Let's find the new Alizée! | The Eastern European Alizée Project 2013

[lapinschous]

As Scruffy mentionned in another thread the fact that the golden era of the first two albums is now long gone is a real problem when it comes to reach a new public . This reminds me that I forgot to tell you guys the project i've set up.

As you guys may know I'm a medical student from the university of bordeaux in france, but the thing is I've been sent to Romania as part of a european student exchange program until this fall (I'm forced to study in english and that also really improved my proficiency) . But as surprising as it may sound I'm starting to like this place (I can afford to live a few hundred meters away from the sea and eat everyday at the restaurant :p ... and students are allowed to take care of patients in hospitals as soon as the first year while you've got to wait till 3rd year in france) ... But I actually have the possibility of extending this trial period in romania so that I will stay 3 or more years here before coming back to France . Here comes my plan : I became friends with a german dude studying here who happened to be really interested in Alizée when I first lent him my HDD full of Zée stuff ... I can now safely say that he's a real fan even though he's relying on me to get news about her as he's not registered on any board. . .

I was really satisfied with having been able to turn a friend into a fan , just like I became one thanks to my girlfriend. So I decided to try my luck and was planning to do the same of one of the very few other french dudes in this foreing university with whom I happened to share a passion for airplanes and piloting ... And surprisingly he happened to be a fan of Mylène Farmer !! Although he had never been interested in Alizée, as he noticed that I was seeking to gather people around Lili he gladly joined us and even watched the 2004 concert with us a couple of times...


With time passing , and exams approaching I could see the guys distancing themselves a bit from our little fairy, there was this atmosphere of lassitude ... they felt like they were living in the past. ... and that's how we came up with a plan: make Alizée's spirit from the early years reborn from its ashes!

We realized that as we were all coming from quite wealthy families and that the average salary in romania is far lower than France or Germany's , the three of us had an enormous purchasing power . So we decided to save funds to prepare a "quest" for young local teenagers between the age of 14 and 17 around the region, we're not sur how we're gonna do it yet but we'll try to print massive amounts of fliers with pictures of Alizée on them, saying that we're looking for look alikes and we'll maybe hire gipsies to distribute them in our city but also in every little village in the area, inviting the girls to send pictures of themselves on a special email adress, or give us a call so we'll send somebody over to take pictures.

Of course , this will mean selecting less than a dozen of potential little Zées among maybe several hundreds of candidates.. That's why we're saving for the transportation costs, the printing, the studio we'll rent for the interviews.

But this isn't the end, out of this dozen of candidates we'll have to select one or two, and the look alike factor won't be sufficient, we'll hire a singing teacher and an english teacher for them (thankfully it's not really expensive here) and my friend and I will be teaching them french. Then after some language proficiency and singing tests , they'll go through a second selection to reduce the number of candidates to 5 . We will then start a course of intense singing and dancing lessons which might take up to a year.

If everything went well... we'll select one of them , while the four other will stay with us as dancers for the choreographies . We will get all the outfits we can get from the Gourmandises and MCE era ( Moi Lolita red dress, the blue/pink one from JPVA , the white/ red one from gourmandises, etc..) and start renting small concert halls where they'll perform in front of the romanian Alizée fans (which are surprisingly numerous ) .


We've estimated the expenses of the project to be of around 10,000 euros over a 15 months period but we hope to get some money back from the live performing and the youtube channel we'll set up if we manage to have Alizée's approval.


We've only started to save money for the project but we're all very motivated, because this is perfectly feasible. Think about it, a french speaking new little alizée, wouldn't that be awesome ? ^^


For those who may wonder how young romanian girls look like over here , Here's a 15 years old half french, half romanian girl from bordeaux... I used to have one massive crush on her last year (which almost led to my girlfriend breaking up with me)

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/322216_4181041697763_1173002932_o.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/339678_4127343795349_2076757297_o.jpg


Btw I know some people working for the local TV very well, what if we could make this happen ? :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cywmkhiwpAU&t=10s


Okay, we're all very young, we've only started to save money so far, but I'd like to have your opinion on the project before playing to the new Graines de Stars copycat

[Marka]

I don't like the idea. First, for me, nobody can replace Alizée, and I don't care who you select. Create your own group, make someone create the music and start fresh, without any connection to Alizée.

Second, this whole idea sounds pretty much like a miniature version of what has been happening in Eastern Europe in the last two decades; Edit: "We have the money, we can do anything" attitude.

In all, for me, this is a terrible idea.

[lapinschous]

Of course no one can replace her , but what we'll do is trying to come as close as possible .
Miracles do exist, and with the necessary funds and some donations we'll achieve a lot I'm sure :)

If this is a success, then it might even benefit Alizée's popularity that is currently dying off... At the rate fans are leaving her behind , we must act ! And i'm positive this project will bring back the public's attention to Lili. ;)

But of course we're open to criticism, please share your feelings on the matter !

Edit:

http://imageshack.us/a/img208/7562/a9n.png

We'll print the first posters in two weeks, here's a prototype. We'll only print a couple hundred of those ones to test the public reaction and see how it looks like.
My friends will be in charge on contacting the local newspaper to tell the population about our project. (It's really easy to appear in the newspaper here, just tell them that you're a foreigner and give them some money :D )


Btw: Fée-Nix is a pun , Fée means fairy in french, and Phénix ... well Phoenix. ;)

[Panther]

I think it's a great idea - for you and your friends. I very much admire your creative spirit and energy and you will learn a lot about life, the media and people, along the way. It would be interesting to know how Alizee felt about it, but either way, I wish you all the luck in the world.

[Karin]

Must agree with Marka, I think the idea is really stupid...

...its like with the mexican girl Tabata... however she doesnt tried to be the "copy" of Alizée, but still she tried to perform JEAM (however it was really bad), so every attention get more on her than Alizee

[Marka]

Lapinschous, don't be discouraged and/or don't think that I have anything against you, I just dislike the idea because of the details - if it took place in France (to avoid the curse of the East Europe and the way capitalism was introduced there) and if all of you had some really good ideas I could relate to, I would support you, but in the present form, I do not do such things as these. Sorry.

[lapinschous]

My friends and I after we were done with the university stuff directly went to a dancing school a few blocks away that we've heard of from local romanian students (reportedly full of beautiful highscool girls ) ... surprisingly we were very nicely welcomed there, a dancer speaking very good english even brought us tea !

We had a look at the girls training (well there wasn't many as the holidays have started) for about 20 minutes while talking about our project to the chick. .. well since we were always mentionning the name of Alizée, we had to show her some videos on an ipad , and when we played one the moi lolita live performance she instantaneously recognized the song and said that everyone knows it here but they all just forgot the name of the singer !

The good news is she gave us a list of all the dancing or singing school she knew of in the region and even invited us to see the girls from her school performing at the end of the holidays !

I'll keep you guys up to date!

(other good news is that we might be able to recruit a fourth guy from Norway who showed some interest in the project!! )

[Ray4AJ]

For the most part I have to go along with what Panther wrote.

I don't quite get the motive though. I mean, Alizée walked away from that era, says she never would listen to the kind of music she was singing back then, and visibly cringes in every recent interview when they bring up Moi...Lolita and just won't let the past go. She says she has grown and that her fans have grown with her. I don't think a new imaginary Alizée from the old days will benefit the path she has chosen for the present. Besides, to many fans there is so much more to her than the songs and the dancing and her looks. It's what's inside her that makes her special, and her kindness and generosity to her fans.

I don't know how things go there but if you were to do the same thing in the US I'd recommend requiring the talent to have chaperones present at all times, and make sure none of you are ever alone with any of the girls. You never know what claims someone not chosen the winner might come up with. Of course, a cash settlement might be required. Just keep the atmosphere appropriate and there probably won't be any problems.

Good luck with the project though, maybe I'm completely wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

[Marka]

Listen to Ray and don't get yourselves into any trouble, you might be needed later on in life, and if you are dead, that won't be possible.

I see that you really will do it. Good luck. Do reality checks from time to time and also have backup plans and be ready to cancel everything at any time.

[Karin]

Lapinschous,

maybe you dont mean nothing bad with this project, but I have feeling it can turn to weird way. The girls which you will find maybe for first time will be ok, to try to be as much possible as Alizée, but as I know todays generation... and sorry I must say it, half todays young girls are future bitches or future gold-diggers... honor to some exceptions...
Then however the idea can be peaceful, but the most Europe has really bad meaning about people living in eastern Europe, and dont tell me not, cause I know it very well.

You wrote somewhere about you want to get Alizées approval... however I dont believe it will happen... but if yes... we know that sometimes Alizée is saying other things than things which she really want to say... by this I want to say, maybe she would give you approval, but in her mind there will be opposite oppinion.
Just look... people still post the old stuff, however she clearly explained she never liked to be a "doll"... but she takes the situation "OK" cause it was part of her life... but still, I dont think its good to rewoke the memories on "old" Alizée, when she hardly tried and still try to find her own way and we should be with her and not still look to past. I see it many times on our A-Life page - on friday I posted photo from Fete De La Musique from 2003, and someone commeted "2003 - RIP Alizée". I know people liked most the G and MCE, but if they and YOU most here still want to live in the dimenssion of "old" Alizée, sorry but its really situation for thinking if you are fans of Alizée or just her old work.

So I think, the rewoking Alizées "old" musical life, using others people can more hurt her and her career...

[lapinschous]

I don't know how things go there but if you were to do the same thing in the US I'd recommend requiring the talent to have chaperones present at all times, and make sure none of you are ever alone with any of the girls. You never know what claims someone not chosen the winner might come up with. Of course, a cash settlement might be required. Just keep the atmosphere appropriate and there probably won't be any problems.

Thanks for your concern guys, we thought about that... but again, what we'll be looking for in the numerous castings and interviews we'll do with each candidates will be that little spark in Alizée's eyes, that innocence, spontaneity that makes Lili all so special. We'll be looking at the facial features , bodytype, pitch of the voice , personality, honesty etc. but we'll also have to make sure that once we've put all our investment in time and money one those five definitive girls, they won't leave the project (We'll never dare to ask them to pay us back the dozens of singing or dancing lessons, so we will first make sure that we can trust them and their family) .

I'm not sure we'll have to worry about cash settlement or legal concerns because we're talking about 14 to 16 years old girls just like Alizée was at graines de stars and we've already decided that we won't give to the candidates any money during the selection process no salary whatsoever... We will be looking for girls motivated in the project, not in money. (But we might end up giving them pocket money once we'll have the 5 definitive candidates, and ofc we'll share the revenue if we manage to perform on stage after the first year of training.)

So yeah, that's really a quest to find a bunch of girls as close as possible to Alizée , even though it's pretty obvious we'll never find the exact same Lili , it's gonna be an interesting experience to give the opportunity to a few girls to embody the character created by Mylène Farmer and Laurent Boutonnat, just like Alizée played that role 13 years ago. It's just about finding the right person to wear the Lolita suit :p


So since today is sunday and everything is closed, we won't be able to print the prototype posters, but Steffen (the german dude) will be getting the official visiting cards of the Fée-Nix project he got from a friend of his .

Then we'll chill out at the beach before the sun sets (yeah it's already 7 here), and we'll be looking for the highschool girl we met last week, she said she could introduce us to some of the most beautiful girls of the city ... so we'll give her some of our freshly printed visiting cards! ^^

...and then watch the Man of Steel ! :D



Edit:

I know people liked most the G and MCE, but if they and YOU most here still want to live in the dimenssion of "old" Alizée, sorry but its really situation for thinking if you are fans of Alizée or just her old work.

So I think, the rewoking Alizées "old" musical life, using others people can more hurt her and her career...

I understand what you mean Karin :/

But that's a reality, most people in France and Europe only remembered Alizée because of her divine collaboration with the great queen of european pop , Mylène Farmer . I , personally, as a fan of Lili , I like all her albums , but I just feel frustrated to sit there and watch the legend of our fairy fade away .

What we're doing will not hurt Alizée's status, on the contrary if we succeed , it will shed a new light on Alizée's carreer and might focus people interest on Alizée even more, because lots of people have forgotten about the early song .

Trust me, the musical industry is very dynamic here ! Especially in Romania where there is so much new artists every year that new labels are created each year. So if we manage to get those carefully selected teenagers under the spotlight , Alizée's music will get all the media's attention , that's fofor sure ! Because let me remind you guys that what lots of young locals arare used to listen to here is very low quality "music" ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnPqWLEKmuM

Alizée's music will be a revolution compared to this crap

[Marka]

Hmmm so basically, you will use music from MCE and Gourmandises and these girls will do exactly the same thing Alizée did back in the day? Hmmm it seems like MF and LB themselves might have something to say about this, not Alizée. Perhaps you should also study the legal side of the deal - their works are not under Creative Commons!

Please state clearly, what are you exactly going to do, and what will these girls do?

Please, don't create another Lolita Jolie.

[Lili4ever]

Lappy, i like the idea of a sexy 14 years old lolita, but i don't like the idea of involving Alizee into this so much. You can copy cat Alizee with out her name being involved. Get a sexy girl with some talent to dance and sweet voice. Write her sexy lyrics, good light dance music. Dress her in tight outfit. Show her Alizee videos. And screw the french language. It is a limited market and learning french would require too much effort and resources. Stick to english and romanian. Requires much less effort and is much bigger world wide market. You have plenty of material learn from. Alizee, Britney Spears, Inna, KPOP. Now, you have to be careful with all the laws and stuff. Maybe consult a romanian lawyer, pay him to write contracts. I think the most important is the first single. With sexy female singers, lyrics don't have to be too complicated. It's the music and video that is important. In this youtube age it is really easy to get attention if you have good stuff. God damn cute cat videos get hundreds of millions of views. Again. I think you should dump Alizee's name and outfits. Too much problems with legal and copyright sutff. Make something simmilar, but not identical

[lapinschous]

Lots of great stuff happened today! :-D We met about 40 girls between 14-18 some even started singing for us .. but more on that tomorrow , there's so much to tell you guys !

One of my friends recorded a couple of girls aged 14 and 15 singing almost acapella (using my phone) We are never ever getting back together from Taylor Swift , and one of them looked a lot like Lili except that she had blonde hair , it was really amazing I 'll share the video with you guys tomorrow .

We've started taking pictures of the girls we're interested in recruiting for a casting, I think I might post them here to ask you guys your opinion .

Anyway, we're all super excited so far so we'll go out tonight (we haven't since the end of the semester at the university) :D

Edit:

Lappy, i like the idea of a sexy 14 years old lolita, but i don't like the idea of involving Alizee into this so much. You can copy cat Alizee with out her name being involved. Get a sexy girl with some talent to dance and sweet voice. Write her sexy lyrics, good light dance music.

Come on man, that's the whole point of the project , bringing the Lolita created by Mylène Farmer back to life ... :$ Moreover, even though I play piano and drums, and my friend a bit of guitar, we have absolutely no skills nor experience in writing song lyrics or even composing anything half as good as Laurent Boutonnat's music.


And screw the french language. It is a limited market and learning french would require too much effort and resources. Stick to english and romanian.


Well, we had in mind to get our girls known in France, and the whole project is to make them sing in French so they'll have to have learned the language in order to pronounce it correctly whiles singing because as Matevz said , we don't wanna create another Lolita Jolie with as crap load of autotune to mask her accent. Actually that would be easier than you think because there's LOTS of romanian guys speaking french out there, french is the second language taught there after english , many tv programs (series ,documentaries etc) here are in french with romanian subtitles ,actually Romania in the only country that has a latinic language and alphabet while all others have either Serbic roots or Cyrillic roots , so they can learn french really quick.

Keep in mind that we're hoping to get the girls to meet Lili when they'll speak a good enough french and english :)

Maybe consult a romanian lawyer, pay him to write contracts. I think the most important is the first single. With sexy female singers, lyrics don't have to be too complicated.

Yeah we'll definitely consult a lawyer , they're not expensive here, but that will be to get more information about how to get our girls to sing legally Alizée songs. "Lyrics don't have to be complicated" You're missing the whole thing dude! :( It's about quality music , it's about using the masterpieces that are the two first albums to bring them back to the spotlight!

[Lili4ever]

You're missing the whole thing dude! :( It's about quality music , it's about using the masterpieces that are the two first albums to bring them back to the spotlight!

oh ok. So you want to go as far as covering her songs ? It would be interesting to see, but i have no idea what would Lili think about that. I bet a sexy romanian teen doing some of the Alizee's dances would get millions of views on youtube. I still don't like the idea of using Alizee's name, but you free to go i guess. Just make sure, MF and LB don't come after you due to copyright infrigment. For all we know the dresses them selves can be copyrighted :)). Also, don't forget that you will have to pay royalties for all the songs you will be covering

[Karin]

Come on man, that's the whole point of the project , bringing the Lolita created by Mylène Farmer back to life ...

Well this is enough for me. This is not about Alizée and to "help" her career. This is about your weird dream to keep the "Lolita" alive.

[Marka]

Well this is enough for me. This is not about Alizée and to "help" her career. This is about your weird dream to keep the "Lolita" alive.

Nothing we do helps her career. All of our acts and projects are essentially just masturbation, they just satisfy our needs. All I can say is to just let lapinschous masturbate the way he wants, while you continue to masturbate in your own way, which is btw, if comparable, no less weird than his.

[Un-rêve]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbK573LQaDo

[Ray4AJ]

I've been thinking some more about this. Early on in my Alizée experience I was pondering the Mylene/Alizée 'collaboration' and asked another fan something like "Why didn't Mylene start over with another girl after Alizée left?" I was told that Mylene did have her niece Lisa do a song/video. There is stuff on Wikipedia about it and all.

http://www.wat.tv/video/lisa-drole-creepie-wpby_2h31t_.html

So I don't know where that project went and I'm not interested in knowing. I don't think Mylene did any more projects like this, and there must be a reason why she didn't.

Anyway, maybe Lapischous and his friends could create the next great sensation, and that would be really cool and a great experience for them. But I think they should make it original rather than doing anything related to Alizée. I know they want to impress her or help her career somehow, but I don't think either of those things will happen. Have the singer sing in English to reach the biggest audience.

Good luck to them and the project.

[lapinschous]

Hello there, sorry for being late with the update. Okay so before talking about what I said in my previous post I wanted to say that earlier tonight while we were having dinner in the pub down the road we talked about the criticism that we received from some people about the project and we really wanted to make clear that this project is not about creating a new Alizée because this won't be possible, but rather a way to find a new embodiment for the Lolita character created by MF . :)

But back to the good news,

So as I mentionned the day before, once we got our official visiting cards , we went to the beach and tried to contact that highschool girl we met recently because she said she'd be hanging out there around that time . So went there and luckily we called her a bit before arriving because she was planning on leaving with her friends.

So we got to the sea as quickly as we could and we saw her, and five of her friends , waiting for us with their bags half packed already.

So we sat there in the sand and started chatting, thankfully two of them spoke very good english and whenever we had to say something to the others they would translate. (too bad the three who didn't speak english were the cutest) So we talked about our project, showed some videos , gave some visiting cards , they seemed to really like Alizée's music, one even asked me to send on her phone the full MCE album via bluetooth. Then we started talking in details about the auditions, castings, and interviews we're planning, we showed them the poster , and as they understood we were serious about finding hundreds of candidates for the project they proposed us to call their friends over just as the first girl we met promised us to . So within half an hour , there was more than thirty girls (mostly around 15-16), among the prettiest of their school, who joined us .
It was a really wonderful moment when we all watched the sun set over the sea realizing there was about fourty chicks sitting there in front of us :D .

But as you might expect, it was getting pretty dark, so soon after the other girls arrived and watched the sun set with us, we asked them to follow us to a park nearby where we could talk. (the scary thing is that the police stared at us , while we were on our way to the park with dozens of teens following us... lmao )

Okay so sat in a circle in that park Steffen and I had to explain again the project (while Thomas was faking being busy with his macbook because I believe he was too shy to face all those girls :p but that's between us)
Then as I was going into the details yet again Steffen decided to stress the point that there was no money to be earned in that project and that the candidates would have to be very motivated. And surprisingly , this didn't even made them blink, so we were sure they wouldn't be doing that for cash .
So after we were done telling them that we needed their help to spread the word about the project, some girls asked us lots of questions about who she was , what she did etc. So we didn't know where to start, I knew the most about her so I kept on answering, especially to a couple of girls who seemed to love everything about france lol . So the atmosphere was really great, we asked them their names and age and phone numbers, and just as we were standing up planning to say them goodbye, some girls who were a bit too excited started "singing" ... okay I'll be honest they were laughing more than they were singing, but that gave an idea to others, and that's how two of the youngest girls starting singing and dancing to the Taylor Swift song, but I realized I had it on my phone so I played it and they sang in synch , then Thomas quickly grabbed the camcorder and recorded it . They had a really sweet voice , I wanted to share the videos with you guys as I said it in the other post, but after we discussed at the pub last night we decided we shouldn't give those girls too much exposure at least until they'd give us permission to do so, and their parent's since they're really young... and posting it here among the strong criticism wouldn't be a good idea at this point anyway.

So , yeah, once they were done singing, we clapped, and congratulated them with the little romanian we knew , we then made sure we had everyone's name and number, then it was soon over and we left the park.

This meeting gave us a lot more confidence in the project since the girls told us they would talk about it to girls from other schools , even from nearby cities!

We then went clubbing to celebrate both the start of the holidays and the promising start of our project.

On the next day , (today or yesterday depending on your local time) , we didn't loose time and headed straight to the copy service to ask them about their tariffs regarding the printing of the posters , it didn't seem to expensive but Steffen proposed to seek for more businesses to compare their tariffs .
Later on, we went to another dancing school a few miles away from the first one we visited the other day, unfortunately it was closed, so since we were in the administrative part of the city, we decided to get an appointment with a lawyer as Lili4ever proposed, so we knocked on the door of half a dozen lawyers, only a handful were there but we still managed to get two appointments next week, unfortunately I will be leaving to switzerland for my hospital summer practice , and Thomas will go back to france, so we'll Steffen take care of this stuff.

Today we're planning to go back to the dancing school that was closed yesterday, we'll also try to launch something using facebook but we're not yet sure how, and the good news is we might get some financial support from donations of some Mylène Farmer fans that Thomas contacted ! :aha:

Okay so great stuff so far, tomorrow we'll start looking for a studio to rentt as well as mics and speakers on the internet for the set up of the casting. I know that's a bit early because we won't start publishing our posters and doing the first candidates interview before the end of the holidays but we prefer to get everything ready in advance.


From AF I really admire your ambition Lapinschous.. it's amazing what Alizée inspires some of us to do at times. Well I'm not one to stand in the way of anyone's dreams, so I say go for it. If things don't work out for you though.. at the very least you can still say you tried.


Thanks for your support , it's not really an ambition , more like making a dream come true, a dream we couldn't realize because we were too young back in the 2000's ^^

If it doesn't work , well... that will just be a waste of money, but a great life experience


Edit:

Oh god... I just realized Robert Rhein is posting this thread everywhere on facebook to turn people against the project... dammit , I think we should communicate less on the internet about it or every new step will be a struggle against the overprotective haters... :/

[Un-rêve]

Thanks for your support , it's not really an ambition , more like making a dream come true, a dream we couldn't realize because we were too young back in the 2000's ^^

If it doesn't work , well... that will just be a waste of money, but a great life experience

Indeed it will be a great life experience! :)

BTW

Ridingthewave is my nick over at AF.. I'm a member there too. ;)

[Karin]

Oh god... I just realized Robert Rhein is posting this thread everywhere on facebook to turn people against the project... dammit , I think we should communicate less on the internet about it or every new step will be a struggle against the overprotective haters... :/

we are making our job, to know what people think about it and many people are against it. Dont play on little poor boy, against who are people. Thats your own fault, cause you are starting the most stupid project ever.
Why you didnt post you idea on Alizée-France, he? You are afraid that they will kill you there? I asked some people from A-Fr what they think about your project... dont pray to know what they think about it.

Make what you want, if you want waste your many... but dont put Alizée in this project and dont play on us a theater that it will be help her, cause the reality will be opposite.

[lapinschous]

... I didn't post it on A France yet because I want to make it a surprise for Alizée since I know she's regurlary checking on the french forums.

You and Robert obviously do not understand that this isn't about today's Alizée, consider the project like a way to get new girls to play the Lolita character... I don't know how many times I'll have to say it, it's a bloody character, even Alizée said it, why would you care so much ? I heard you guys saying that you were afraid of us replacing Alizée, but there is nothing to replace since the lolita doesn't exist anymore...

What the hell Karin, you seriously need to understand what we're doing before criticizing everything about the project.

Anyway, everything is going smoothly so far.

[Karin]

I understand very well its not about todays Alizee, and thats the problem... the "Lolita" time was part of her life, which she however never liked but still... so I think its not good idea to make the Lolita alive again, using other persons. Yea, it would be surprise for Alizée... but very bad. Do you think she would be happy, that you want to rewoke the "Lolita" life thanks which many people in France think she is just one big bitch? Nobody said, at least not me, that you want replace Alizée, but sorry it sound so... many people said it, when they read your idea.... and that are french Alizée fans!

If you would like to increase Alizées popularity using material after "Lolita", I would have nothing against... It would be much better use her "not-lolita" work... 1. it would promote more her not-mylene stuff, and remind people she still exists and has other new material...

[Jenny_HRO87]

copy of my post over @ AF. Maybe you won't ignore it this time...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

wow. you must have a lot money to spare to make young girls "famous" for a few minutes...

I'm sorry but this project makes me feel quite uncomfortable. So you are looking for a "new" Alizée right? You take young girls and make them into "Alizées"?

First of all, you can't just copy a person, people should express themselves and not just copy someone for this kind of "casting". You might copy some habits or something you like from a person you adore but you can't copy a person. Unless you want to cast an Alizée double or something.

and when you found "her" or "them" - so what? I mean did it occur to you that these girls might have hopes? and more hope than just singing for one time a few french songs in front of some people? Don't you think some might be doing this because they expect to get "discovered", get a career or sth? Do you really think this might happen? There are a shitload of singing contests etc. stuff like this simply doesn't happen. And in the end you will stand there in front of girls with shattered hopes?

I'm sorry I don't wanna be rude but let's be honest... but this sounds too much to me like you creating little Alizée because you and your friend are frustrated that you can't be close to her yourselves...

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[lapinschous]

It would be much better use her "not-lolita" work... 1. it would promote more her not-mylene stuff, and remind people she still exists and has other new material...

Look, ... everything she did after the second album is seriously unpopular in France... the people wouldn't even wanna know about it. If there is a way to make people remember about her, it's thru her work with Mylène, I don't like to say it, but it's the only way. If you ask anyone in France who they think Alizée is, they'll tell you about the Lolita... :(

Edit:


wow. you must have a lot money to spare to make young girls "famous" for a few minutes...

"For a few minutes" ? Nah, it's about a long term fame with a contract with a label etc.. It's some sort of investment , just like Gainsbourg invested on France Gall, just like Laurent Boutonnat invested on Mylène, and just like Mylène invested on Alizée. and like all investments there are risks, it might work and it might not...




First of all, you can't just copy a person, people should express themselves and not just copy someone for this kind of "casting". You might copy some habits or something you like from a person you adore but you can't copy a person. Unless you want to cast an Alizée double or something.

We will not find another Alizée, we will find someone with a personality, a face , a bodytype, that will closely resembles Alizée's .... It's about finding the one that is as close as possible to Alizée's standards.


I mean did it occur to you that these girls might have hopes? and more hope than just singing for one time a few french songs in front of some people? Don't you think some might be doing this because they expect to get "discovered", get a career or sth? Do you really think this might happen?

We will do everything we can to make it happen :)
Seriously , once we'll have taught those girls, french and english, how to sing and dance, how to do behave during interviews etc. Even if our project doesn't continue or if we can't bring them to France, we'd have helped them in their career... ;)

[Junkmale]

I can't quite figure out what you are trying to accomplish with this Lappy?

Why involve Alizee at all?
If you are going to put a lot of money, time and effort into it why not just use it to find a talented Romanian singer and let her 'do her own thing'?
I'm sure that there are many really good Romanian singers out there who would jump at the chance for a little recognition but to bring them in and then to tell them to 'impersonate' someone else just doesn't make much sense to me.
I know if it was me i wouldn't want to be just another tribute act for an artist who has moved on from that particular style many many years ago.

I also think you may be very much on thin ice by asking a lot of underage girls to come in and dance for you and let you take their photos and videos of them. I don't know the laws in Romania but here you could get arrested for that sort of thing.

But good luck with it. Just consider letting whoever it is you might 'discover' perform in there own style. You might be very surprised who turns up?

Leave Alizee out of it. She wouldn't be impressed i think.

[Ray4AJ]

one even asked me to send on her phone the full MCE album via bluetooth.

Hopefully you didn't do it, but gave her links to iTunes or something like that instead. :fear:

[lapinschous]

Hopefully you didn't do it, but gave her links to iTunes or something like that instead. :fear:

well...

You know I don't think there's anyone among the girls we met who ever downloaded music legally... don't expect a bunch of 15yo in a country with one of the highest poverty rate in eastern europe to spend money on the internet :/

[Scruffydog777]

I had seen this thread when it was first posted and I thought someone would be more likely to be hit by lightning a half a dozen times before they'd find another Alizee, but it wasn't something I thought had much of a chance of happening but if Lapinschous wanted to pursure this effort, I didn't see much harm in it, but in the past few days, I've received some comments from outside this thread from people who were not at all happy with it, so I decided to give a very close view and so I read through all the posts again.

Now you say this is not an attempt to replace Alizee, but I think if you achieve the amount of success that you are striving for, that's exactly what you'll do. If you achieve a marginal amount of success, you will probably come up with somethng similar, but probably a little better than that video you had in your first post and a video like that would probably get some people interested enough to find out more about the song and the dance and thus discover Alizee, but again if it gets the good results you hope for, You will find a very beautiful girl, who's a great dancer, maybe a great personality like Alizee and if they can sing the songs much the way Alizee did, then you will have created a performer that people who haven't heard Alizee sing before and who hear this new Alizee sing and perform for the first time will probably fall in love with this new character and wont care a bit about finding out about the original Alizee. So in you attempt to carry on the Lolita spirit, you will be taking away potential fans from Alizee.

Now if you want to use totally different music and different dances and certainly not the name, that's fine. Create another "Lolita" image and not another "Alizee" image, but I'm sure you at least have to use the music for without it you have nothing. How ever if you achieve the amount of success I think you are hoping for, you will run into a road block by name of Mylene Farmer and Laurant Boutanant. I would think they still own the rights to the music and the lyrics and if they seeing someone starting to make money or even just a name for themselves off of their music, they will quickly step in.

One thing I've worried about is the song ML is about 13 years old now. They might want to release it again sometime in the not too distant future using a new young performer of their own choosing. I think that's a very real possibility and they wont look kindly upon someone else stealing their material.

So I think if you achieve a marginal level of success, you'll gain Alizee a few fans, but it won't be worth the money it takes.

If you achieve a great deal of success, you will cost Alizee fans and you might run into legal troubles.

As far as asking Alizee permission to do this, I think that's a very bad idea. Again you said it's not to replace her, but I think that's exactly how she'll look at it. This year she turns 29. The big 30 that a lot of young women dread is a little over a year away. She'll probably feel bad enough that she's approaching that age as a single woman. Now she'll think "My own fans are looking for someone younger than me!". I really hope you don't do this. Even if she approved of it, I think it would be a tremendous blow to her feelings.

As I mentioned in the begining, I think finding another Alizee will be an impossible task. There are so many great things about her; her looks, dancing, singing, personality, mannerisms, kindness. Then you take the great music and lyrics of MF and LB which were such a great match for her voice. In all my years, I've never experienced anything like this. I am quite happy with Alizee just the way she is. I hate those tats, but when I was watching her at Les Enfoires, I was still mesmerized by her beauty.

So I have to say I'm against this idea. I think there is something else you could do to help her along a similar line. This is something I suggested a couple of years ago and you can have some of those beautiful young Romanian woman help you do it. It's something I could've done in my younger days when I had a lot of younger freinds and a couple of video cameras and that is to make music videos of her songs.

Take for instance, Coeur deja pris. It's one of her most beautiful songs imo. I'd love to see this in a music video. Also songs like Lou ou toi or Youpidou or how about Tempete; not to mention her newer songs. There was a video that came out last year I believe which had a beautiful girl in it but a creep of a guy and it was amateurishly done I'd say, but with a little more work and a different guy in it, It could've done well, I think if you put the same type of time and effort that you are talking about putting into searching for and cultivating this new Alizee, into making some videos, then you might have something that would really benefit Alizee. But if you had a girl singing in a video, have her lip sync to Alizee's voice; don't replace Alizee's voice. If you replace her voice, you will be replacing Alizee.

[Marka]

Scruffy has a very good point... very very good point.

[Rocket]

Last year I saw a tribute band for Pink Floyd and it was brilliant. They sounded exactly like Floyd and did all of their greatest hits. So I don't see any problem with what lapinschous wants to do. My only problem is, as it's been pointed out, is Alizée's music from her Lolita days still popular enough to draw a good audience? Pink Floyd was known all over the world, won multiple awards and had a large following whereas Alizée is only known in Europe, Japan and Mexico. Even with that, her popularity is dwindling.

If I were you lapinschous, when you find the right girl, make a video of her doing anything in a relaxed atmosphere and then look at that video very closely. I have seen people who are gorgeous in person but who are not photogenic. It was while Mylène Farmer was watching Alizée on television that she knew this was the perfect girl for her Lolita project.

After you find the right girl, she will have to be able to sing. I will be the first to admit that Alizée does NOT have that great of a voice but when she sings À Contre-Courant and hits that high note, you can tell she's had voice training.

All in all, I wish you the best of luck lapinschous. As the song says: Dream always and all ways!

Bonne chance mon ami!

[lapinschous]

Thanks for your support Rocket ! : D I wish I could share with you guys some of the pictures we took because some of the girls are very, very cute... Anyway stand by for the Fée-Nix project till the end of the school holidays.... juicy stuff coming soon. ;)


If someone's into recording devices (lefty?) , we'd like to get some advice , we are looking for a good affordable mic for professional studio voice recording.

[lapinschous]

Just found a good microphone at a renowned music shop here in switzerland , I asked specifically for a mic suited for lossless performance with high pitched voices ( i.e. parler tout bas) , but it's way too expensive for us at this point , the good thing is I found it online for about half the price but we're still gonna compare it with the one Steffen found two weeks ago that was about 500€ .

https://www.google.com/shopping/product/16410218169913700695?q=studio+recording+microphone&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=ZRTYUYrJDoTwhQfo74HYDQ&ved=0CI8CEPMCMAg

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn187/kev49r/mike4.jpg


Fun fact: It kinda looks like the one Alizée used for her first tv appearance while singing Waiting For Tonight at Graines de Star :p

Edit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAyYQj-bwzc

[lefty12357]

Neumann makes great stuff. They also have a less expensive TLM-102, I believe. I use an AKG C 414.

Edit: Remember that these are condenser microphones, so make sure that the device you are going to plug them into has phantom power. Condensers are a good choice for vocals, but they need phantom power to operate.

[lapinschous]

Yeah they do, according to the salesman this model is ideal for low budget professional recording as it can be used for pretty much all instruments , works ideally with high pitched voices, is shock resistant and can even be used in non-ideal soundproof/echoproof environments which is perfect for us since we probably won't afford a professionally insulated recording studio ...and it's got a 4 years warranty !!

As to the phantom power system, I believe most if not all Neumann devices require it (I just looked it up and it seems that the brand its very inventor .. ^^ )

How are you using your AKG ? Did you use a sound booth to record your songs ?

[lefty12357]

I use the AKG for voice and acoustic instruments. I have a personal project studio, so the recording room and the control room share the same space. I used a combination of acoustic treatments consisting of absorbers, diffusers and bass traps. Of course they are tuned to my specific room size and shape.

For recordings on the fly in a room where you don't have control of the acoustics, it is best to set the microphone to a cardioid pattern. Many microphones have switchable polar patterns. A cardioid pattern provides the most sensitivity facing the vocalist, and much less sensitivity in other directions. This helps to eliminate unwanted and bad sounding reflections off of the walls of an untreated room, thus eliminating the room itself from the equation. Make sure the wall behind the vocalist is not too close, and hang a blanket on that wall to avoid reflections from behind. Also, if the floor isn't carpeted, throw down a rug. What you want to avoid is two hard surfaces facing each other. Avoid positioning the vocalist in the center of the room, but avoid being too close to walls, as well. If in doubt, put blankets on all the walls and over things such as desks. Adding some reverb to the voice in the mix will help to compensate for the lack of a good sounding space. If you follow this method, you can probably avoid using a vocal booth or other homemade remedies. Don't overdo the reverb.

I would also suggest that the vocalist use closed-back headphones to help prevent headphone sound from bleeding into the microphone. Also be aware of the proximity effect of the microphone. The vocalist should maintain a consistent distance from the microphone, such as 30cm (check your microphone's instructions). An experienced studio vocalist knows how to use the proximity effect to their advantage (like Alizée). An experienced vocalist who has never recorded in a studio before can have trouble with this. I think if you follow these suggestions you will get a satisfactory demo recording.

The only other consideration is blocking outside noise. A condenser microphone can pick up a lot of noises that may not sound very loud to the ear, but will end up on your recording. Obviously, you want to avoid windows, doors, people walking on squeaky floors, heating and air conditioning equipment going on and off, etc.

Edit: One other thing, use a pop filter on the microphone to avoid plosives. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Pop_filter.jpg&imgrefurl=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pop_filter.jpg&h=748&w=1087&sz=183&tbnid=KCjqWN0FwVzfKM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=131&zoom=1&usg=__ZAC4yORMQ5nzIJ6CZmGalWVkpQc=&docid=Cr31n7th4Q6kTM&sa=X&ei=83HYUanaMorXygGOvIEY&ved=0CHYQ9QEwBQ&dur=7094

[lapinschous]

Hey thank you so much for all your advice! I never heard of that cardioid pattern you mentionned, we'll make sure to everything as you said :)

btw, a friend of mine recommended covering the booth walls with egg cartons to avoid any unwanted reverb, would that be necessary even if we follow all the steps you mentionned ?

[lefty12357]

Hey thank you so much for all your advice! I never heard of that cardioid pattern you mentionned, we'll make sure to everything as you said :)

btw, a friend of mine recommended covering the booth walls with egg cartons to avoid any unwanted reverb, would that be necessary even if we follow all the steps you mentionned ?

The egg cartons and the blankets are interchangeable for the most part. Actually, I think a heavy blanket would work better than the egg cartons. In a perfect world, you would want a combination of absorption, diffusion and bass trapping. Blankets, egg cartons, foam, etc. mostly attenuate mid to higher frequencies. They do little to eliminate bass problems. Egg cartons may offer a bit of diffusion, but probably not enough to make a difference. Diffusion is more of a concern if you are trying to make a "sweet" sounding room in order to capture that element in the recording. In your case, you'll want to eliminate the room completely from contributing to the sound, since it is not a studio room designed as such. If you follow the practices I outlined in my previous post, I think you will get a good result.

You could also build some gobos, if you want. Here's a cheap example that would probably work well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCpwGgxmCaU

[george007]

Is there anything new going on about this project lapinschous? I hope you haven't abandoned it. :13: