Behind the Scenes of This Week in YouTube

This was one of the most difficult episodes to schedule. If it wasn't my schedule crimping the shoot day, it was Shira Lazar's nutty schedule. It was hard to figure out when the two of us would be in town at the same time to shoot. It went from an August to a September to an October shoot. The calendar gods finally aligned and we hit the Mahalo Studios in Santa Monica on October 22nd.....the same day that I left for a job in Miami. (I told you it was tough to schedule.) Actually, my work life looks tame compared to the woman with a million jobs, Shira Lazar. She is one of the hardest working, savviest, and nicest hosts in the industry. Shira and I have crossed paths a few times, but we had never officially been introduced. Everyone kept tell me how fun and kind she is. You know what? They were right.

Now, I cannot forget about Lon Harris. I met Lon at the GeekOut event in May of 2009. That event certainly brought a lot of interviews for The Web Files. We met Tay Zonday, who was our first guest EVER on the show along with Brett Register of The Crew, which became our 2nd episode. So, one event netted three interviews along the way, guess it speaks volumes for power of networking. I find Lon to be sweet and funny all at once. He is the veteran host of This Week in YouTube and it is his steady presence and writing talent that helps drive the viewership of the show.

We were able to check out a taping of an episode which happened to be their first shoot using an TelePrompter. As any host knows, this is always a welcome sight since it takes half of the time to shoot versus memorization. They banged out the script and then sat down with us for an interview. You can definitely see why the show works as Shira and Lon have an easy natural chemistry off screen which carries over on screen. Lon also gave away some strong trade secrets on how to get hits on the saturated YouTube site. He is a master at drawing them in, so make sure to watch the interview!

Off-screen, Shira was really excited that we had brought our makeup artist, Melissa Anchondo to set with us that day since Mahalo does not use an artist for TWIYT. If you like Shira's hair and makeup in the episode, tell Melissa, it is all of her artistry. Also, Mahalo has a chef on the premise. How cool is that? I find that to be a very Google-like office perk.

Finally, I love my dress from Roni B. worn in this episode. Roni even let me borrow the shoes since I didn't have a pair to match. Thanks, Roni! Makeup provided by e.l.f. Don't forget to check out the episode below! Thanks for watching.....

Notice anyone hanging out in the background of this photo? The best set dog ever....Indiana!