An edited down version of the 1984 Eurovision Song Contest in Luxembourg (in a theater with multiple names) with a scoreboard using today’s technology. Nothing but a fun lockdown project.
This edit will give a flavour of the evening (5th May) with Terry Wogan’s UK commentary. Special edit goes to song 19, a lovely number from Portugal which I edited with the interval act.
You might think a tiny country like Luxembourg would struggle to host a show this size - but RTL is a major broadcasting player, operating in many countries today, and actually owns shows like The X Factor. How come? Well commercial TV and radio was allowed a lot earlier in Luxembourg than their neighbours (even many UK radio presenters started in Luxembourg) and this allowed them to boom in the industry and become a large multinational.
Their 1984 production is a triumph. The stage design is versatile and inspiring, despite being locked down to a traditional theater space. The presenter, a 19-year-old polyglot, swerved effortlessly through multiple languages and significantly sped up the sclerotic voting sequence seen in 1983. This is how to do multilingualism, ARD! The songs...well, meh. The fact there was no clear favourite going into the contest led to four countries dominating the scoreboard, at one point there was a 30 point gap between fourth and fifth. Wogan’s favourite fact about the Swedish band was that they lived on the west coast of America - I just get the sense that this was both an observation, and a criticism. I’ve kept the first postcard in this edit to show the first real use of computer graphics in the contest, and it’s worth noting the (two) computers at Frank Naef’s desk...they weren’t there in 1980.
I’ve also kept the booing of the UK entry in, just to show that we weren’t that popular in the 1980s either. Perhaps Luxembourg is picky with it’s American imports and they strongly dislike Motown - or they wanted to show their disgust at English football hooligans trashing the city in November 1983. And in 1977. Eek.
DESIGN AND THE BOARD
The strongest part of the design this year was two fold - the stage and the logo font. The stage comprises large geometric shapes that have a unique layout for each performance. The angular shapes make an excellent ‘84’ at the beginning (although only an inspired designer would reduce an ‘8’ down to a single quadrilateral) and it’s a nice touch to reorganise it to a ‘1’ for the winning performance. Stay tuned for the credit sequence too for more of the Luxembourg winners orchestral mix! The visual design reminded me of Channel 4’s (UK) iconic...icon - and I used that for inspiration for my motion design.
The display typeface, Yagi (Robert Trogman, early 1970s) has no official digitisation and was unlikely to be seen on anything requiring a computer, so I used Gus Thessalos’s (2010) version which has double lines but achieves the spirit of the look. You might recognise it’s other style, Yagi Double - it’s the CNN logo font!. For the on screen captions, Serif Gothic (ITC, 1972) is used for a geometric feel and this is what I’ve gone for as my main typeface. Seen it before? It’s the font on the Star Wars logo (The Force Awakens).
The scoreboard this year is most likely lifted from Munich - the leading country’s score ‘twinkles’ in the same way. For TV viewers, the board went blue at some point during the voting, after appearing in its physical form (black). I believe, although I am not certain, it was intended to be blue by using a form of chroma-key technique that would make it look more like a computer generated board but this must have failed at the beginning of the sequence.
TRANSFER NEWS (source: Wiki)
OUT: Greece, who decided that the show wasn’t good enough for Greek TV. Israel also didn’t compete, after coming second in Munich, because of a clash with it’s memorial day (Yom HaZikaron).
BACK: Ireland had sorted out it’s industrial disputes at RTÉ and also brought back Johnny Logan - as a writer. They meant business! Two out, one back, makes 19.
INTERVAL ACT - cut with song 19
Prague Theatre of Illuminated Drawing. A great performance of a ropey looking horse, set to piano music in a silent movie style, I edited some along with song 19 - although it doesn’t fit you get the jist!
CREDITS
JUGOVIZIJA for the higher quality vision
Nicolas Baus for Wogan’s commentary
Intermedium-Bremen for uploading so many of the old contests originally (including this one)
www.countryflags.com/en/ for all the free to use images of flags
Yugoslav flag by Đorđe Andrejević-Kun,https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
All Copyright goes to RTL, BBC.
00:00 Intro
03:19 Song Supercut
17:40 Song 19 with Interval act
19:02 Voting Intro
20:32 The reorder board 84
56:01 Recap and reprise
1:00:01 Closing Credits
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