We spent the weekend down at Elstree Studios, watching The Voice UK live, and here’s what went on!
As true tv geeks, there’s nothing more we love than the atmosphere of the live set: A car park scattered with OB trucks, jibs and cranes flying through the air and steadicam operators leaping across the stage. The Voice’s one was particularly athletic.
We were seated by 6PM for the start of Saturday’s show, but the first thing we watched was Emeli Sandé’s performance for the Sunday results show.
The Scottish vocalist wowed us and the rest of the audience, and pulled off the performance in just one take, two fewer than the coaches took to record their cover of I’ve Gotta Feeling for the audition shows.
After the coaches had quickly changed out of their Sunday outfits and back into their Saturday outfits, it was time to go live!
“We only want lots of encouragement for our coaches and acts,” warm up Andy Collins says. Rather different comments than those made at The X Factor, where the audience are positively encouraged to boo and shriek the panel if they disagree.
Watching live, the show was fast paced, with groups of production staff storming the set as VTs played out to the viewers at home to prepare the next singer. Viewers often complain about padding and adverts in telly shows, but live ones absolutely need it. From dragging pianos out to boxes of candles and unfolding 20 umbrellas, there was plenty to prepare for each performance.
Anyone will tell you that live music is completely different to anything recorded, and it’s not different when being in a TV studio compared to watching from home. Not only is the atmosphere a lot noisier, fortunately drowning out a few of the duff notes, but it’s also a lot more loud and powerful.
Toni Warne‘s big voice stormed it while Hannah Berney‘s large note at the end of Cry Me A River shook the building.
One of the fun things about going behind the scenes is seeing the whole picture, rather than just what the often cropped camera angles can pick up.
This is more true than ever in Becky Hill‘s performance, which saw some bright spark tie a pointless pink cord to her microphone. It wasn’t plugged in, simply taped to her wireless mic, and got caught on almost everything as Becky performed Good Luck. Despite a few nervous moments as she grappled with the catching cord up the stairs, Becky fortunately managed to pull it off like a pro. However it was still far more distracted than Hannah’s dancers.
After the live show , the coaches did some recorded bits of “reality”, as they spoke about the performances they just saw. Production staff clearly felt that the panel or artists are quite forgetful, with giant cue cards plastered with pictures of the contestants brought in to help the coaches remember the acts.
Once that was done and wrapped, it was time to record the results show, which wasn’t done as-live.
We still don’t like the idea of a pre-recorded results show, but it has to be said, there’s still plenty of work that needs to be done if it is to go out live. The 30 minute episode took close to 2 hours to film, and that was taking into account the fact that Emeli had already done her performance.
First up we had to wait for the coaches to change back (again) into their Sunday clothes, although everyone else – including the artists – stuck with the same outfits.
Then it was time to pre-record Team Tom and Team Will’s group performances, which both had to be done twice. On hearing them live, Ruth Brown, Frances Wood, Joelle Moses and Leanne Mitchell all stood out in their teams.
Then came the links with presenters Holly and Reggie, which took a lot longer than you’d think, thanks in part to Holly’s lovely looking dress spreading glitter on everything she touched, including her face.
Finally it was time for the results, which weren’t really that tense, thanks mainly to big breaks in filming to correct the ear pieces of the contestants. There was clearly a lot of emotion on stage though, with tears and hugs from many artists regardless of the results.
But things were perhaps made worse for those in bottom two by having to retake their reactions again and again for failing to say “yesterday night” instead of “tonight”. Max Milner in particular struggled, in the end deciding not to mention the time at all!
It was a long slug of an evening’s worth of filming, but it was quite worth it and we’d love to again if anyone wants to offer…
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