Grease Live was an unquestionable television success, with millions of people tuning in to watch (and sometimes angrily tweet about) Aaron Tveit, Julianne Hough, and Carly Rae Jepsen sing through all the catchy numbers you’ve heard your entire life (Anna Kendrick even got turned on). But besides the jaw-dropping guest performances, the new music, and the fact that Vanessa Hudgens went on and gave the performance of her life only hours after her father died, there was something else going on that was just as impressive. We just didn’t get to see it because it was going on in the control room.
In the video above, you can watch Carrie Havel, the associate director, counting out the beats and measures between different camera shots and then calling out the shots themselves while the show runs (it’s presented in a convenient split-screen format). She sounds a lot like an auctioneer doing it (please, please, someone autotune her like they did this guy) and it’s impressive to think how much stamina she had to have to do it during the entire broadcast, especially since margin for error is so tiny in a live show. It’s a nice reminder that while some of the biggest stars of the show are on stage, others are behind the scenes, invisibly making all the magic happen.
