Xin Qing Rong Ji (Continued)

Friday, May 1, 2009
After prelims, we had a good look at our finalists, budding song writers/ composers from all walks of life. Eligibility checks were performed and voila, we have our 12 finalists. Usually there will only be 10 but for this year, the judges decided on 12.

Here is a video by our Video Director, Hao Yang. I think it captured the essence of the competition. Enjoy.......



Before the Grand Finals, our head, Shu Ling told us about her plans on having a roadshow. It was supposed to be an avenue for us to gain valuable experience before going all out in our Grand Finals preparations. Another round of sleepless nights, endless discussions and site visits ensued. Our roadshow was held at *scape Youth Park, near Orchard Road sometime in January. I remembered this was the time when our beloved stage manager, Ken Juin and our would be production manager Chin Ee started to get very very busy. If not because of their hard work and dedication, it would be difficult to get the whole team together for the roadshow. I recalled having a Finalist Day a week before the roadshow. It was the day when we interviewed our finalists, took photos and videos of them, basically to know their needs and wants for the grand finals. Xu Su was a busy man that day, having to rush in between 3 locations to get good video footage...haha.

We had countless dry runs, trying to make sure that everything will go smoothly. I had tremendous respect for both Chin Ee and Ken Juin, judging from the way they both handle leadership duties effectively. Sien Long took care of all tech related stuff and I did stage crew work. Quite simple compared to what the stage crews of the grand finals went through.

The Roadshow Day soon arrived and for many of us, it was a chance to showcase XQRJ outside of NUS. I remembered Ken Juin coming all the way to my room to wake me up at 6am, but I was already awake..haha. That day was the first time I sat at the back of a lorry, sandwiched in between audio equipment with Mc Vin driving us all the way to our venue. The stage was set. Haha..looking back, I remembered how disappointed we were when we saw the place. It was an open air performance pavillion with a stage so dirty, you wonder if it had ever been used for a performance. Anyway, setting up the equipment went on smoothly and we had our Tech Run in the afternoon.

Kudos to Xu Su for coming up with a splendid publicity idea. The "Freezing Game" idea to publicise our event at Orchard Road attracted much attention and really you guys had lots of fun. Too bad I had to stay back for the Tech Run, or else I would run around crazy at Orchard Road. The show started somewhere in the evening and luckily we managed to get a crowd (mostly lao rens anyway). The lao rens are ex- XQRJ members who helped us a lot. Now that XQRJ is over, I am officially a lao ren too!! Not wanting to blog any further, let me just end with pictures of our roadshow. Again, our bond grew stronger as we completed another stage of the wonderful XQRJ experience.



Our XQRJ Banner with the finalists!!!


Ruiqi and Michelle with the posters.


How many people do you need to put up a banner? Answer: ???


The Freezing Game team!!!

XQRJ + Joker.....

One of our finalists going through the Tech Run.

After the Roadshow. Good work XQRJ!!

Wait for Part 3....

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