Eurovision Song Contest - Belgrade 2008

I have to admit, Iceland this year is my first choice and Sweden is my 2nd choice.

I liked the Swiss entry but alas you can't have it every way!

The camera work has been really good. Very little shots with jibs and steady-cams operators in the way, as there usually is!

I wonder if the BBC will let all of the final credits play this year with a proper Eurovision endcap, rather than the BBC's EBU one that they have put up at the end of the semi-finals...

I love the Swedish entry and think the Icelandic song is pretty good too. Actually for pure Eurovision Nonsense Point Scoring I like the Latvian thing too...!

Re camerawork, I missed Tuesday's semi, but thought that the direction while generally good last night, did miss a few tricks. The timing was a little off here and there, with steadicams in shot once or twice, cameramen scooting out of shot here and there and during one song (can't remember which - she got up on a table at one point with four male dancers...) the director cut to an overhead shot for the opening of the table to reveal a red diamond but cut away just as they pulled out red cloth from each side of the table... it would have looked great from overhead had they not cut back to a stage frontal shot... Maybe the cuts were as per the camera script and the performers' timing was off... a shame nonetheless.

Thought the postcards were great and I really loved the red and blue 'paint' crashing together as a graphical device. The Commercial Break opt-in/out holding cards were nice too... in previous years haven't we just had a wide shot of the auditorium?

Sadly, I doubt the BBC will let the credits run through uninterrupted, they usually pot out midway through before all the sponsor credits come up full screen.

Looking forward to Saturday though!

I think the BBC have to try and get out before the sponsor bit of the roller as it breaches their editorial guidelines.

For the same reason the BBC have to blank out the company logos that appear on screen during the scoreboard at times. (There was a blue block that kept appearing to blank out the digame.de graphic a year or two ago)

Anyone seen Darek Gatherer's statistical analysis.

He ignores the content and perceived quality of the songs and has just analysed the various voting patterns over the years, tracking the various bloc votes and how they've changed over time.

Last year he predicted Serbia to win - and they did.

He was pretty accurate with this year's first semi, but not with the second.

He has predicted Ukraine to win - because of the semi-effect - though a a basic run of his model predicts Serbia (who he is now putting second), with Russia a close third. He is also tipping Greece and Turkey as outsiders.

http://www.geocities.com/derek_gatherer/

(To understand the maps you need to go to a site that deals with 2 letter country ISO codes - as they are not all intuitive)

His long paper on voting patterns is well worth a read.

One interesting factor this year is that all the Scandinavian nations (Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark) have got through their semis - which is pretty unusual (and yes, I know Finland don't like being described as Scandinavian...). I suspect they will be very pleased with the new twin-semi system.

The semi-entries from the smaller twin voting teams - Belgium/Netherlands, UK/Ireland, Spain/Andorra - haven't done well as usual though. The big blocs are still favoured.

That's been the key downfall in recent years of the contest - the idea of being "fair" to everyone just doesn't work, fails to reward those that out perform others and has just damaged the structure of the show, especially with the voting.

I've always said the votes of countries not in the final should just be combined into an extra vote rather than getting one vote each, but I think at the very least they should just put all the non-competing votes straight on the score board rather than going too an extra 20 countries or so.

I'm sure someone, somewhere, has analysed the voting in recent years - would the outcome have been different if only those in the final voted?

As I've alreaday said, I missed semi final one on Tuesday evening, but I preset my HDD/DVD recorder to record it, and I've been watching it this morning. During the Wednesday evening Lottery draw, I accidentally heard that Ireland had already been knocked out, but apart from that, knew none of the rest of the outcome of Tuesday when I started watching at 9:50am this morning. You see, when they showed snippets of Tuesday's semi in the interval of yesterday's semi, I went out of the room to avoid knowing what happened, and switched off before the semi final two qualifiers were announed last night to avoid seeing what had already qualified.

Thus by not knowing at 9:50am this morning who had and hadn't qualified from Tuesday's semi, I was able to write the following analysis. The following remarks are written as though I had been watching live on Tuesday and writing them then, so any references to "tonight" in the rest of this message refer to Tuesday 20 May 2008. Here goes.

Song 1: MONTENEGRO "Zauvjek Volim Te"
The first song in this year's Contest to be aired: a male soloist with some ladies behind him. Not particularly exciting, that won't qualify.

Song 2: ISRAEL "The Fire In Your Eyes"
Not a bad song, not one of Israel's best, but better than their "Push The Button" from last year. I tend to prefer Israeli entries which, like this year's, are in Hebrew, and have a bit of the style of music that appeared near the start. A questionable qualifier.

Song 3: ESTONIA "Leto Svet"
A lively song, sounds kinda like a football anthem, with some Madness style beat thrown in for good measure. Liked the way the bloke in the red suit did a star jump early on. It could qualify just for being lively and a little silly, though not outrageously silly.

Song 4: MOLDOVA - "A Century Of Love"
From a football chant to a gentle ballad. How come the woman did all the singing while the bloke lazed on the sofa holiding the trumpet? Not sure it'll qualify, it's not catchy enough.

Song 5: SAN MARINO - "Complice"
Now for newcomers San Marino. A power ballad in which the one man seems to be doing all the singing. I don't think that'll go through somewhow.

Song 6: BELGIUM - "O Julissi"
After "Sanomi" five years ago, Belgium have done it again, done a song in a made-up language. What's the point in that when there's loads of languages world wide, even Chinese, Japanese or Swahilli? Still a rather catchy song, which includes some usage of the flute. That's going through, but not sure it'll be the runner up in the final unlike Sanomi in 2003.

Song 7: AZERBAIJAN - "Day After Day"
The other newcomers Azerbaijan. I don't particularly like that high pitching at the start, or the outfits. What's it meant to be, thrash metal or what? A take on "Hard Rock Hallelujah" (Lordi) from two years ago? That's not going to qualify.

Song 8: SLOVENIA - "Vrag Naj Vzame"
An upbeat catchy song, particularly the chorus. Quite a good middle eight too. Liked the use of arm movements, I enjoyed joining in and copying them That's going through!

Song 9: NORWAY - "Hold On Be Strong"
A beautiful ballad, well sung. That deserves to go through. It reminds me of the 2002 Israel song "Light A Candle".

Song 10: POLAND - "For Life"
Another ballad from a female soloist. I'd like to see this one on Saturday too.

Song 11: IRELAND - "Irelande Douze Pointe"
Dustin the Turkey now. Liked the way they wheeled him on in a trolley. It must be a human being in a costume singing live as all vocals have to be sung live. The backing singers are dancing around. Altogether a rather silly song, I'm not surprised there was so much booing. Deserves nul points tonight. I'll be gutted if this utter garbage goes through.

Song 12: ANDORRA - "Casanova"
Another catchy ABBAesque all-female ballad, this is about Andorra's best effort to-date. So far they've never qualified, but this should be their first time of qualifying to the final. See you Saturday.

Song 13: BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA - "Pokusaj"
Bosnia & Herzegovina have had excellent entries the last two years, but this one's nowhere near as good. This won't qualify.

Song 14: ARMENIA - "Qele Qele"
A catchy eastern style song. That ought to go through.

Song 15: THE NETHERLANDS - "Your Heart Belongs To Me"
A Motown style song. Reasonably OK, a questionable qualifier for Saturday.

Song 16: FINLAND - "Missa Miehet Ratsastaa"
A thrash metal entry, something like their winner two years ago Lordi "Hard Rock Hallelujah". I'm surprised they're singing in Finnish in this free language era, the last few years they've sung in English. Not my cup of tea, but I bet it'll go through just like Lordi did two years ago.

Song 17: ROMANIA - "Pe-O Margine De Lume"
It's happened again this year, a bloke combining a smart white shirt and black jacket with blue jeans. Not sure I like that combination. As far as the song goes, a reasonable ballad, but not sure it's got what it takes to go through.

Song 18: RUSSIA - "Believe"
The penultimate song of the night, the Russian entry. After a slow start, it had a reasonably catchy chorus. Will it be there Saturday? I don't think so somehow.

Song 19: GREECE - "Secret Combination"
The final song already. A reasonable song with good dance routine to end tonigh's line-up, it may go through. Unfortunately Greece you won't have your guaraneed 12 points from Cyprus, so you'll have to hope some of the other countries eligible to vote in the first semi-final will vote for you.

Well these are the ten I'd like to see on Saurday:
Israel, Estonia, Belgium, Slovenia, Norway, Poland, Andorra, Armenia, Netherlands, Greece.

Had I been watching live, and had the UK been given a vote in Semi Final One, I'd have voted for Slovenia.

So now I'm about to see the ten semi-final one qualifiers being announced. Then I'll watch the tail end of semi-final two, and I'll give my feedback on who made it from each semi to the final.

So now I've seen the rest of semi-final 1, and the tail end of semi-final 2 which I deliberately avoided seeing last night. Here are the qualifiers from each semi-final:

Semi-Final 1: Greece, Romania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Finland, Russia, Israel, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Poland, Norway.

Semi-Final 2: Ukraine, Croatia, Albania, Iceland, Georgia, Denmark, Sweden, Latvia, Turkey, Portugal.

I'm gutted that Slovenia and Andorra didn't make it to the final, they were superb songs. Better than Bosnia & Herzegovina or Azerbaijan. Also I'd have preferred to have seen Estonia or Belgium through instad of Finland. It seems the group representing Finland are the second Lordi, hoping to do as well as Lordi did two years ago.

Regarding the second semi, I'm glad that Sweden and Latvia are through. I'm not so keen about Denmark having gone through, I didn't think their song was as good as last year.

So with Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark all in, there's a full representation of Scandinavia this year. Greece are in but Cyprus are out, so Greece may still get 12 from Cyprus if (and only if) the eliminated semi-finalists are voting tomorrow (does anyone know?), but Greece certainly won't be able to give 12 back to Cyprus. No representation of Benelux, because both Belguim and Netherlands failed to qualify. Will Luxembourg ever make an abense after they last appeared 15 years ago in 1993?

Regarding the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia are in, but FYR Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovenia are out.

Think the message is that pure pop doesn't really go down well across Europe. What people think of Europop doesn't really travel across the whole of the new Europe as it did when Eurovision was basically "Western Europe-vision".

Think Andorra was a bit Stepsy (and thus dated). Slovenia usually enter good thumping dance numbers - and deserve to do better than they did. Was disappointed for them - as I was for Malta for similar reasons.


Yep - though I think Azerbaijan probably played better to an Eastern audience.



Yep - though the Finnish group had a pretty thumping track with well produced pyro sequences - and got very good coverage. Visually it was a good watch.



Think there is some light and shade going on this year - some MOR stuff getting through - which isn't a bad thing. Gets the Radio Two vote...



As in past years - all entrant countries can vote in the final - not just those who make it through. It isn't at all fair to only let final countries vote - and there has to be a reason for the countries to watch the final even if they aren't in it. We have to remember our guaranteed final position gives us a different outlook on the contest to most countries.



Don't see Luxembourg rejoining - don't think they are prepared to underwrite hosting the contest.



Yep - though presumably this may work in the favour of those in the final as all the Balkans can still vote their 12/10/8 are less likely to be diluted?

Incidentally, anyone with download accelerator software can capture the Octoshape stream from the 'official' site and record it. It does take a while though as it's played out in real time. You'll get a file called 'Octoshape' which can simply be renamed to a .wmv file and it'll play out using Windows Media Player. It doesn't appear to have any DRM associated with it.

(gather the file identifier properties by mouse hovering over the video screen on the player and then right clicking.)

In due course, of course, the DVD will be out, it's scheduled in around 5 weeks time.

Before I heard 'Hero' I wanted Slovenia to win, but since hearing 'Hero' I was hooked, and want it to win, go Sweden! Like the Latvian entry to, very catchy.

At the moment I'm a bit tied between the Greek and Swedish entries, both of which I think have potential to win, by my standards anyways. I think Hero is becoming my favourite, and it seems to be quite popular, so who knows.

And this is the biggest flaw with letting everyone vote, and counting their votes individualy on the night - it magnifies the bloc voting from the new recruits in eastern Europe.

What should happen is to group the losing semi-finalists in to five groups, and aggregate each groups scores into the usual 1-8/10 and 12 points. Then the 25 finalists give their votes out as normal. So, you still have 50 odd countries voting, but with only 30 hitting the scoreboard (and nice to see Serbian TV using VizRT to it's maximum this year ) any bloc voting is reduced, and would help level the playing field somewhat and make it fairer.