May 2

WELCOME TO THE 10TH EDITION OF THE EUROVISION DIARY!

May 02

So, as many of you have figured out by now, we do have TWO Technical Directors on this show. Besides me looking after show, we have Pelle Hövde looking after all cameras, OB trucks, Intercom, Commentator boxes and all that jazz. It’s all in the spirit of: stick to what you know, and there is NO ONE in the world that knows enough of both broadcast AND show to be the Technical Director of both on a show of this scale. Many have tried, and they all failed. And so did their budgets………

And here he is! Our Technical Director for Broadcast, Pelle Hövde and his camping car! Let’s peek into his wonderful world of stuff.

The main OB truck is the heart of the broadcast. And it’s also the home of a lot of people, spending an endless amount of hours every day, to get every single shot correct.

Every shot in this show is scripted. All seven hours of live broadcast.

We are using cue pilot to cut this show, which means that we can timecode all the camera shots, so they appear exactly in the correct moment of the song. But this doesn’t mean that we skipped the operator for the vision mixer. He knows the songs as well as the computer, and is the physical back up if the cue pilot decided to have a melt down. The biggest advantage of using this system is that we can cut between different cameras faster than in any other way, and it always tells us what shot, what camera and the duration of the shot we are in when rehearsing, or reviewing rehearsals.

Here is the EBU switch that Felix is putting together in the MCR (Master control room). This is where all votes are received, and all broadcast links are sent out to the rest of the world.

Here is the patch panel on the OB truck. This is where all cameras are connected, and this is also from where we feed the EBU switch with the host broadcast feed. This feed is done by two separate fibers to give us full back up on it and it’s distributed to the world via two satellite dishes parked out in the OB Compound.

This is one of our Multi Camera Directors, Daniel Jelinek who is doing opening and intervals in Semi Final 1 and the songs in Semi Final 2.

This is Daniel’s DA Fennika.

And here is our second Multi Camera Director Robin Hoffwander who is doing the first Semi Final and opening and interval acts in Semi Final 2. In the Final, they are both rowing the boat to shore. Robin and Daniel did Eurovision 2013 together as well.

There is an average of 70 camera shots per song, and we have 42 songs. Then you can add three openings, and 5 interval acts, plus a bunch of 30 second thingies here and there, so I dare to say that we have more scripted camera shots than in ANY other show in the world.

Because we are awesome………….

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