Friday 9 May 2014

1st Dress Rehearsal - 2014 Final (Post-Songs)

After Lise's product plugging, Nikolaj and Pilou start talking about the commentators. It appears Graham Norton will be shown on TV again, probably one of the most famous Commentators accross Europe with his show being broadcast in many of the participating nations.

The voting is to start shortly and the list of all countries is seen. Shots of the green room follow with all but one of the sofa's being filled by stand-ins. The one which is not is France as you could imagine. Lorent, François and Patrick are taking in every minute of this it seems - and good on them for doing so.

Recap of the songs.

Back in the arena and Nikolaj informs us of the competition where people accross Europe were asked to send in their ideas of a performance on stage. A German viewer seems to have had the best idea, and he requeste to see what Eurovision wold look like in the future. We therefore have a preview of what the Contest will look like in 2075!

First of all it is an Earthvision. Every country in the world takes part. A showdown is needed to ensure the contest doesn't last two weeks and therefore five songs take part and sing at the same time. Well, this is ... painful. Merethe Trøan doesn't have enough lung capacity to mock this as much as it needs. We've seen some bad interval acts in the past but this takes the cake. Can we get Petra Mede again please? Really, if you ever needed the bathroom use this - you miss nothing!

After the randomness that was this 'interval', Lise is on stage with Gaia, winner of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2013 from Malta. Gaia doesn't sing her whole song but gives us a bit of the chorus.

Second recap ensues.

After the second recap, there is a 10 second countdown by the three presenters in order to close the televoting.

Nikolaj is on stage and informs us of the Danish museum of Eurovision History in Copenhagen. It incldes ABBA's actual costumes from 1974, the language school for visitors "Douze Points" says the teacher holding a stick. Johnny Logan (the real one) is there also and starts complaining about having to sit on the chair for hours and hours. In the children area, the younger amongst us go into a balloon arched-cave, where Lordi is there to scare them to death.

Leaving the kids area, we meet the Herrey's walking down the hallway, with their golden shoes leaving golden footprints on the floor. Finally, a karaoke booth with glitter and pyro and anything else which a Eurovision hopeful will need. Finishing this section (which in fairness is quite amusing) and we're back in the green room with Lise.

Lise talks to Richard and Michelle from Malta (again, the real artists this time) and also Molly (again, real!) which makes it slightly more interesting than when she was interviewing the fake ones. Molly would have voted for the Netherlands and Malta if she could.

Moving on and we now talk with Twin Twin. Patrick's hair naturally grew a French flag. Lise has a set of moustaches for Lorent and he selects one for himslef and also one for Lise to try on. This completes this section of the show.

Nikolaj and Pilou are back on stage and we are getting ready for Emmelie. A very different performance of Only Teardrops is shown on stage. Female dancers dressed as trees, many a man banging the stage with drum sticks... not really what we are used to.

We move along into Rain Maker and you have some drummer guys kneeling in the water for this. That water is quite deep!! We have people jumping into it (and going completely under)! Many a naked torso and jumping assets in bras to ensure all the watching public have something to look at.

The flags of all the participating nations start walking on stage as do the artists. Some of the artists seem to be enjoying this more than others. And some seem to know the lyrics a bit more than others too. In fact, some of them (not mentioning names) seem to be completely baffled as to what this is.

It seems that the section where the artists were singing the song which had previously been filmed has been removed. The original idea was that all artists would be filmed singing the song and clips used for this section however, for one reason or another, not all artists were invited to do the recording. This left some of those not requested to do so quite angry about the situation so instead of finishing all recordings, it appears the item was scrapped.

It seems the next section is for this:
I say it seems since it appears there are more technical issues and therefore everyone is just standing around looking confused. There's a lot of Danish being spoken - which I don't understand - and many a person with papers looking at what is going on next. The video posted above has been shown in bits and pieces so and Nikolaj has been seen at the white piano for a bit. I guess it might be considered funny and entertaining in some areas of the continent.

And yes, we have started again and in fact it is this ode to 12 points which is the next section.

And finally we have arrived to the most important part of the night - the votes! All the spokespeople will give a wave before the voting starts. Each of them is seen in a big block projected on the back wall.

And yet another issue now with the scores - no one knows who starts, is it Albania or Hungary? Again we seem to be needing to fill time while things get organised.

You'd assume that this part could not have been screwed up but it has been. Oh well, teething problems I'm sure. And now we start with the voting. And it is Albania who start us off. But it seems we are going in alphabetical order since next is Armenia. Ukraine gets 12 from 'Albania' and Belarus the twelve from 'Armenia'. I can see a pattern here. Will Azerbaijan get those from 'Austria' who is next to vote?

And yes, yes they do. So we know what the voting is like for this dress rehearsal. Alphabetical order for the country order and the 12 goes to the next song in line in performance order.

The voting order is ISO-2 code rather than alphabetical, Switzerland (CH) votes next after Belgium.

And yet more technical issues in this section. At least it's just a run through. Not nice to be watching this.

And if you were wondering why on earth it took so long to update anything, it's because it seems the voting section has been given up on. Nothing showing on screen, no audio and no one who seems to know what is going on It's raining heavily outside and well, that's about it. If nothing seems to be happening shortly I might take the opportunity to close and go for some much needed rest.

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