Video leads to talk show appearance
For The Madera Tribune From left, George Giron, Paulina Ramirez and Steve Harvey discuss a video Ramirez made that led to her appearance on The Steve Harvey talk show.
Little did Paulina Ramirez know that her simple missing-boyfriend video would turn viral and lead to an appearance on The Steve Harvey talk show.
About a week before Christmas last year, Ramirez was talking with her boyfriend of three years, George Giron. The two made plans to get chicken and waffles at Black Bear Diner and hang out after.
“We hadn’t seen each other for a few days so we made plans to go out to eat after he got off work,” Ramirez said. “Then, he ended up falling asleep.”
What followed led to video that went viral and had more than three million views.
Ramirez decided to make a video about her “missing” boyfriend. The video, made to look like a movie trailer, was made on her iPhone, using the iMovie app.
What happened next, Ramirez never thought would have happened.
“It was supposed to be a joke between my boyfriend and I,” she said. “I never planned on even showing the video. After he thought it was funny, I realized it was funny so I posted it on Twitter. It just exploded and I just landed on the show. It worked out well.”
Ramirez, who is a Madera South graduate attending Fresno State, was hungry for chicken and waffles so she made the video.
“He fell asleep and I made the video,” she said. “It took about 30 minutes to make and posted it that night. He actually woke up an hour later. I showed it to him right after.”
After the video went viral, Ramirez was contacted by The Steve Harvey Show.
“They contacted us a few days of the video going viral,” she said. “It was one of his associate producers. She found the video on Instagram and messaged me. They had to do their pitches to their bosses. I didn’t get the confirmation we were going on the show until Jan. 10. I was really skeptical. I didn’t believe it at first. We had Facetime calls to prove they were legit.”
Ramirez and Giron were flown down to Los Angeles on Jan. 14, shot the show on Jan. 15 and the show appeared Jan. 24.
“The show was really neat,” she said. “Everything is so fast paced. We were really nervous. We were just taking everything in. Everyone was super helpful. They calmed our nerves and told us what was going to happen so we could be prepared. They dressed us up and everything.”
In order to calm their nerves, a producer told Giron and Ramirez some of the questions Harvey was going to ask so they could prepare. Everything went smoothly from there with Harvey.
“When you go up there, he’s really friendly and you forget you’re being filmed,” she said. “We only got to meet him on the show. We didn’t get to talk to him after because we had to hurry to catch our flight. He offered for me to make him a video and he would pay $1,000 and he kept up on his promise.”
Because of the success of the video, Ramirez received job offers for more films.
“I got offers from people to do promo videos for their businesses, wedding videos and I even got people that wanted me to do the same video for their boyfriends and girlfriends,” she said. “I have no background in editing. I didn’t want to take people’s money, for them to think I’m professional.”
After she appeared on the show, Ramirez was getting tagged all over social media.
“A lot of people were tagging me,” she said. “It was on YouTube and Facebook. It’s been super cool. It’s also brought more attention to the original video so it’s happening all over again. I never expected all of this.”
