Lights, Camera, Everything!

Its that time of year again… when all the wanna be superstars and singing in the shower crazies make their way to a talent show audition….

Long ago, Australian Idol was a fresh and exciting piece of TV. Now, between X Factor, Australia’s Got Talent, So You Think You Can Dance and the other flurry of “lets make you famous TV”, the genre is overworked, under-talented and generally quite irritating….

But….

From a technical perspective, even I can’t help but marvel in how much smoke, mirrors and pizzazz is thrown into these shows. Take X Factor as a perfect example. This week, within one hour of TV, they used pretty much every current and available technical gimmick known to man. White screen technology (as per the infamous Beyonce “Run the World” performance), harnesses and flying dancers, enough LED and movers to make the gang at Eurovision green with envy and much much more was thrown into this one episode. So much so that I didn’t even really hear the people sing!

Now normally, as an event producer, this sort of full on production number should excite and inspire me. Call me a cynic but in this instance, it just made me think – what are they hiding? Do smoke and mirrors a good show make??

In my opinion, this argument is the same in TV and Event world This can easily be translated from TV into our event world. Just because we have access to amazing gadgets and technologies it doesn’t mean we should use them. Each thing that goes into an event space should serve a purpose and have meaning. Movers and high tech gizmos are awesome – as long as they are not used to distract from a bad piece of talent or remove people from the overall purpose of an event.

So the question is – will I tune back into X Factor this week? Much to my partner’s disgust, I probably will. Will it be to see the talent? Probably not - but hey – who knows what tricks they pull out of their hats this time! 

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