Rehearsals1 SF1 (Part 1)

After a flaky start from the technical side, we are pleased to announce that the press room can now watch and hear the rehearsals as you would expect us to.

Armenia
Starts off quite simple with just Aram MP3 on a darkened stage. Gentle blue light starts shining down on him, encircling him from above. This appears to be the design for most of the first part of the song, adding small amounts of ligt to the stage over the course of the song. Nothing amazing for stage concept for the time being but it works - the playfullness of the lighting on his one-man show is working well already.

And then you have it, you move into the rock part of the song and the lighting is used amazingly well, at one point the whole person is immersed in flashing light and even (if I was not mistaken) I see a crusifix of light to which he appears to be 'nailed to'. But that could just me seeing things which are not actually there.

Singing on the other hand, I think he is saving himself since I know he can do better than the performance this morning but there could be multiple factors as to why it sounded the way it did - unfortunately one of them not being the impromptu 90s karaoke session myself and Danny from esc-chat.com were having last night at the apartment.

Latvia
Well, what did you expect really from these guys?! They use the first verse of the song to nonchalantly walk on stage and then its just a case of performing the song. In one chorus (haven't counted which one) we have the use of the catwalk. Unlike Armenia, I don't think they are saving themselves vocally and unfortunately the sound does not seem to be coming across that good. Stage could also do with a bit more "oomph!" but again, it's not one of those songs which lends itself to big flashy shows. Not sure of what will happen to it, but wouldn't it be fun to see this on the Saturday night?!

Oh, and on the second run, the "piece of cake" line just sounds scary - I wouldn't want to take any cake from anyone that offered it to me like that - and don't get me wrong, cake is never refused in normal circumstances. I've asked if the guy singing is Raitis or Guntis ... yes, they are names, but unfortunately no one around me knew.

Third run through and this is starting to sound better than it did in the first round, but maybe it's more to do with getting accustomed to the sound rather than it actually being better.


Estonia
Starting off laying on thir backs on the stage, the song begins quetly in the background. Even though there are double the people on stage of Armenia, there are a couple of shots which just make the performers look like tiny ants on a massive stage - and althouh the lighting for these was quite nice, the smallness of the artits was all you could really focus on. These seem to have been altered slightly in run two but still there. There is a shot however in the bridge which uses the audience and stage really well - zooming out at just the right speed to fit quite well with the song.

Performance wise it doesn't really change much from what we've seen in the national selection. Why is that? Maybe they are thinking on the lines of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" or maybe it's just a case of no time to learn more complex dance routines from the time between Eestilaul and Eurovision. Whichever the reason may be, it's not a bad thing, but for us who have seen this time and time again it's got a bit "samey". Vocally however quite good - but you could have made that comment even before she stepped foot on stage, this is someone who does deliver her song well even when having to wake up at stupid o'clock to get ready for it.

I believe now it is time for a spot of luncheon and a coffee - and then back again for Sweden, Iceland and Albania.