Last week I volunteered at the Stateside Theatre for the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival here in Austin, managing lines, taking tickets, answering questions from attendees, and keeping people away from the red carpets. I also got up close to many, many celebrities. Hello, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Susan Sarandon!
South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW, began in 1987 as a music festival and keeps growing every year, with parallel education, interactive, film & TV, and music events every March in Austin. Now the largest music festival in the world, over 350,000 people were expected this year.
I’ve been following SXSW for about 20 years and have always been jealous of those who have been able to afford it. When I was here in Austin last January and February, I kept hearing radio ads about volunteering and thought that might be fun someday. And when I decided to come back to Austin this year, I knew I had to look into it.
The online registration process was simple, but I was confused when asked to select a badge type: education, interactive, film & TV, or music. I knew those were categories of the conference but didn’t realize exactly what the point of earning a coveted badge would be. Turns out that if you volunteer for 40 hours, you receive a badge; volunteer 56 hours and you get a platinum badge.
Once I started volunteering, I quickly realized what all the badges meant and provided. SXSW is known for lines—standing in line for a film premiere, conference session, music venue, or even restaurants and pop-up booths. For the film and TV premieres, there are separate lines for express, primary, secondary, day-of tickets, and will-call. Since I had a film & TV badge, it meant I got primary access to all film & TV events and secondary access to everything else. Same for other types of badges. A platinum badge gets you primary access to everything. Sometimes—after standing in line for hours—the theater or venue fills up and not everyone gets in.
You select a crew to be on, and I wanted to see some celebrities, so I hoped to be at one of the big theaters. After doing online research, I knew the Paramount Theatre downtown was where the big premieres happened. There wasn’t an option for that crew (my guess is it fills up right away with returning volunteers), so I selected Stateside Theatre which is literally next door—in the same building—as the Paramount.
Volunteering at Stateside ended up being amazing because when we had downtime is usually when “talent” would arrive to walk the Paramount red carpet. Our crew was big—sometimes over 20 volunteers during a shift—and about half of us were inside taking tickets and helping people find their way, and the other half would be standing outside, basically forming a human barricade to block the closed-off street from people stumbling into the red carpet and stanchion area. This allowed us lots of time to people- and celebrity-watch!
I really enjoyed working outside because I got to meet so many awesome fellow volunteers and talk to festival attendees, locals, and tourists who didn’t realize the biggest event of the year was happening during their visit.
We were told during volunteer training, and constantly throughout our shifts, that taking photos was not allowed during volunteering. We understood why—we had a job to do and needed to be alert and not looking at our phones—but it meant we didn’t get to take photos of celebs!
Luckily on the Tuesday afternoon of The Fall Guy premiere, my team got let out 45 minutes early, and we all rushed outside because we knew talent would be arriving momentarily. A few minutes later, Hannah Waddingham (Rebecca from the amazing Ted Lasso) arrived—signing autographs and taking selfies. Not long after, two motorcycles raced down the closed-off street, doing daredevil-type stunts. Then an old hotrod pickup truck revved its engine, coming down the street. The crowd went wild, and I quickly realized Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt—the film’s leads—were sitting in the bed of the truck. What a red-carpet entrance!
In addition to those big stars, I also saw Jake Gyllenhaal, Lucy Lawless, Susan Sarandon, Pamela Adlon, Mary-Louise Parker, Post Malone, Cheech Marin, Judd Apatow, Stormy Daniels, and others that I’m now forgetting (sorry, famous people!).
By the end of my shifts, I was usually so exhausted from standing for 8 hours—often on street concrete—that I didn’t actually attend any other SXSW premieres, sessions, or events. I feel kind of stupid about it, but to be honest, just being part of the experience—and seeing all those stars on the red carpet—was totally worth it.
Volunteering at SXSW: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ Would recommend!
Here’s a photo gallery of my favorites from volunteering at SXSW. Enjoy!
