Hello everybody on ATRL, as many of you know, X-Factor is one of the most popular music shows on TV. You love to see these people audition to find their dream, and you see so many people audition on TV, so many people cheering on the judges and acts, right?
Well... This may come as surprising to some... but it's all completely fake. Almost the entire show is fake.
I got tickets with my fam to see the show (be in the audience) and due to my looks, I got VIP (no kidding we weren't first in line but since we looked good they chose us and sent others elsewhere) I got to see a bit of the behind-the-scenes things that few other audience members get to see.
Let me explain everything in order: we arrived in LA after a 2-hour drive from our vaca home in San Diego. After that we stopped by The Ivy to eat ridiculously expensive lunch, waving at tourists watching us eat thinking we're celebs (lol). After that we headed over to The X-Factor's auditions at USC, we were there for the 6:45 show and we arrived at 2:15 to be behind 100 people. Kelly and Paulina had already arrived to the scene whereas Simon and Demi were fashionably an hour late for the 1:30 show.
Here's where things get fake.
The TV crew had everybody start cheering extremely loudly for each person as they arrived, and they told us to be ecstatic and try to get pictures, etc. (not like we wouldn't have tried to anyway
) (My sister got a dope pic with Demi)
After this we stayed outside for a bit longer doing nothing, then the crew had us moved from one location to another wanting us to make it seem like a big line was moving to try to get in. We stood outside for another hour before they took people for VIP.
For VIP they took us over to a "registration" area where we "registered to become contestants on the show." This meant that we were faking registration for the show in order to make it look like a lot of people were doing it on TV. (The actual people register far earlier and have already gone through two round before even appearing in front of the judges) It's just for entertainment value. All fake.
We got our tickets and waited for another hour in the VIP area for the earlier show to finish while an event manager was trying to sell at $4 water bottle. That's right, for 2 hours he was trying to sell a $4 water bottle to the people. Nobody bought it. Everyone was standing in LA summer weather, which isn't really anything. I was actually freezing (I'm from Phoenix, so anything <70 is freezing to me) Also, it wasn't everybody standing, I was sitting on a cigarette trash while everyone else stood for an hour. I feel bad for everybody who wasn't me.
We were finally let in and this is where things became the most fake of all. We were segregated based upon appearance, they placed my fam and I in front of the left camera, 3 seats away from where Simon was sitting and in the 2nd row.
The people in front of us who weren't thin and didn't have "acceptable fashion" were told to sit on the basketball risers (the auditions were in a basketball court redesigned for the X-Factor auditions.) After that the event's host (not Mario) came out to talk to us about how to act. He said to never boo the acts or any judges excluding Simon. He also ran through standing ovation procedures, and recorded us doing them for the producers to use on any act they wanted. They had people with early birthdays stand up first, then mid birthdays second, then late birthdays third to make it look flash-mobby. Actual standing ovations I highly doubt will be used (we stood twice during the actual auditions)
The host told us to scream for Paulina and Kelly, really loudly for Demi, and the loudest we can for Simon as he said hello to the audience. They had their makeup people come out and do some touch ups then they began the show.
The interviews took about 5-10 minutes for each act, then Simon would wave off the music whenever he didn't like the act or felt they wouldn't make for good entertainment. The voting process took about 5-10 minutes after the 1-3 minute long act, and then the makeup crew would come out, do touch ups, and the next act would come out. 80% of the way through the show they had acts from the prior day come out and do their greetings again for better camera footage. There were a total of maybe 20 acts there, all of them provided some sort of entertainment that the judges could work with (probably weeded out the uninteresting/generic ones in the prior two rounds)
Then we tried to leave early because we didn't want to get stuck in traffic, and the organizers wouldn't let us because we were in the second row and the camera had been on us the entire time. They had to find other people from a few rows back to take our spots before we could leave.
That's my experience at the X-"Fake-Tor" auditions. Anybody else ever been in the audience or auditions for the show or similar shows? I have some inside stuff on American Idol, too, but that'd be getting off-topic :P
~Ari Bradshaw (Thread title credit Bahjat)
I knew that show was fake but that's some god damn orchestration 
