American Idol is keeping the cameras rolling on its eliminated contestants starting with this week’s results episode.
The new feature, appropriately called “Still Rolling,” will allow fans of the show to see what really happens after the final voting verdict is handed down. Viewers will see promos running on Thursday’s Idol, then get a behind-the-scenes peek during special airings of Fox’s New Girl and The Mindy Project.
Credit the network’s marketing department for the Idol add-on, which has previously been featured on americanidol.com. “When we locked the New Girl and Mindy episodes behind Idol, the marketing team tried to come up some ideas that we thought could help pull some of those Idol viewers through the night and into the comedies,” Shannon Ryan, Fox’s EVP of marketing and communications, tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We thought it could be interesting to bring that concept -- seeing those sort of raw, real, intimate post-show moments and reactions -- to our air in these quick pops throughout the night.”
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Indeed, when tears are rolling -- and the cameras too -- you never what you might catch, including another fireworks moment from judge Nicki Minaj. Ryan puts it more diplomatically. “All the judges are different when they're not behind the desk, so this will let viewers at home catch an inside glimpse of how they are with the contestants after the show is over, especially on elimination night when emotions run so high,” she says.
Pulling off video of the moment will be challenging enough. The show will employ three cameras to do so along with a jib arm. Then, Ryan explains, “Using Idol’s EVS system, a special ops team will capture the line feed, select the 15-second snippets that we want to highlight, and then quickly get that back to the control room. There, lower third messaging will be dropped in, and it will be fed over to our network operations.”
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Look for the first piece to air around 9:14 p.m. EST and the second piece five minutes later. The other two will follow shortly after (around 9:44 p.m. and 9:52 p.m. EST).
“Needless to say, getting this shot and onto our air so quickly is a huge technical undertaking and requires a lot of close collaboration,” says Ryan. “Ultimately, it will happen super quickly, so it’s both nerve-wracking and exciting!”
Tune in to Fox on Thursday to see how it all goes down.
Twitter: @Idol_Worship
