At the end of my last night shooting a rather grueling project for the French Open, which had built a regulation clay tennis court and exhibition in the middle of one of the world’s largest and poshest open-air malls (The Place), I was looking forward to a little R&R. Instead, as I gathered up my equipment and prepared to head home, I got a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize. The young girl on the other end asked if I wanted to go to Vegas.
YEEHAW! You betcha! But wait… what’s the catch? Why am I going to Vegas with you young lady that I don’t even know? Is this some sort of gimmick? A Ponzi scheme? A kidnapping?! She went on to explain that she was the general manager of a Chinese singing competition called ‘Rock the Web’. They were in the middle of their first season, and the 12 semifinalists were headed to Las Vegas for a training camp with some very distinguished voice coaches and dance instructors. And to sweeten the pot, we’d be living in a massive mansion in Vegas. YEEHAW! You betcha!!
But there actually were two catches. The first is that they weren’t asking me to go as their cameraman. They needed an editor. The Chinese editor they had lined up months before got his US visa rejected, and now they needed somebody last minute who could get into the US (and I had been recommended by a company for which I had recently edited some big corporate projects). And that led into the other catch. The R&R I so desperately longed for would have to be postponed. It was Wednesday night, and we would be flying out for Vegas on Friday morning. DOH!
As a Vegas virgin, longing for my first taste of the glitz and glamor that Hollywood had been peddling to me since I was a kid, I naturally said yes. And packed my bags. Frantically. Friday morning came, and I met everyone – for the first time – at the airport. There were actually more staff and crew members than contestants, as three semifinalists had been rejected visas to the US, and another six were still waiting to receive theirs. So there are only three contestants in our motley group, which consisted of the general manager, a few of her underlings, two CETV (China Education Channel) people, and a French cameraman I had seen several times around Beijing but had never actually spoken to.
Since I was to be locked up in a room editing most of the two weeks we were to spend in Vegas, I hadn’t brought much more with me than several changes of clothes, a swimsuit (for the jacuzzi and pool that was attached to our mansion!), and my camera. And I’m very glad I brought that last item, because in the end it liberated me from the confines of my makeshift editing suite and allowed me to go out occasionally with the contestants as the group photographer. The team had brought someone from the office with a Nikon DLSR, but he wasn’t an experienced photographer, and at the end of the first day when they saw the pictures I had captured, they asked me to add photographer to my official duties. In the end, I spent as much time shooting and editing photos as I did editing the video that I was originally brought along to do.
The mansion we stayed in was indeed VERY posh, and in true Vegas style it was completely over the top. A number of celebrities stay there regularly, including Drew Barrymore who had just left a week before we arrived. In addition to the maze of bedrooms with their myriad of decorative flourishes, an addition to the back of the house held a bowling alley and disco with full bar. Evidently they rented out this section of the house often to bachelor parties who didn’t necessarily need the whole house. Oh yes, and as I mentioned above, there was the lovely swimming pool and jacuzzi pair that served as the centerpiece for the backyard (and a number of our little evening parties). Needless to say, we all had a very good time staying in the lap of luxury for those two weeks.
Despite the house providing more than enough entertainment for the twenty or so of us (six more contestants and several staff members flew in a few days after our first group arrived), we did manage to venture out into the casinos and clubs to see what all the talk was about. Sadly enough a few of the contestants weren’t 21 yet, but we still found ample entertainment for all to enjoy. We even spent one morning dancing our way down The Strip with the two dance instructors from the training camp in the lead. And several of us attended a party of a couple interested in sponsoring our competition, where we enjoyed a view of Vegas from above.
I can’t say that Vegas itself was everything that I had hoped it would be, but I will admit that I had a hell of a great time hanging out with my new Rock the Web friends all the same. Also I didn’t lose any money on the Blackjack tables or slot machines (like I did on my first trip to Lake Charles), but that’s probably because I never had any time to try! As we boarded the plane to head back to Beijing, I had the tune of Elvis’s famous song running through my head, and as we took off from the tarmac I was almost tempted to yell out “Viva Las Vegas!”
