Long post coming up....
Shambles doesnt come close to it. Here's how it went down. There is a preliminary audition where none of the judges are at. This took place at a hotel in Cardiff where you audition for one TV producer. Due to the low ceiling we were not able to do our routine so we left them (as advised) with a DVD showreel. This was the slideshow video on the WB site with the star wars music sprog mentioned. This was in November. We were told the next round was in February. We heard nothing until less a week before the next round. I received a phonecall asking me what music we would use on our routine as they needed to check the royalty requirements. I told them the music which we had devised and rehearsed a routine to for the last 4 months. No problem.
The proper auditons took place on a monday and tuesday. We got a call at 10pm on the thursday before telling us we needed some council performance licenses for everyone under 16. This wasnt even a phonecall saying we were through. That came on the Friday NIGHT and our audition was monday. I told them we need to do tuesday because we need to get all the different forms and ID needed for these licences. Note, the licenses are issued by the council who require 14 days processing for these things...we gave them about an hour. Thanks ITV. We were also told on the Friday night that we HAD to use the music on our DVD showreel. I totally lost my temper with them on this. There was no way we could adapt our routine to the star wars music and no way we could come up with a whole new routine in just 2 days! Tough poo. Either we did or our audtion ended right there.
So we did.
On Monday we told ITV that we could net get the ID and everything for the licences and could we do the audition and get the licences later. They said no. So Tuesday morning before our audition we were literally running around all over the place getting these licenses, birth certificates and passport photos to the local council to get us the licences. As you can see in the video, it was one of the worst snowy days of that time. 3 of our guys in the routine were snowed in and couldnt make it, so again we had to adjust the routine without them. As sprog mentioned, about 45 mins before we were due on stage ITV needed to know the exact artist and track name of the starwars music or we could not audition. Sprog saved us there, much love
Next we asked if we could see the stage before our audition. There was a judges break in the theatre so we put our stilts on and crossed the road to the theatre. We were not happy that the stage was on a slope but apparently this is standard in theatres. We were on our way back out to the holding room when we were told we were on in 10 minutes. I explained we needed to warm up etc but they said no.
I'm not surprised they didnt show anything. At the preliminary audition we did loads of filming like the "welcome to cardiff" stuff they do and we the film crew loved us. You never get tired of a TV producer shouting "ok everyone else back inside...just the bockers to stay here" for some filming on our own.
Also the council sort of broke some rules when issueing us the licences. We had to get some doctors note to the council within 7 days of the filming or the licence would not be valid and ITV would be informed of this. We had such an awful day at the audition and were so annoyed with ITV that we didnt bother with the doctors notes. This might be the reason have not been shown.
For what its worth, the crowd really enjoyed us and wanted to see the end of our routine but the judges did not.
We learned a lot....and we'll be back
