Reporting from the producer's desk!

As the confetti is being cleaned up, it is time for us to look at what happened behind the scenes of the January 2018 edition of the Bitesvision Song Contest. Even though the show was two hours long, the work before the show reached over two hundred hours. Here, I will go through everything that happened behind the scenes, before and while we were live on air. 

For the January 2018 edition of Bitesvision, there were mainly three people who spent their time on the contest. There was Funkyhabbo, who was in charge of coding our voting system and overseeing the entire production process. Seth, who not only acted as the Bitesvision host, but also as the entry manager who established contact with not only the jury, but also all the entries if there were any concerns. Then finally, there was I, IAmReallyBored who was in charge of editing and being Seth’s in-ear producer during the live broadcast. 

10th of December 2017 (28 days remaining)

The first few weeks is just about getting entries, and promoting the competition. Either through tweets, the Habbobites radio or inside the hotel. Around the same time, Seth began the construction of the Bitesvision stage room. 

2nd of January 2018 (5 days remaining)

We receive only a few entries early on, so we don't have a lot to do. As the entries start to roll in however, we are able to start organising the show. The big part that no one should notice is the surprising amount of editing we do. Some entries only required a minor volume adjustment to match the other songs, while other entries needed to have their instrumental added or be edited entirely.

The timeline for one entry during the January 2018 edition of Bitesvision.

At this point Funkyhabbo was finished with creating a brand-new voting submission form, and we were doing tests to make sure that it worked properly. Audemars was also talking with staff to get the Bitesvision badge approved so that it could be ready for when the show began later in the week. Seth was making sure our jury members were ready to judge, and contacting (and possibly mildly-harassing) the entries who forgot to add their intro clips along with their song submissions. 

5th of January (2 days remaining)

As we were finishing up the entries, it was time to start work on the script. This included what songs should be played while we tallied the votes (interval acts), how the results would be revealed and when certain jingles would be played. We also started to work on all the intro clips that everyone had sent in presenting themselves and their song. These were not as complicated to edit as the entries, since they only need to get their volume adjusted. 

6th of January (1 day remaining)

At this point we had gathered all the entries, intro clips and interval acts. It then was time to create the set list (the running order) for the contest. We started by dividing the show into two equal size halves. With 16 entries, it happened to line up perfectly with 8 songs in each half. Then, we randomly drew 8 entries to be in the first half of the show, and the remaining 8 entries were put in the second half of the show. After this, we moved all the entries around within their halves to make an interesting and varied show. This includes trying to avoid three low tempo songs in a row. Once we determined the order of the songs, we sent all the entries to the jury members who then proceeded to rank the entries from their most favourite, to their least favourite. Work also began on editing the recap which was played while the voting lines were open.

The timeline for the January 2018 recap.

7th of January (day of the show)

We started the day by filling in all the scores from each member of the jury. Their favourite entry received 12 points, second got 10 points and third through to ninth scored 8 to 2 points. The other entries which were not in the jury members’ top 9 entries only gained 1 point. This means in total, our 5 jury members gave out 320 points. This is the same amount the audience would get to distribute during the live show.

All the entries, jingles, intro clips and interval acts were then transferred into a special soundboard that was to be used during the show. Once that is filled with all the Bitesvision goodness, Seth and I had a dress rehearsal to go over the script and tune certain elements to make everything work. Below is an image of the soundboard after all the sounds have been put in.

The final version of the Bitesvision January 2018 soundboard.

7th of January (showtime) 

Right before the show, Seth and I began a voice call so that I was able to talk to him, give him cues for when to speak, when to reveal voting results and be his in-ear producer (if you noticed Seth stuttering or stopping during the show, then it was most likely caused by me talking to him while he spoke). Nobody got to hear any of it however.

Then it was a game of hitting the right buttons in the soundboard at the right times such that everything flowed nicely. Once the voting had ended, we succeeded at covering up our calculation time by playing the interval acts. This time it consisted of three songs plus the previous winning entry, which was by Asteile. This gave us a time limit of 12 minutes to finish up. We managed to finish calculating the final scores around half of a minute before the last song was finished. We then commenced to release the results from the jury and the final results for the top 8 entries, concluding with our winner Sary! 

Final thoughts 

We hope you all enjoyed the show since we spent a lot of time preparing for it. Thank you so much to everyone who was involved, by either participating, retweeting, tuning in or however you contributed. We would not be able to have this show without you!