Uncool Cooking Audition - The Lost Tapes

I've sent in my audition video for Next Food Network Star and fully expect to never hear anything back... ever. Technically, I'm still in the running but am having my doubts.

As part of the process, we are to send in a 3-minute audition tape to give the judges a look at our on-camera skills and our personality. The rules were pretty clear: no music, no fancy editing, no tricks. They basically want the camera to stay on you the whole time for this demo. If this were a real piece, I would have wanted cut-a-ways, etc., but that is not what they wanted. There is no music and it is pretty dry. Plus, I would have mic'd myself if this were real but didn't want it to look 'too' professional (they didn't want professional).

My first demo was really, really long and I tried to edit it down to three minutes without trickery but it looked a little choppy to me. I finally said the heck with it, re-set up the camera and shot another demo using a simpler recipe that I could finish in three minutes. I rehearsed, I had a stop watch on the counter and practiced a couple of times. This was the second or third take.

I finally decided to send in the first video (even though it was a little long) because I thought it showed my personality much better, it was a little clearer about my food knowledge, and I had better eye contact with the camera. For this second one, I was so concerned about the three minutes that I'm looking down the whole time. Plus the food I made was pretty gross.

Once my rejection from Food Network becomes official, I'll post the other video.