Pinoy Idol

CEBU CITY, Philippines—The fourth stop in the search for GMA 7’s first “Pinoy Idol” took an 80-man production contingent to this Queen City of the South.

Host Raymond Gutierrez pointed out to Inquirer Entertainment that this Visayan island had produced “great singers,” among them Pilita Corrales, Dulce and Verni Varga.

Still, Perry Lansigan, executive producer, was “surprised” by the turnout. Long lines of starry-eyed aspirants gathered in SM Cebu on the first two days of the three-day tryouts which wrapped up Saturday last weekend.

Largest so far

“This is the largest crowd we’ve had so far,” Lansigan said. (Previous stops were Cagayan de Oro, Batangas and Iloilo.)

On Thursday, program manager Hazel Abonita estimated they would be seeing 1,400 to 1,500 contestants. “We have to extend pre-casting (screening) to accommodate everyone.”

Mercifully, Abonita noted, the “Idol” audition process had been fine-tuned by FremantleMedia, franchise holder of the world-famous reality show.

There’s now a little method in the madness.

Abonita explained: “Freemantle provided us with a computer software that was developed in Indonesia. With this program, all levels of the entire audition process are linked through the computers in each work station.”

“If a production staffer wanted to verify the background story of a specific contestant, all they have to do is check their laptops,” Abonita said.

Three phases

Before contestants can even stand in front of the three judges— Wyngard Tracy, Ogie Alcasid and Jolina Magdangal— for assessment, they have to go through phases: registration, pre-casting and results.

For each city-stop, the Kapuso network sends a team of at least 80 production people from Manila — equipped with 10 laptop computers and 8 cameras.

“The team is divided into five dockable units,” Abonita said.

“We have the same team in the different auditions so that we don’t have to retrain fresh recruits every time,” said Paolo Luciano, associate producer.

Constant motion

The cameras, especially four units placed in the final judging room, are constantly rolling.

“We want to make sure everything that happens is captured on tape,” said Magdangal.

That’s every note, every quip, every smirk, every gasp.

“If a segment producer notices that a certain candidate has an interesting story, a cameraman would follow him or her from pre-casting to final judgment,” Abonita said.

Ubiquitous sign

Unmistakable was the tarpaulin sign posted on the wall of the holding room at the audition venue: “If you don’t want to be seen on TV, leave the area.” In fact, everyone who registers for the tryouts signs a waiver allowing the show to air footage —in any way, shape or form.

The Fremantle software also prevents a rejected aspirant or a contestant from auditioning more than once in the same venue. On other shows, enterprising rejects have been known to change clothes and hairstyle, just so they can rejoin the cattle call.

Happy to oblige

But everyone in the winding queues at SM Cebu was only too happy to be seen on TV.

Random selections made by production staffers in the crowd yielded aspirants who belted out their audition songs, and then some, at the drop of a hat.

Source: Inquirer’s Method in the Madness

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Pinoy Idol. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.