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We’ve just finished making the promos for Channel five’s Don’t Stop Believing. If you are a Glee fan you’re in luck. If not, you may well dig this show too. It plays out live, starting late July and is five’s biggest investment ever in creating an entertainment program. Unlike most talent shows, the interest wont hinge on the cruelty of putting down the rejects. Each week 6 groups of auditioned people go through heats. The groups will be made up all different ages, shapes and sizes of at least five people, but some will contain over 100 individuals.

Our promo aims to capture to capture the upbeat, uncynical nature of the show. We cast over 1000 people for the spot. The real challenge was that we couldn’t feature any of the groups competing in the show as we didn’t want to show favoritism! Some of the groups we have put together ourselves(Simon Cowell eat your heart out), and some of the groups came to us as a team. The yellow group is actually a gospel choir – keep an ear out for Cathy’s voice who is the blonde girl who leads the group – absolutely stunning. The blue team are a barber shop quartet; eh, well actually we ended up making them a triplet. Within the main group at the end is The Choir With No Name made up of homeless people.

You’ll notice a pianola at the beginning of the spot that Emma Bunton activates. We managed to find the only living person in the UK who is able to program pianolas with the original paper-style script. He told us that suitable paper is becoming increasingly hard to find. The scrolls are hand-perforated although he does now use a computer to map out the notes. The 80 year old who owns the pianola doesn’t know that his keys were carefully rainbow-ified with colored film. Looks pretty cool though.

The spot was beautifully crafted by Kim Gehrig (and her ever patient producer Dom) at Academy. With music by the audio wizards Nick and Ollie at Soundtree.