After getting the call and doing my prep work, I had a huge pile of papers which included the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) that I had to sign to make sure I don’t give away any results of the show. When I say a huge pile of papers, I mean it was a good couple of inches all stacked together. On every single page I had to initial the bottom right side of the page. Even if my name was signed on the page, I still had to initial the bottom right side of it. I know some people have neglected to read the contract and just signed everything. Others had lawyers look through them. Me? I read every single work of every single page by myself and made sure I understood exactly what I was signing. It took me a good couple of days to read through it all and sign everything. Then you had to scan it all and send it back to the producers.
That was the boring part of this journey.
Now that I have everything signed and ready to go all I have to do is past one test before I can fly out to L.A. It was a COVID 19 test. Keep in mind this is a rapid at home test, we had to be on a zoom meeting while taking the test with our cameras on, and I have never done one of these before. To add onto the fun, I was feeling a little under the weather as if I was starting to get sick. The only thing going through my mind is “Don’t be positive! Don’t be positive!” Thankfully it came back negative, and I had a few days to recover before I had to take another COVID 19 test after landing in L.A.
I spent the last few days resting and packing my clothes that I would need while I was out there. A couple of “show outfits,” and a few regular outfits.
The flight out to L.A. was long but it was a smooth flight. My parents were with me which made things a little bit easier. However, like I mentioned before I had to take another COVID 19 test when I got to L.A. I still wasn’t feeling well. In fact, I was feeling worse. I got to the hotel and once I got my room I went down to the lobby and met with the medical staff who handed me another COVID test. I reluctantly stuck the test up my nose, and I was handed a mask to wear until they got my results back. After about two hours I get a text asking me to come back to take it again because the test came back inconclusive. Now I’m freaking out. I don’t feel well and my COVID test came back inconclusive. Thankfully the second time around went well, and it came back negative.
This is when the fun begins.
After I had cleared the COVID test I was given a piece of paper with my name and other piece of paper with my run number on it. I was runner 323. Even though that’s a big number they had already run through 300 competitors at this point which meant I was running 23rd for my qualifying night. Out of 60 competitors in one night, I was right where I wanted to be. This was my sweet spot. Not too early where I need to set the bar high but not too late where I have the pressure of where on the course I need to get to move on. I got my picture taken and the rest of the day I was free to rest.
After a day of rest, I had to wake up early to make it to B-roll which consisted of interviews and what they call hero shots. I was taken to do my interview before the hero shots. They wanted my mom to be a part of the interview, which was amazing, but I didn’t know this prior to getting ready so I had to rush my mom down to the lobby where we were escorted to the interview waiting room. We get called in and my story producer asks me some questions about my colorblindness, which was my main story. I answered all of her questions, and they called my mom over to ask her about my colorblindness and how she handled that throughout the years. I will say I couldn’t see a thing when I was in front of the camera because there was a bright light in our faces to make sure the lighting was good.
Onto the hero shots.
This part was honestly a lot more fun than I could’ve imagined. I was taken to this fancy dining room area that American Ninja Warrior took over with loads of camera gear and lighting. If you’ve ever seen American Ninja Warrior, you might’ve seen a shot clip of the competitors spinning around and they do different poses. Well, that’s exactly what I did. I stood on this circle pedestal that spun me around and this lady who had a camera mounted on a tripod was telling me the different poses I should do. Some of these poses included a game face, flexing, pointing at the camera, pointing to my shirt, and many others. To be honest, I felt really awkward while doing this. Maybe that’s because it was my first time, maybe it was because I knew this was going on national television. I don’t know what it was, but I felt awkward. Don’t get me wrong it was a lot of fun and I hope I can do it again one day. After that was a different type of shot where I am off the pedestal, and I run towards the camera. It’s like my intro shot. Once again it was awkward, but they told me I did a good job. Then we finished with the game face panning shot where they only capture your eyes. I did these a good four different times back-to-back. Once with my colorblind glasses, once without and with game face eyes, once without the glasses while smiling, and once following the camera.
I know this was a longer post but there’s a lot that happened in a short period of time. Next week I will be going over the rollercoaster of emotions I had when I walked up the staircase of dreams. Be on the lookout for that.