MAR31-APR3

WELCOME TO THE 11TH EDITION OF THE EUROVISION DIARY!

MAR31-APR3

Hello everyone! Or Tjäääääna as we say in Sweden (in some odd retarded parts).
I’m not sure if I said this, but we had a really stressful first 10 days in this project, where there was no time whatsoever to spend on something as trivial as this diary.
So, we are still in catch up mode, covering these first 10 days of our group holiday trip to sunny Kyiv!

This is one of the most well searched boxes in the entire production! My party case was stuck in customs for a week together with all the other production cases.
Talk about being grumpy not getting your espresso in the mornings………….

It was also hard to find enough 30 & 40 meter cherry pickers that were crucial to have to reach the top beams in the highest part of the arena.
We had plently of lower ones, which resulted in that all the audience light was actually hung before we started with the mother grid above the stage.

But if you can’t trust the fire brigade in an emergency, who can you trust? Their 90 meter lift sure made things easier. Thanks for being a good sport lending it to us!

Hall 2 has a huge side annex that we have dedicated for props area and workshops for our suppliers. Here is the PRG–Litecom village.

You’ll need quite a lot of heavy duty truss if you are building a mother grid that has to support 140 tons over the stage area.

Mother grid being installed. Why isn’t it called Papa Grid? And why do we still call it dimmer city? Do we have anything dimmable in the big shows that we do today?

If you want to see the newest and coolest Elation fixtures on the market, you can go to ProLight & Sound in Frankfurt and check them out. Or you can come here! We have 850 of them!
A bit more than in the Elation booth in Frankfurt………. We’ll go into technical details of all the fun stuff we have in this hall once we’ve caught up with the past! Be patient! No really, PATIENT! 🙂

So, since we are running very late with most things in this project, as described on the welcome page, our official APP is not up and running yet. Therefore we have to do it the good old conventional 90’s way.
Printed day sheets, menus and bus schedules. We clearly sent someone vertically challenged to by the cork boards to post them on…….. (Joan Lyman)……. My Technical Manager for Grandstands John McDonough is not impressed.

Some more wonderful rockstars in my team! From left: Technical Director Peter Andersson, IT and Intercom Manager Axel Ekblad, Technical Manager for delegations Robban Roos, and my Operations Manager Anders Karlsson waiting for spring to come.

Here is a weird guy in a hat, together with my Technical Manager for Lighting, Matthias Rau. Matthias is also gaffer for our LD Jerry Appelt. Busy guy!

This pile of junk is actually not a pile of junk! It will be something really amazing! The most amazing thing ever actually! Stand by!

The center piece of our modest LED wall in position. This will be a 70 meter long and 11 meter tall curved wall once we are done.

The pile of junk starting to become something amazing! Stand by!

It was bloody cold here the first week. But the day after my belowed warm windbreaker arrived together with our production cases, spring decided to arrive, with 20° C (why do I clarify that it’s Celicius I’m talking about? All countries in the world but one knows what I’m talking about…….) and sun. Thank you mother nature.

Here are some more innocent victims I decided to annoy today……….

Name: Prefers to stay anonymous, although his t-shirt gives us a hint of who he works for…We’ll call him Touchy Dutchy.

Title: Technical Support Elation

OM: So you seem like a nerd to me. Can you explain this vibe I’m getting?

TD: You guessed correctly Ola. I’m a proud geek! I have an entire bookshelf of Star Wars books and I like to sleep with them next to me when I have bad dreams.

OM: And yet, you look like a hippie! When’s the last time you got a haircut?

TD: Glad you noticed – it was about 6 weeks ago but only a trim on the sides.

OM: And how are we feeling today?

TD: I’m hurrying up with waiting.

Name: Nicole Barnes

Title: Technical Production Assistant, Operations

OM: What would you be doing right now if you weren’t here in Kyiv with us?

NB: Load in for Coachella. OM: Is this why I’m explaining Celcius? Ha just kidding. Can you get me tickets for next year? NB: No. OM: Fine, I don’t like it anyway…….bitch.

OM: Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met?

NB: Ola Melzig!

OM: If you got a naked mole rat as a pet, what would you name it?

NB: Ola Melzig!