Chartjackers (2009)

Genre

documentary film, reality television

Country

United Kingdom

How it feels

Four teenage video bloggers try to create a pop single for charity through crowdsourcing. The series follows their ten-week effort to write, record and release the song with help from an online community.

upbeatambitiousmoderndiary-likeenergeticprocess-drivenearnestfast-paced

What happens

Chartjackers is a British documentary series, produced by Hat Trick Productions and commissioned by BBC Switch. It documents the lives of four teenage video bloggers over the course of ten weeks, as they attempt to write, record and release a pop song for charity, with the goal to "sell an estimated 25,000 singles to achieve their dream of a number one single". It premiered in the UK on 12 September 2009 on BBC Two, and ran for a single series of eleven weekly episodes. When first broadcast, the programme ran in real time: its first ten episodes documented the events of the previous seven days, while the final episode was an extended compilation that summarised all ten weeks. The Chartjackers single was written entirely through crowdsourcing, with the song's title, lyrics, melody, singers, band, production, cover art and music video all being solicited from the global online community. The crowdsourcing took the format of the four bloggers—Alex Day, Johnny Haggart, Jimmy Hill and Charlotte McDonnell (formerly Charlie McDonnell)—posting videos to a dedicated YouTube channel named ChartJackersProject, where they invited viewers to suggest various ideas for the final song. After receiving advice from industry experts such as Charlie Simpson and David and Carrie Grant, the completed Chartjackers single, entitled "I've Got Nothing", was released through the iTunes Store at the end of the ten-week period on 9 November. The track received mainly negative reviews from music critics and sold approximately 8,400 copies in the UK, earning it a peak position of number 36 on the UK Singles Chart. Chartjackers garnered a viewing figures peak of almost half a million with its final episode and was critically panned by reviewers. Some commentators felt that the programme's concept was ridiculous and doomed from the start, others felt that the series showed a contempt for music and the general public, and other critics questioned whether the point of the project was to raise money for charity or for the four bloggers to promote themselves. The show was nominated for a 2010 Broadcast Digital Award in the Best Multi-Platform Project category, but lost out to The Operation...Surgery Live. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• The Big Time
• How to Be a Composer (2009)
• Around the World in 80 Days (2009)
• The Big Art Project (2009)
• High Street Dreams (2010)
• Video Diaries
• Freak (2009)
• Afghan Star (2009)