Still Looking for Top Engineer Contestants

I was asked to pass this along…

The Discovery Channel is looking for engineers for a test run of an upcoming show called Top Engineer.

http://pilgrimstudios.com/casting/topengineer/
http://dsc.discovery.com/show-news/seeking-americas-top-inventors-machinists-and-engineers-to-compete-for-a-huge-grand-prize.html

Before shooting the real show with the real contestants, there will be a test shoot of teams tackling the engineering challenges to see how long each challenge takes, how much $ is required, what sort of tools & equipment are needed, how much space is required, how it all looks on TV, etc.

At this time, the Discovery Channel may not have enough people to draw on from those who applied for the show & weren’t accepted, so they might want to add some more people to the test teams. This effort is still gelling, hence the vagueness.

The test taping of 8 challenges will be from 7/23/12 to 8/11/12, about 3 days per challenge. They plan on working Mon-Sat, 12-hour days, & they will pay $300/day. They probably don’t want the same people for the whole shebang, so they’ll probably swap people in & out over that time period. Much of the work will be here at WET, next to the Burbank airport, but some challenges will be executed elsewhere, at some bigger, safer, more remote locales, probably not more than 2 hours away from here(?)

If you’re interested, write to [email protected] & let me know your available dates and add a quick biography/skillset list/resume.

Feel free to pass this along to anybody else who may be interested.

Bonus if you live in the Los Angeles area

BOB

BUMP…

One of our mentors (also a regional judge) works at WET, and their shop is one of the most awesome places I’ve ever been to. It’s worth doing this just for the chance to visit.

Passing on…


Discovery channel is “all engineered up”.

Please post to the FIRST forum that the window of opportunity has shut.

Thanks,
-J


I heard about this show on CD, applied, and after several rounds of cuts, eventually made it onto the show. I had a blast during most of 2 months of filming last winter, and the show is premiering tonight under the new name The Big Brain Theory: Pure Genius at 10|9c on Discovery.

It’s all about building things with limited money and Very Limited time, which is something that FIRST helped prepare me for (and should feel a bit familiar to other FIRST’ers).

Here’s 2 promotional videos:


Cool.
Are you on tonight’s episode?

Yes. All 10 contestants are in all 8 episodes. Actually, when eliminated from contention for the grand prize, contestants are not sent home. This way we can have teams of 5 for each challenge. It would have been kind of anticlimactic if we got to the end and the last two people had to work by themselves.

Wow, I’m really disappointed in this promotional video. All the explosions look cool, but the drama and massive amount of swearing make the show look really lame. Why can’t it be about engineering? There are way too many reality shows about people who solve problems in a childish manner. If somebody acted like that at my work they’d be fired. Unless the show is different from this promotion, I wouldn’t recommend it to our best and brightest. They are better than this.

I know an alumni from my team is also a contestant on the show. Are many of the other eight contestants involved with FIRST? I think this may be the sort of makeitloud event that we’re looking for in the culture.

I watched the show last night. Overall, pretty good. I think it would have been beneficial to have given the team a little extra time. It reminded me a lot of “Junkyard Wars” meets Top XXX (shot, chef, model…) minus the junkyard. I was a big fan of Junkyard Wars, and my hope is that this fills the gap that was left when that show went off the air.


What are folks thoughts of having discussions about teh specifics and engineering of the shows. I would love to “arm-chair” quarterback last nights episode. Whould we start a seperate thread in Chit-Chat? Keep it in this thread, or should we kick it over to some sort of Big Brain Theory forum?

Yes, at least two others are. Gui Cavalcanti and Amy McDow Elliot are both FIRST alums. Amy is also an alum of the NASA Robotics Academy.

-dave

.

The ‘NASA Mohawk Dude’ is a guest judge on tonight’s episode (Seek and Destroy), who I believe Dave said was involved with FIRST during his speech at Championships this year. That means that at least 4 of the people on the show tonight are or have been involved with FIRST :smiley: