Before being able to sing on the big stage of “La Voix”, candidates for blind auditions follow a process of identification, interviews and rehearsals which allows them to be in full possession of their faculties when they find themselves in front of the coaches.
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After being selected during the pre-auditions, the candidates are therefore invited to join the MELS studio, located near the Saint-Hubert airport, in Longueuil, for a first day of preparation.
“The day before their blind audition, the candidates often come with their family or companions, detailed Chantal Lépine, executive producer of the show. They first have a meeting during which we explain to them in detail how the day will unfold.
Everyone is then interviewed by Charles Lafortune, while the families are back in the foyer. Then, they must do an individual interview during which they explain their background. For blind auditions, the candidates decide which song they want to sing. They are not coached by anyone.
Day 2
The next day, the candidates return to the studio to do their audition in front of the coaches. The atmosphere behind the scenes is much more feverish, because not only is there an audience in the studio, but it’s really that day that will be decisive for the rest of the adventure.
“It is during this second day that we record everything we will see in the show, whether it is their crossing of the corridor, the red door, and the 20-second countdown, indicates the executive producer. Then they go on stage and audition with the coaches.”
In the rules of the competition, it is also provided that from the moment the candidate begins his performance, the production can no longer stop the cameras.
After being taken or not by one of the coaches, the candidates go down to join their family, before simply returning home.
Big logistics
Blind audition recording days are a challenge for the production team. “The coaches should never meet the candidates before their audition, specifies Chantal Lépine. The candidates never go, for example, to the second floor of the studio, where the dressing rooms are located. The coaches are accompanied in all their movements in the studio. But since we have two studios at our disposal, it allows us to manage this constraint well.
At the end of each day of audition, once the candidates and the public have left, the coaches do individual interviews in order to come back to their choices, their good and less good moves of the day. It is only at the end of the blind audition process that the research team gives them files on each member of their team so that they can try to get to know them well to form duels.
“In these files, we indicate the biography of each, but we also add links so that the coaches can listen to and see everything that the candidates have done before, on social networks, on YouTube or other.”
With all this in hand, each of the coaches will form six pairs of candidates who will compete in duels, thus reducing each of the teams from 12 to 6 candidates.