Don’t Stop Me Now

The original idea was to shoot LIVE on the roof of Jimmy Kimmel during the Oscars and cut to a Live performance during the show. It turns out that the roof, structurally could not hold the cast and crew, so we started looking at roofs and ended up finding the Hollywood Roosevelt a few doors down. As Queen and Adam Lambert were now opening the Oscars and could not do the American Idol contestant piece. This Idea was developed after climbing to the roof by entering through the Hall and the Penthouse. The developed idea became a Narrative/Performance :90 sec piece that be would pre-recorded the day before to insure that the new contestants and our crew could pull this off in :90 sec. Ryan Seacrest was suggested for the opening the elevator and brought in the GOLDEN TICKET to the light narrative. The American Idol musical director recorded the instrumental with their band on Saturday, gave us the music on Monday and the creative team rehearsed and recorded the vocals on that WEDNESDAY. Then, Rehearsal, choreography and steadicam moves throughout the hotel. Filming was Thursday the 2/21, ( just missing the rain). Our day started with Ryan in the elevator at 5pm and went until 4am on Friday. Production took over the 12 floor and the penthouse and roof. The DIT and editor were in one room, replacing the animatic frames after each set up, so that we had a completed edit by the Friday morning at 5am. The selected shots were sent over to ABC for VFX and approval, then mixing and color on SAT evening and night. It was Delivered on Sunday morning for air live on the Oscars Sunday.