You're seeing it here first.
The audition process of the 7th season of Idols on M-Net has begun, and today I spent a few hours behind the scenes of this big production done by Nevermachine for the pay broadcaster. I want to give you a special glimpse behind the scenes of this season of Idols that kicked off on Saturday at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) when hundreds of hopefuls showed up, hoping to make it through the first round.
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One of the massive conference rooms in the Cape Town Convention Centre (CTICC) is used as the judges' audition area that you can see here. The venue is vast and only one corner is used. Contestants enter and exit on the left in between the large blue banner and the four light blue plasma TV screens. From the angle of the photo it doesn't look like a lot of space, but the blue banners are actually curved and there a whole door size opening there. (You can see the door and the bigger space on the photo above just behind the sound boom.)
In between takes of contestant auditions the make-up artist runs to reapply some powder on Unathi Msengana's face while the lapel mic batteries are also checked.
For more behind the scenes photos of the production at the start of the audition process in Cape Town of the 7th season of Idols, click on READ MORE below.
Outside (it's still ''inside'' the convention centre) the Idols judges' audition room is another monitor so that the production crew ''outside'' can keep track of what is happening outside. Angry contestant not going through? The producers outside can tell ProVerb what to ask since they saw and heard what's been happening on the inside. In once instance a contestant is send back inside to ''confront'' the judges. Contestants waiting for their brief moment in the limelight also gets interviewed by Idols presenter ProVerb before they enter.
There they sit: the Idols judges - Gareth Cliff, Unathi Msengana, Danny K and Randall Abrahams. Off screen to the right (right here in fron on this photo sit production crew. The headphones is on the head of Gavin Wratten, the executive producer of Idols who's very hands on. He often gives the judges instructions and information himself. He hastens them with hand signals when they dilly-dally (they so love to talk) and he can keep an eye on all of the available cameras and camera angles.
Do you want to grow up and one day be a sound man (or woman) on a TV production? Well, start practising those biceps and triceps now. Can you see the boom operator in this photo to the back at the right? Spare a thought for this production person. Boom are made light but even the lightest one start to feel heavy once you've lifted your arms above your shoulders for just a few seconds.
Idols makes good sound a specifically difficult production challenge. On a ''normal'' TV show you deal with actors who (hopefully) project their voices. They say their lines on cue. They enunciate and emphasize and talk loudly and clearly. On Idols you deal with young people. They're stressed. They're tense and scared. There's adrenalin, so good and bad voices falter. They often talk very softly. It's unscripted, so if you miss something contestants say, it's lost. There's no do-overs. Now imagine having to hold the sound boom close enough to try and capture their singing and talking, but to not get that sound boom in the camera shot. You can agree that boom operators deserve medals (and upper arm massages).
After Cape Town the national audition process for Idols will be moving on to Polokwane (Peter Mokaba Stadium, 26 February), Durban (Moses Mabhida Stadium, 5 March), Soweto (Dobsonville Stadium, 26 March) and Johannesburg (Montecasino, 2 April).