Last Sunday, we caught the opening episode of CBC’s new reality series Over the Rainbow which is the quest to find Dorothy in the new Mirvish production of Wizard of Oz. We’ve watched some of the other CBC reality TV shows in the past, specifically Battle of the Blades and thought that it would be fun to be part of the live audience, but that particular one had an issue since we couldn’t both get out to the Hershey Centre by the time the taping started.
Over the Rainbow was taped at their downtown studios, which is a much easier location to get to. We got tickets to the Monday show, which was the results show where one of the original 10 Dorothys would be leaving. As this was our first live TV taping, it was a fun and interesting experience. We saw the stage crew getting things ready (they Windex-ed everything, a lot) and various hosts (the real one and an in-studio one) rev up the audience. They even practice introducing and announcing the judges even though the judges didn’t do anything that evening.
The actual show was fast, as it was 30 minutes with 3 commercial breaks (and some pre-filmed scenes). They did their intro song number as a group, and one new group song. Then they announced the two contestants who were on the brink and had them do a sing-off. Andrew Lloyd Weber, without much fanfare, picked one of them to save and the other was eliminated. The best part was that the loser had to sit on a moon that sailed over the sky as she sang Over the Rainbow. Since this was the first results show for this series, we didn’t know it was going to happen so that was surprising and emotional!
It was a fun experience to go to a taping, although there was a lot of waiting in lines before the show. I was also surprised that they did everything live, there were no retakes or practice. They also didn’t enforce a lot of rules on the studio audience (although we behaved); I suppose I could’ve brought in a better camera with a telephoto too! The next day, they posted the episode on CBC and I could check if we made it on TV. There were glimpses of us several times, but the above is probably the best shot when they panned the audience.
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