Observer: I was one of the judges that night (the young bloke wearing the leather jacket on the end) and I can tell you, adding up the points is the easy part. Deciding how the points get allocated in the first place, that's where the challenge lies. I'm not going to go into too much detail as to how I allocated points but the first place to start is the terms and conditions of entry.

The powers that be decided that 20pts would go to vocal performance, 15pts to presentation/attire and 15pts to stage performance. I personally was also looking for sponteneity, a feeling that while it probably was rehearsed and polished, the performance had a naturalness to it. As you can see, you can blitz the vocal catagory, but unless you hit high with the other two catagories, you're not going to be in the running.

The other problem you have as a judge is ensuring that the points are allocated in what staticians call 'a bell curve'. Ideally, you want the singers spread out in the shape of a bell, a few at the bottom, a few at the top and the majority in the middle. While individual circumstances (such as quality of talent on the night) might not result in that, if you aim for it in your scoring, you're likely to achieve a much fairer result. The last thing you want is 5 singers all coming first! (Which is similar to what happened at a previous comp I judged at). I had my own little things that I was looking out for that enabled me to separate the good singers and performers from the very good; to see who really was putting in the extra effort and trying to think outside the box; to try and anticipate what the better performers might do and try and out-do them. Believe me, before I started judging, I had no idea how knife-edge the process could be...
Submitted by LeatherBaron on 27-11-2006

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