Check inside for Dani’s (Pandora147) recap from the Sydney premiere of “17 Again”.

On Wednesday, March 11 2009 I was in attendance as a member of the shrieking red carpet crew of the 17 Again premiere in Sydney. Making the decision to go was actually really stressful in itself. I don’t live in Sydney, I had to fly down for the event. I had to miss an important uni class. There were all these obstacles and all of the logic in the universe said I wasn’t meant to go but there was this overriding sensation of just feeling like I had to go or I’d regret not going.

Last year I attended the High School Musical 3 Premiere in Sydney with Ellie, Kylie and Karen; and on the day we also wound up hanging with Holden (who Kylie knows from LiveJournal, a.k.a. Less Than Perfect at Fan Forum) and her friend Kat (blackgreywhite from Fan Forum). When I was umming and ahhing about wanting to go down again for the 17 Again premiere, I’d put out there that one of my ‘cons’ was that no one else I knew was going and then the cat was let out of the bag that Holds and Kat were planning to be there and Holden generously offered for me to not be a complete loner and said I can hang with them, haha. And Kat’s friend Karen (who, is not the same Karen who I went to the HSM3 premiere with, just to make our lives complicated and confusing hehe) was also coming along so we’d have a nice little cosy group. So yes… I booked. Screw the real world. Sydney, here I come!

The Lead Up

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

4:10am: I woke up. It was dark. Human beings should not wake up whilst it is still dark. I cursed Zac for being so freaking amazing that I actually was doing this. Seriously, I hope the guy appreciates what people do for him, haha.

6:10am: My flight from the Gold Coast to Sydney took off.

8:35am: I landed in Sydney – noting that the 8:35 is Sydney time, the Gold Coast is an hour behind Sydney at the moment due to New South Wales having Daylight Savings

10:30am: I’d gotten a train from the airport to the city, been to my hostel, left my luggage in storage, gotten a bus to somewhere near the venue, got off a stop too late and miraculously found my way blind (not really having any idea where I was going, the venue was very confusing for people who’ve never been there) and then met up with Holden, Kat and Karen. They’d been there for a couple of hours already.

At this point, the barricades were still being set up, the girls had been watching from a table a few metres away. There were a few other small groups of people around waiting for the premiere, but pretty much, we were looking at an awesome chance at getting a good location.

12:30pm– We made our move. Everyone had been just sitting back watching as they set up – well, watching as they stood around doing nothing and occasionally did some work. These roadies are serially lazy. They were experimenting and moving things around and by now they had put black sheets over the metal barricades, indicating the lay out was fairly permanent. This decision was fairly integral – it wasn’t just one straight carpet, there was an area which jutted out, like a section that was wider, which you could assume that he was going to go around to the people standing around it but then once he’d moved past there, you wouldn’t be able to see anything. The red carpet was short, really short, and so we were bargaining that he would make the effort to try to make his way along just about everyone, even with zig zagging.

We determined here and now that our priority was getting a great view – you can’t control getting an autograph, but you can control your vantage point. From our locale along the main stretch, we would be able to see him as he went along doing all of his interviews, we were right across from all the media outlets, so if nothing else we’d be looking at him for a long time.

At this point there were maybe… 15, 20 people? Hardly any at all. It was spitting/drizzling with rain on and off and the roadie guys had like, plastic bags over the speakers they’d set up. They then began to make all this feedback noise and there was all this sound check stuff going on and they got into arguments about whether they should or should not have taped the bags on. These guys do this professionally – it was pretty much the same people as at the HSM3 Sydney premiere and Kat and Holds said they were also in Melbourne. Hard to believe though, with the inefficiency of how they were operating.

2:30pm: These two crazy girls arrived and joined our little area. They told us that one of their sisters was coming in a wedding dress later which we didn’t believe but were proved wrong later on. One of the girls also had a Zac Efron spiral notebook (well, Troy Bolton… I own stationery from the same set of photos, it’s HSM2 promo shots) and was talking about how once she dropped it on the ground and she snatched it up and hugged it and I quote “I gave it the gift of my breasts.”

It was at about this time I realised I was sunburnt. So, I spent money I don’t have, skipped a uni class and my dad’s birthday, flew from the Gold Coast, queued up all day, and got sunburnt – all for Zac.

3:00pm: I think it was about this point when I went to use the bathroom and bought a muffin at Gloria Jeans. When I went into the cinema one of the guys working at the cinema came up to me and asked me if I knew where Laura was. I was dressed in like, a grey skirt and my top was fairly nice so I guess that  maybe to him, I looked a bit ‘professional’ and he seemed to think I was involved.  I just said ‘sorry no’ and then realised that I could have somehow used this to my advantage… I don’t know how. Told him that Laura wants me to go check something in the cinema and hid in there, lol.

3:40pm: SO BORED at this point. The crazy girls have befriended other girls and pretty much not talking to us anymore. We were at the point of boredom where we couldn’t be bothered to do anything, that’s how bored we were. It also wasn’t getting that busy yet – there were a few people trickling in but in contrast to the HSM3 premiere, we were kinda worried that Zac was gonna get out of his limo and say ‘is this it?’

4:15pm: Wedding dress girl arrived at the same time as a bunch of school girls seemed to arrive, like high school age. It still wasn’t crazy but the people that were there were pretty hyper.

4:25pm: They were vacuuming the carpet, putting the media signs down – the weather had cleared up which was awesome.

4:40pm: Lazy workers were kicking around a ball nearby. Wedding dress girl and friends disappeared to a new better location. Adios.

People were starting to stand, in the section across from us they were nearly all standing and the back few rows (I guess there were maybe 3 – 4 rows of people sitting, which condenses into like, 2 – 3 rows of people standing) were standing and wanting to inch forward. There were issues with like, this chick with crutches literally just moving past all the people sitting down and standing up between where I was sitting and the girl next to me was sitting – and the girls who had been sitting behind us for a while were like, um excuse me? And the girl with crutches made this big deal about moving aside. Eventually everyone was standing and there was us four and a couple of school girls we’d been talking to behind us that had remained sitting, and it was a bit claustrophobic – barrier behind us, people looming over us, and so we stood around maybe 5:15.

From around here, time has no meaning to me. The Hot 30 radio people were pre-recording a show and doing crowd warm ups – giving away 17 Again posters (mine is ridiculously crinkled, I’ll buy a full size one when they’re available anyway) and giving away t-shirts and getting people to shriek and scream by holding up signs and getting people to bark and act like monkeys…

The Premiere

The competition winners began to arrive – there were SO MANY of them! I don’t know where all these competitions are advertised, I’ve only seen a handful. Are they advertised internally within schools in the area or something? We were judging their fashion choices (rubber thongs – read flip flops – are the devil. It’s a premiere! I don’t care if this is Australia. YOU DON’T WEAR RUBBER FLIP FLOPS!)

A limo pulled up and people began to shriek. It wasn’t him. But it was that brief window into realising just what it was going to be like. There may not have been as many people as the HSM3 premiere but the people who were here were dedicated. This event wasn’t advertised as blatantly, the location is out of the way, and since it’s the first of a string of premieres, generally people who aren’t into the online pandemonium may not really be aware of what is going on with it all.

There were these two ‘hot girls’ as we dubbed them who were getting all this attention from the male media and we had no idea who they were, and we still don’t. One of them was wearing like a sparkly dress and everything. And then another hot girl arrived who received even more attention – we believe it was the current Miss Australia. I don’t know her name. Her dress was pretty though. And then the sparkly girl and sparkly girls friend came back and sorta interviewed next to Miss Australia so maybe they were also contestants or something. –shrug-

Okay.

Then Zac arrived.

Now – I wasn’t prepared for this. I was expecting a few more B/C/even D grade celebrities. For example, there was rumour that the current So You Think You Can Dance contestants would be there. And so when a limo pulled up and the shrieks began – I was sorta jolted, it was like ‘Huh? What?’ and I looked up and I peered and I looked and I looked and I looked…

And there he was.

(*Note – at this point, there were still competition winners arriving. Even after Zac. They were being ushered along to keep walking and between Zac’s people and security and the competition winners, it was like trying to find a needle in a hay stack. I’d had maybe two, three glimpses, enough to confirm that he was actually there and it wasn’t just people shrieking at nothing. The security appeared and were standing right in front of each of the sections of barrier – of course blocking photo opportunities. Between the blonde woman, security guards, competition winners and the girl behind me shoving her poster in my face – I’m lucky that I saw Zac at all.)

He did a few of the interviews at the beginning of the carpet, this was the point where I had no hope of getting a really great photo but I was like, okay, phone out, tell Audrey what he’s wearing. I thought to myself that I could text and tell her that he’s wearing black and I could imagine a response like ‘black what?!?! A black bathrobe? Black shorts? A black beanie?’ and as you can tell if you read Audrey’s direct typing out of my text I was a bit shaky, deciding upon ‘Suit. Slicked hair. Heaps of ppl no carpet so hard to get photo.’ But I persevered – and at least I got one semi exclusive blurry pic on my cell to hold you over til there was something better out there!

As predicted he came over to the weird jutting out bit – we couldn’t see him at this point but he was in there for a while, so I’m assuming he got to a lot of the people in there. He went from the jutted bit, and then to the main straight where we were in. He moved his way along, and Karen got his autograph – and then he crossed over to the media side of the carpet.

So. Freaking. Close.

I was so calm and focused. I didn’t shriek while he was there. I only took one photo while he was that close. I just… basked in his being so near us.

Click here to read Dani’s full premiere recap (Users must register at the forum to comment)

Visit the ZacE Gallery to view 15+ images

17 Again opens in Australia April 9th, 2009

Soure: All photos taken by Dani

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