Kentridge High School senior Christian Ie this week got to experience a life most people only see on television. He was a contestant on this year’s “Jeopardy!” Teen Tournament.
“Because you’re in L.A., you’re in Hollywood – for a few days it seems like you’re living the life of a star,” Ie said.
He stayed at the Hilton Universal City Hotel, took in the sights and was shuttled to and from the Sony Pictures Television lot in Culver City, Calif., for the taping of the show Dec. 6-7. The shows won’t air until February 17 – March 12.
Ie is one of 15 students that made it into the Teen Tournament – and one of 13,000 who registered to take the online test for the show. It all started when he took the test of 50 questions with 7 to 15 seconds to answer each question. He scored well enough to get a call to audition for the show in Los Angeles in August, where he took another knowledge test and did a personality interview. He didn’t hear back from the show until November, when he got a surprise visit from a KOMO 4 crew, his parents, friends and school administrators who gathered in his school library to break the news to him.
So what was it like to tape the show?
“Number one, the set looks a lot smaller in real life than it does on TV,” Ie said. “I’m pretty sure it proves that TV adage though that TV makes everything look bigger.”
Ie said you could apply the same wisdom to Alex Trebek, the show’s host who was shorter in real life than he appears on television but still pretty tall and very nice.
All the contestant’s height they tried to even out behind the scenes with podiums of different heights and the laugh track is enhanced to sound like several hundred people when in reality only about 100 people were in the audience, Ie said.
To prepare for the game, he read a lot instead of straight memorizing information. He was already comfortable with geography and history, having competed in geography competitions in the past. He checked out a volume on the 500 greatest writers and studied their profiles and what movements they belong to, to fill in his gaps on literature.
“When we were actually playing the game and the camera was rolling, the questions really weren’t that hard,” Ie said. “I bet that the majority of students my age could have answered maybe even half them.”
The trick was how fast a contestant could buzz in to answer. After a clue was read, contestants had to wait for the game board to light up, if they buzzed in too early they were locked out of the competition for a quarter of a second, Ie said.
“You could know everything on that game board, you can know every clue, but if you’re not fast enough, you won’t get to show your knowledge,” he said.
There was no animosity between contestants; in fact Ie said meeting the others was one of the really special parts of the experience. They bonded after the taping over the two days at the hotel and while waiting in L.A.’s rush-hour traffic on the shuttle bus. He’s still in touch with them and hopes to see them again in the future.
“It was an unforgettable experience; I would strongly recommend that any student try out for the “Jeopardy!” Teen Tournament,” he said.
Ie was not allowed to say how far he got in the competition, but he did walk away with some money. The grand prize winner received $75,000; second place got $50,000; third was $25,000, semifinalist received $10,000 and those eliminated in the first round got $5,000.
