Darkoshi

Watching so-called "reality" shows, I've often wondered how much the story lines are scripted or heavily edited to make them seem more interesting or appealing. Especially dance and music competitions like America's Got Talent, and X-Factor.

For example, do they decide before-hand which acts will continue on, versus being voted off by the judges. And whether the audience is told whether to cheer or boo for each act. How much of the audience reaction is edited versus being spontaneous. Often the audience reactions seem very scripted to me; everyone boos or everyone cheers. One act may get cheered, and then another similarly good act which the judges don't care for gets hardly any reaction, or boos.

So I did a search.

Our Day at the X Factor Judges Auditions

Before the main show began, a man came out onto the stage to warm the crowd up. He had us dancing and jumping up and down, but also, he had us doing fake reactions that could be used in the TV show. With strict instructions not to look at the camera as it panned around us, we had to first be “shocked” then to jump up clapping an amazing performance, and finally to turn to the person next to us and laugh, pointing to the stage as if something hilarious were occurring.
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He also asked us, once the judges had left, to stay in our seats so that they could film more crowd scenes with us.

What really goes on at the X Factor auditions?

A surprising number of people got to sing two songs, probably around half of the auditionees.
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We were told not to join in or look like we were having fun if a contestant was bad, but instead sit still and quiet. No-one paid attention to this instruction.
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Although I came away feeling like the whole thing was very manipulated, I still thoroughly enjoyed seeing what the audition process was really like and would definitely recommend you to go if you get the chance. Now I can’t wait to see how they edit the auditions I saw for TV!

Do the audience get told to Boo/stand up/cheer? (Strictly Come Dancing)

The warm up guy told us to cheer and make as much noise as possible for the lifts and good comments and to boo bad comments. Standing ovations for the couples were spontaneous but we were told to give the pro routines a standing ovation, which I found a bit sad. I was more likely to give their routines a standing ovation than most of the other performances.

There aren't cue cards etc but you follow the lead of the floor manager and warm up guy who start it. Funniest moment for me was when Len was talking about no more lifts, the floor manager started booing but most of the audience clapped so he changed his reaction and clapped along with us
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yes, we were essentially told to give a standing ovation to the professional dancers in the results show though we were not told to give the competition dances one unless we thought they deserved one.
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There is sort of an unwritten contract between the BBC and the studio audience that says that 'if we let you in for free then you have do what we tell you'.