CHI & Partners BrightStar Studio

10.09.01 – Belt out some Bonnie Tyler, spin the decks to Bros or show off your dance moves as you star in your own music video – you might even get on TV. Following the success of last year’s Brightdancing, we created this site for TalkTalk’s X Factor sponsorship.

We once again teamed up with CHI & Partners to create an experience that encompassed karaoke, dancing and the playing of light-drawn instruments. While performing you can also interact with light drawings on-screen in real time to create some cool and engaging music videos. There’s even an editing suite where you can apply 80s-style video effects such as motion blur, photo freeze and time displace grids. Every week the very best user-generated videos are then picked to be broadcast on TV during the X Factor ad breaks.

During just the first four weeks the campaign had over 15,000 video submissions. It’s great seeing so many people enjoying a project so directly. But of course managing such a large amount of user-generated content is tricky.

We required a capable back end that allows moderators to easily check submissions, mark them for review and even pick out videos that may be suitable for TV.

In order to control the timing and animation of the light drawings, the lyrics, bouncing ball and video effects, we created a custom tool that allowed us to accurately place everything against an analysis of the songs.

We also worked with our director Tom Malmros to create a set of idents also shown during the X Factor that would get people excited about trying out the BrightStar Studio for themselves.