~CHICAGO IDOL AUDITIONS~
Helloooo sweet benches!
As some of you know my sister and I auditioned for Idol today in Chicago. Unfortunately, neither of us are the next American Idol! But it was fun nonetheless and kind of interesting to see how the "system" works.
I said I would make a post with details of ~the audition journey~ but it is HIDEOUSLY LONG so please skip anything you find painfully boring.
Registration
We registered on Saturday. Registration goes on for two days before auditions but it's pretty important to get there early the first day, since you get assigned a seat which determines your audition. We got there at 7 am and ended up about in the middle of the pack. There were already people waiting outside the United Center at 11 pm the night before!
We met some really cool people waiting outside on Monday, which made the time pass much faster today! But also, waiting in line for registration was where I noticed a lot of things I hadn't before. There were people already being filmed and interviewed. Some of these people were "attention-getting" i.e. bright hair, eccentric outfits, or just had a confidence about them. Some of them were weird. Like there was this one girl in an Amish outfit who clearly was not Amish, because she had painted toenails and flip flops and a lot of makeup. Anyway, the people who the producers decided were interesting enough were "flagged" by way of "green stickers."
(Jamar was also flagged with a green sticker. I'm not sure how exactly the repeats get in touch with producers but it seems like they do. The M.C. even announced that he was there to us. The friend he was with also had a green sticker and got through as well. This tall white-blonde girl with a lotttt of makeup and a dress which I can only describe as polyester lingerie was standing near us in line, got interviewed a lot, and ended up green-stickered and went through. Not sure if she is a repeat or not.)
Morning of Audition
As far as the actual audition day, they make you get there at 5 am for no reason at all, other than the fact that they want you to be exhausted and want lots of time to film you being exhausted. It was raining all morning so that was fun. This adorable boy sitting next to us named Chris was playing the guitar and the producers grabbed him and had him play the guitar chords to our group song ("Hot and Cold"... yeah...) while some people sang it all animated-like for the cameras. We dubbed him the Pacific-Islander Kris Allen, since his name was Chris and he was cute as a button and played the guitar and wore plaid.
Once you're inside, at about 8 am, they spend and hour+ with you going over the group song and making you stand and clap and sing again and again and MY GOD it's ridiculous how many of these people auditioning don't understand that we CLAP ON 1 and 3. But anyway. Normally at this point Ryan Seacrest would come out and talk to us for a bit and film his "We're in Chicago and THIS........ is American Idol," but HE WASN'T THERE TODAY. WTF. hello_eunuch, i was so excited to tell you all about him too :(.
Tryouts
Once they start moving people down to audition, they take a section at a time, and assign groups of four to one of 12 tables. Each table has (or is supposed to have...) 2 producers. Each group of four takes a turn. You each step forward, get about 15-20 seconds to sing, and then step back. At the end the producer will either tell you all "There were a lot of good voices but you're not what we're looking for," or they will ask someone they want to keep to talk to them for a bit and have them fill out paperwork, while they send the others away with the "not what we're looking for" speech. It is a total crapshoot which table you get. The women at the table next to us were SOOO cute. My table only had one producer because the other had left to go to the bathroom, and the women who was left get looking for her coat while everyone was singing. Not that I'm blaming the fact that I'm not the next American Idol on her :) but it is just luck of the draw who you end up with. A girl who was sitting behind us all day had the table next to us, and she got through. She was nice enough, not that good, but very very pretty. ALTHOUGH--- my sister and I didn't care for her too much because she kept talking about how she "doesn't GET why people love adam so much because DON'T THEY KNOW HE"S GAY?!"
Anyway if people make it through this first cut, they go to another room and spend about an hour filling out stuff and taking pictures and given info about callbacks. They might be in a few days but honestly I'm not sure. Apparently there are 1-3 rounds left until seeing the judges, which is probably not for 1-3 months. (This makes me even more baffled at how people like Jasmine or Sarver make it through all these rounds)
Towards the beginning of the day I saw somewhat of an even spread between boys and girls going through. All the boys were attractive. The girls were pretty cute, and a few were super tan with bleached hair and spandex skirts. The weirdos were either very overweight, or just otherwise very creepy (one girl deliberately picked a wedgie towards the audience while bending over and grinning). I swear I also saw Sex from SYTYCD, but I can't be sure. (I've met him before, have I told you guys that? His mom is craaaazy.)
Mid-morning the producers called a staff meeting. They put auditions on hold for five minutes. When the staff came back, they mostly only let weirdos through, and one or two more regular people that I saw (like the cute girl who was blasphemous about Adam).
~~Conclusions~~
So, basically:
If you want to get on the show, you should:
-try to do something to catch the producers attention on the registration day, or in the early morning on audition day.
-be really gorgeous
-be a hot guy
-be weird/bad
-dress like a hot dog (although I don't actually think that girl got through...)
-DO NOT BE NERVOUS. I'm usually pretty good with auditions, but I felt so uncomfortable singing to this lady because she looked so miserable, and I wish I hadn't let it psych me out.
During my stay I saw about 20-30 people go through out of... I don't know, 15 or 16 thousand?
So it's over now and it was fun-- I think I'll audition next year if they have auditions somewhere closer to Baltimore :) I sang an Adele song, but definitely wasn't at my best-- although I think my outfit was pretty fierce because my fashionable sister picked it out!
I paid pretty close attention to the auditioners so maybe I'll recognize some people on Season 9 :) Although, according to my baby sister "Kradam broke Idol so it doesn't matter anyway" ;-)
Next year I think that anyone from here who wants to audition to plan out the cities and maybe we can ~strategize~
XOXO
p.s. TAG THIS SHIT
p.p.s. irrelevant photo is irrelevant, but we just found out my sister was posted in the Baltimore Sun in the fashion section for being fierce as shit:
As some of you know my sister and I auditioned for Idol today in Chicago. Unfortunately, neither of us are the next American Idol! But it was fun nonetheless and kind of interesting to see how the "system" works.
I said I would make a post with details of ~the audition journey~ but it is HIDEOUSLY LONG so please skip anything you find painfully boring.
Registration
We registered on Saturday. Registration goes on for two days before auditions but it's pretty important to get there early the first day, since you get assigned a seat which determines your audition. We got there at 7 am and ended up about in the middle of the pack. There were already people waiting outside the United Center at 11 pm the night before!
We met some really cool people waiting outside on Monday, which made the time pass much faster today! But also, waiting in line for registration was where I noticed a lot of things I hadn't before. There were people already being filmed and interviewed. Some of these people were "attention-getting" i.e. bright hair, eccentric outfits, or just had a confidence about them. Some of them were weird. Like there was this one girl in an Amish outfit who clearly was not Amish, because she had painted toenails and flip flops and a lot of makeup. Anyway, the people who the producers decided were interesting enough were "flagged" by way of "green stickers."
(Jamar was also flagged with a green sticker. I'm not sure how exactly the repeats get in touch with producers but it seems like they do. The M.C. even announced that he was there to us. The friend he was with also had a green sticker and got through as well. This tall white-blonde girl with a lotttt of makeup and a dress which I can only describe as polyester lingerie was standing near us in line, got interviewed a lot, and ended up green-stickered and went through. Not sure if she is a repeat or not.)
Morning of Audition
As far as the actual audition day, they make you get there at 5 am for no reason at all, other than the fact that they want you to be exhausted and want lots of time to film you being exhausted. It was raining all morning so that was fun. This adorable boy sitting next to us named Chris was playing the guitar and the producers grabbed him and had him play the guitar chords to our group song ("Hot and Cold"... yeah...) while some people sang it all animated-like for the cameras. We dubbed him the Pacific-Islander Kris Allen, since his name was Chris and he was cute as a button and played the guitar and wore plaid.
Once you're inside, at about 8 am, they spend and hour+ with you going over the group song and making you stand and clap and sing again and again and MY GOD it's ridiculous how many of these people auditioning don't understand that we CLAP ON 1 and 3. But anyway. Normally at this point Ryan Seacrest would come out and talk to us for a bit and film his "We're in Chicago and THIS........ is American Idol," but HE WASN'T THERE TODAY. WTF. hello_eunuch, i was so excited to tell you all about him too :(.
Tryouts
Once they start moving people down to audition, they take a section at a time, and assign groups of four to one of 12 tables. Each table has (or is supposed to have...) 2 producers. Each group of four takes a turn. You each step forward, get about 15-20 seconds to sing, and then step back. At the end the producer will either tell you all "There were a lot of good voices but you're not what we're looking for," or they will ask someone they want to keep to talk to them for a bit and have them fill out paperwork, while they send the others away with the "not what we're looking for" speech. It is a total crapshoot which table you get. The women at the table next to us were SOOO cute. My table only had one producer because the other had left to go to the bathroom, and the women who was left get looking for her coat while everyone was singing. Not that I'm blaming the fact that I'm not the next American Idol on her :) but it is just luck of the draw who you end up with. A girl who was sitting behind us all day had the table next to us, and she got through. She was nice enough, not that good, but very very pretty. ALTHOUGH--- my sister and I didn't care for her too much because she kept talking about how she "doesn't GET why people love adam so much because DON'T THEY KNOW HE"S GAY?!"
Anyway if people make it through this first cut, they go to another room and spend about an hour filling out stuff and taking pictures and given info about callbacks. They might be in a few days but honestly I'm not sure. Apparently there are 1-3 rounds left until seeing the judges, which is probably not for 1-3 months. (This makes me even more baffled at how people like Jasmine or Sarver make it through all these rounds)
Towards the beginning of the day I saw somewhat of an even spread between boys and girls going through. All the boys were attractive. The girls were pretty cute, and a few were super tan with bleached hair and spandex skirts. The weirdos were either very overweight, or just otherwise very creepy (one girl deliberately picked a wedgie towards the audience while bending over and grinning). I swear I also saw Sex from SYTYCD, but I can't be sure. (I've met him before, have I told you guys that? His mom is craaaazy.)
Mid-morning the producers called a staff meeting. They put auditions on hold for five minutes. When the staff came back, they mostly only let weirdos through, and one or two more regular people that I saw (like the cute girl who was blasphemous about Adam).
~~Conclusions~~
So, basically:
If you want to get on the show, you should:
-try to do something to catch the producers attention on the registration day, or in the early morning on audition day.
-be really gorgeous
-be a hot guy
-be weird/bad
-dress like a hot dog (although I don't actually think that girl got through...)
-DO NOT BE NERVOUS. I'm usually pretty good with auditions, but I felt so uncomfortable singing to this lady because she looked so miserable, and I wish I hadn't let it psych me out.
During my stay I saw about 20-30 people go through out of... I don't know, 15 or 16 thousand?
So it's over now and it was fun-- I think I'll audition next year if they have auditions somewhere closer to Baltimore :) I sang an Adele song, but definitely wasn't at my best-- although I think my outfit was pretty fierce because my fashionable sister picked it out!
I paid pretty close attention to the auditioners so maybe I'll recognize some people on Season 9 :) Although, according to my baby sister "Kradam broke Idol so it doesn't matter anyway" ;-)
Next year I think that anyone from here who wants to audition to plan out the cities and maybe we can ~strategize~
XOXO
p.s. TAG THIS SHIT
p.p.s. irrelevant photo is irrelevant, but we just found out my sister was posted in the Baltimore Sun in the fashion section for being fierce as shit: