Students celebrate 'Extreme Makeover' success

March 2, 2010

Note: This feature story appeared in InsideUF’s biweekly print edition on March 2, 2010. The print edition is a paid insert that appears as the entire page-three of the Independent Florida Alligator.

It was 8 p.m. on a Sunday and Ryan McGinn and Aaron Wilbur were sitting three rows back from the large screen amid 150 other people. They ate catered hors d’oeuvres and wore their blue “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” T-shirts once more.

The two friends, students at the University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning, previously volunteered their time as production assistants for “Extreme Makeover” during its Gainesville shoot in December.

Their job was to make sure everything ran smoothly. They moved furniture, unpacked trailers and dealt with catering — all while wearing headsets that Wilbur professed were “just like the FBI.”

On Feb. 21, they donned their blue shirts for the viewing party at the Gainesville Woman’s Club, to see the final product of their toils. They watched both a “behind-the-scenes” video and the main TV show.

McGinn, a master’s student studying architecture, and Wilburn, a senior in landscape architecture, said that the episode did a good job of portraying what happened on set.

“I think they really trimmed the fat,” McGinn said. “But you’re not going to want to sit through every phase of construction. They touched on all the highlights.”

Christopher Silver, dean of the College of Design, Construction and Planning, said the “Extreme Makeover” experience was “just another example of our students contributing to the community as they hone their skills in shaping the built environment.”

Attending the viewing party and seeing the people they had worked with, and of course watching the episode, was a bit of a “last hurrah” for the students.

“It was the last step in the entire process,” Wilbur said. “It was fun to see that, but it was also the end of the entire build. It had been over for a little while but it almost didn’t feel done because it (the show) hadn’t aired yet.”

McGinn added, “It was fun to be there, and fun being with the family to see their reactions to the show.”