The scalloped ceiling of New York's Radio City Music Hall flashes red, blue and gold, changing with the shouted cues of the lighting director on the floor below. Around him, cables coil, speakers hiss and headsets crackle. Harried stagehands hustle by, production techs furiously tap notes into MacBooks and cameras swing and swoop on massive cranes. It's the organized chaos that comes with putting together a gigantic awards show — and, more importantly, making it all work.

It's five days before the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, and Radio City is a whirlwind of activity. There are an infinite number of parts and pieces and positions to rehearse and they all have to work in perfect unison come Sunday night, so you can understand why there is a professional level of tension in the house.

Of course, most of that tension is caused by the VMA stage — and not because it's malfunctioning, but because it's so incredibly massive. There are blinking video screens and racing LED lights overhead. On either side, the stage is flanked by a series of interlocking fire escapes — like you'd see in every apartment building in NYC — which jut out into the red-velvet Radio City seats (and seemingly dare any would-be Tim Commerfords out there to pull themselves right on up).

The stage itself extends into the seating area, too, in a series of footlight-studded catwalks that promise to bring the stars perilously close to the normal folks in the audience.

It's all pretty amazing, but it pales in comparison to the real showstopper, a positively gigantic (as in 90 feet tall, 130 feet wide) LED screen that serves as the backdrop. It's currently being tested, which means everyone in the hall is viewing the most epic color bars in history.

And then it's shut down, and Radio City goes dark for a minute — only to be relit by a hundred Mac screens scattered throughout the house. And the work picks back up again as if nothing happened at all. Business as usual ... only five days to go.

The 2009 MTV Video Music Awards will take place this Sunday, September 13, at 9 p.m. ET. Stay tuned all week long for news on additional performers and celebrity presenters.