstage at events like these.  I can’t wait to see what other opportunities my MTV future holds