How To Fail Your Survivor Audition

True Story.

I auditioned for Season 3 of Survivor without ever seeing a single episode of the show.

I posted the video at the bottom of this story for you to enjoy the spectacle and get a laugh at my effort.

I originally had heard talk about Survivor and all my friends loved the show. So when another friend of mine who was honing his video skills suggested I apply to survivor, I said “Sure, why not”.

There was no script and I had no idea of what I was going to say. I just ad libbed for about 45 minutes and he took the tape and chopped it up into a 3 minute presentation.

I am eternally grateful for him putting in the effort and time, especially as the deadline was 3 days away from our first night of filming. The audition tape being a stinker was certainly not because of any quality issues. It was a stinker because of my content and our complete lack of understanding on how to make a proper audition video.

The audition was composed of two parts. A questionnaire to be printed and included with a 3 minute audition tape of why you think you should be on Survivor.

If you find yourself in a position to audition and a videotape is how you are presenting yourself, please follow the tips listed below if you would like to fail.

How To Fail

1. Use the first 10 seconds of your tape with a black screen as music fades in. The reason you would do this is because clearly the people screening the audition tape would like to watch the full 3 minutes of the entire video tape before deciding to move you to a more selective round of processing.
2. Use the next 56 seconds to showcase cool special effects and lose 1/3 of your audition time not showcasing yourself. This is not a knock on the video my friend put together, he did an excellent job in a 2 day turnaround to get this completed. I absolutely loved what he did. It’s just that neither of us knew that they made their decisions in their first few seconds about whether to move you forward.
3. Have no clear purpose or plan for showcasing yourself as a valuable asset to the show you are auditioning for. I rambled, said things I thought were funny. My friend kept shooting. I changed clothes, came up with another ad lib and so on. There was nothing endearing about this nor gave any of them a reason to like me.
4. In a questionnaire, reference a porn star as the one thing you would be allowed to bring on a deserted isle. Do I need to even say another thing about that?

My friends final product was crisp, and his edited product was much better and funnier than my raw footage. The video below is a copy of a copy of an 18 year old VHS tape. It does not do justice to my friends work.

There is a part where I talk about being anatomically correct. It was a lead in to being able to sell merchandising to make a doll in my image. The last part is edited out, so it looks like one of my selling points was that I personally was anatomically correct. Just in case you doubted after seeing me in a sweatshirt and shorts.

He put cricket noises at the end of my Shakespeare soliloquy. You don’t get to hear a single word of my acting debut much to the watchers delight. But he did keep the end where I look to the camera. This became my favorite part of the video.

Funny enough, my girlfriend saw this tape before she ever met me and credits this as the beginning of her overwhelming crush on me. You also may not realize that using the word “overwhelming” in the previous sentence was my choice of words, not hers.

Without further ado, here is the full audition tape in all its 2:32 seconds of glory. Do not follow my tips. I repeat, do not follow my tips.