Eurovision 2011 - 10/12/14 May 2011

I've just listened to all the songs in the first semi final, in order of performance. Currently my preferred ten qualifiers for the grand final are:

Norway
Switzerland
Finland
San Marino
Croatia
Iceland
Hungary
Portugal
Azerbaijan
Lithuania or Greece (borderline countries)

Of course my preference may change when I watch semi-final 1 on the night.

I've further comments about a couple of the above songs:
Croatia - catchy, good dance routine, but there strobes in preview video (I hope they dispense with them at Dusseldorf).
Finland - a beautiful ballad, but its saving the planet theme makes it a protest song (and protest songs tend to flop in Eurovision).

Here's some of the images from the video posted earlier- as it's quite hard to pause at the right time to see everything!

A couple of different logos. I'm assuming one is for the title sequence and the other is for going in/out of commercial breaks?:




Some of the country graphics:


Postcard sequence shots:


Song information strap:


Semi-final qualifiers scoreboard:


Final scoreboard:


12 points and Top 3 strap:

Do you think the straps will be sponsored by BBC iPlayer this year?

Very nice graphics suite those.
At least they've choose a font that is clarity over style which makes it easy to read. Some of the straps in the past few years have been absymal.

They may look good on the big arena screens, and close up on the GFX designers screen, but in use, and on the various viewers tv screens they quickly fall apart.

Arrgghh. Just looked at the proposed postcard sequence again. Nahh. Don't like the idea of 2 full screen white solar flare transition graphics coming around 2-4 seconds within each other.

Aren't the flare transitions either side of the full-screen VT? If so won't that mean there's a bit longer between them? (I don't think they're doing the clever 'virtual maps and screens over audience' stuff that NRK did last year)

This afternoon I've listened to the Semi-Final 2 participants in order of performance via the site http://www.eurovision.tv/mediaplayer/2011/

In some cases I just listened whilst doing other things, in some cases I actually watched the video in whole or in part. From my experience this afternoon, these are my ten preferred qualifiers for the final:

Bosnia & Herzegovina
Sweden
Israel
Slovenia
Romania
Estonia
Belarus
Latvia
Denmark
Ireland

Of course my preferences may change whilst watching semi-final 2.

Eurovision.TV shop has the Blu-ray on their site now. It is 2 discs after all, according to the cover - the other site must have got it wrong when they put 3.

At the risk of reading far too much into professional mock-ups, and that in the interests of space some steps may have been missed out, here's how I read the sequence, to get to my solarflare conculsion.

End of previous act/performance (1)
Graphic wipe into name of next perfoming country (2)
Full formed name caption (3)
Graphic wipe into postcard vt (4)
Solarflare wipe out of postcard (5)
Live cut to Green room or backstage with members of act delegation - or pocket of national supporters in arena (6)
Solarflare wipe to country name line-up and to perfomance (7-10)

I of course, could be wrong . Whatever, they do look great set of graphics and looking forward to seeing them next week..

http://premium1.uploadit.org/ChrisCornwall3/News/ESCBR2011-2.jpg
So this is the cover according to the shop ... where's the count?

Top left.

Well spotted Sherlock.

I hope they change the Bosnian flag before the show -- the one is this cap hasn't been used since 1998.