Girl power is coming back again in dance and music, there's a mighty team from Project Lotus that will conduct a talent search for the next girl group here in the Philippines and across Asia, it all begins here. We are just introducing Grammy award wining produceer Eliot Kennedy who is also the original producer for the Spice girls and worked with Bryan Adams, S Club 7, Dannii Minogue, Boyzone and Take That. He teams up with Brian Grant and FarWest Entertainment Asia, a new global media company founded by former Electronic Arts executive Jon Nierman. They will be around in seek out the best female talents in Asia and launch them into an unprecendented international music career.
online audition now going on, so if you want to be a member of the next global girl group, then check out the details below
Visiting the Philippines recently to lay the groundwork for Project Lotus, Kennedy explains their goal in simplest terms. “In principle, it’s a talent search across all Asia,” he begins.
“What we’re doing is a very simple idea but it’s never been done before,” he says. “We want take five girls from five different Asian countries—5 from Philippines, 5 from Japan, 5 from China, 5 from India, 5 from Korean. And what we’re going to do is take all those 25 girls and put them in a place called the Lotus Academy in Hong Kong which is a huge facility with dance studios, recording studios, vocal studios, etc.”
Lotus Academy, according to Kennedy, will not only house these state-of-the-art facilities; to aid in the training of the 25 girls, he says that aside from him, there would be an award-winning choreographer, an amazing vocal coach, a nutritionist, a health advisor, gym instructor “and all of that stuff.” There exerts would essentially put all the girls through the ringer.
“It’s a school of excellence is what we’re sort of calling it…”
Eliot Kennedy
Bryan Grant
And it’s not as if the girl wouldn’t be in good hands. Kennedy has had his share of major success, having had the distinction of being the original producer for the Spice Girls. Since then, this English songwriter and producer had also worked with Bryan Adams, S Club 7, Dannii Minogue, Boyzone and Take That, among others. Among his several awards is a coveted Grammy for “Never Gonna Break My Faith” by Aretha Franklin and Mary J. Blige for the movie “Bobby.”
Kennedy’s partner, Grammy award-winning video director, TV and film producer Brian Grant, explains that there is also another component to this talent search—that is, they are making a documentary of the whole process.
“It’s not going to be an entertainment talent show in normal sense of the word,” Grant points out. “It’s not going to be ‘Pop Idol’… not ‘X factor.’ It has some of those elements in a way, but what want to do is not to concentrate on the histrionics or the melodrama. We’re not interested at what goes on behind closed doors. It’s really to just make a documentary of the process of what these five girls have never done before.”
Projcect Lotus will then have a separate life of its own in front of the cameras even while the whole audition and elimination process is going on. For the TV component, viewers will be able to see two parts of the journey. When both Grant and Kennedy come back to each of the five countries within a few weeks, Grant will be shooting what would be the first episode.
This will be the search proper in the five countries, intercut with scenes from the writing camp that Kennedy is putting together—which is comprised of “some of the best songwriters in the world,” as Kennedy says, who would be gathered at Peter Gabriel’s studio in the countryside outside London. These tunesmiths and wordsmiths would put together the materials that the newly formed pan-Asian girl group would be recording at the end of their training.
But just as important as the whole process is talent acquisition. Auditions in the five cities involved will begin on August 15, 2010, after which Kennedy and Grant would narrow the numbers to five girls each from Japan, Korea, China, India and the Philippines. The 25 finalists will undergo intensive training at the Lotus Academy running from September 15 to October 30 this year.
The 25 girls will be formed in five groups of five, each from a different country. Learning songs and choreography, each group will then perform the piece in front of a chosen audience and a chosen celebrity at the end of one week. The following day, the judges will deliberate as to which one girl from each country will be eliminated, which would then leave 20 girls that would form four groups of five to go through the whole process again, and so on.
The five girls left would then represent each of their country and it is this group that the producers would push outside the region. The TV show they will produce will be eyed for broadcast across Asia and also the US and Europe. Their album and touring schedule should also kick off in the first half of 2011.
“The idea being that we want these girls to be ambassadors of their country, and also of their culture,” Kennedy explains. “One of the beautiful things about Asia is, unlike the rest of the world, your culture is still very intact in Asian countries. It’s still very much part o the day-to-day living in your country—and people in the West admire this. But seldom do we get an opportunity to see Asian artists and how talented the people are from this side of the world. We want to be responsible for bringing Asian artists to the rest of the world.”
Niermann adds, “The top professionals we gathered onboard for this project are absolutely enthusiastic about its potential. It is amazing to see how many people are passionate to the cause of giving Asian artists their spotlight in the international music scene.”
Indeed, the producers’ lofty dreams could very well echo the aspirations of many Asian singers and performers who are all dreaming of that one big break. And for a handful of them, this could be it. The producers’ only advice, then, is summed up in two words: desire and commitment. Because once someone makes the cut, there is no turning back.
For more information on PROJECT LOTUS, visit www.projectlotus.tv.
