Promising bets boost impersonation tilt’s new season

BAUTISTA, CONCEPCION AND LAUREL. Enjoy theoretical edge over other contestants.

AFTER AN eventful but controversial first season, the “Your Face Sounds Familiar” singing impersonation tilt returns with a second edition to ABS-CBN this month—and viewers trust that key lessons have been learned to make it a better and more credible competition.

The new batch of impersonators include Kakai Bautista, Sam Concepcion, Myrtle Sarroza, Erik Nicolas, Michael Pangilinan, KZ Tandingan, Kean Cipriano and Denise Laurel.

Hope springs that this fresh batch includes standouts who will live up to the good performances turned in the first time around by the likes of Nyoy Volante, Jay R, Karla Estrada, Edgar Allan Guzman and Jolina Magdangal.

We’ll have to wait for the new batch’s initial performances to “educatedly” vet their respective chances of winning. Off the bat, however, we can observe that the theater background, exposure and training of the likes of Denise, Kakai and Sam give them a theoretical edge over the others.

Why so? Because musical-theater performers are trained to be versatile when it comes to depicting a wide range of different characters—and that’s what an impersonation tilt requires.

In instructive contrast, many other local performers are very happy just playing themselves, or minor variations thereof, and have a hard time even understanding the meaning of characterization, or playing other people, in performance.

So, they could have a harder time coming up with exceptional and convincing impersonations in the tilt’s follow-up edition.

On point of exceptional vocals, KZ and Kean are proven standouts—but, they have quite distinct and even “signature” personalities and styles as performers—so, we hope that they will be able to step out of their respective comfort zones and come up with a versatile gallery of impersonations.

Surprise factor

Other bets this season are not all that familiar faces and voices to viewers, like Erik, Myrtle and Michael. But, this should not be taken against them, because the “surprise factor” could turn out to be a big plus for them—if they turn out to be standout impersonators in their own right.

It’s important for them, therefore, to make sure that their first impersonations will impress viewers enough for them to decide to follow their progress in the course of the competition.

Lessons learned from the first season? The three resident judges didn’t do all that well, but have been retained. So ,we hope that they’ll do a much better job as mentors, dispensing much more detailed notes instead of just generally gushing over the “great” performances they’ve been privileged to witness.

This season’s new batch of contestants should also know that the choice and assignment of which celebrity to impersonate is all-important, so they should make sure that some bets aren’t inadvertently or intentionally favored in this regard.

We also expect improvements in the way that the contestants are transformed to look exactly like the celebrities they’re impersonating—no more garish “drawings” and caricatures on faces, please. And, make sure the physical size and height of the original is observed!

Finally, on the tilt’s “public voting” phase: Voter-viewers should favor exceptional ability to impersonate over personal and subjective factors—so the best impersonator will actually win—for a change!