Eurovision 1988: The Forsyth saga | Redux - Song super cut and animated scoreboard

[@thereorderboard]

A few other things I couldn’t fit in the description: Hi! Firstly I should say that this production has taken me nearly two months as I have been doing other things finally, I won’t be making a regular return to posting long videos, but doing them from time-to-time. I felt that 1988 was the one from Part One of the project that’d I’d like to tackle again, mainly because I felt I could have done better on what I did in June 2020. Also, since then, there’s been plenty of good work by @SvenskTV, so higher quality video is available to cut from. I also wanted to bring the video up to a similar standard, with lyrics for the entries and some bulkier edits and notes. Thanks again to @mrjdsworld for his research in the newspapers of the time! For those interested, I’ll certainly take another look at 1980, if only to get rid of the problematic Spanish transitional flag, which I am still getting questions about! I’d like to perhaps tackle 1990 & 1991 again, as well as my favourite - 1981. But don’t be waiting around…it maybe 2024 until I get there! ARCHIVES: I do like to fold in any behind the scenes footage too, and RTÉ Archives offer a great service. To re-use the footage I think I would have to access it properly, and I felt RTÉ were perhaps best left not knowing about this project (before they start asking why Eurovision 1988 is on KZbin at all!). Anyway, here’s some clippings (selected by @mrjdsworld of course!) Awkward clips of the Eurovision presenters after that lengthy search: www.rte.ie/archives/collections/news/21269654-rt-eurovision-hosts/ As part of some of the ‘benefits in kind’ that surround RTÉ’s Eurovision, here’s footage of everyone on a train party, given by Iarnród Éireann (Irish Railways) - I’d hazard a guess Scott Fitzgerald had ‘had a few’: www.rte.ie/archives/collections/news/21275009-eurovision-train-journey/ And here’s a preview piece from the news a day before the final, probably the clip I would have used just before my video: www.rte.ie/archives/collections/news/21275033-eurovision-88-preview/ (Including shots of the new OB truck!) The sources for these notes are: Me, the newspaper clippings that @mrjdsworld found (give him a follow on Twitter!), Gordon Roxburgh’s book: ‘Songs for Europe: The United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest’, Volume 3 (1980s) and also some clippings from the wonderful andtheconductoris.eu. DESIGN: You’ll notice that I’ve approached this one differently, instead of interpreting design from the other aspects of the show, I’ve gone for a straight up re-creation with minimal animation and texturing, hoping to replicate as closely as possible what the computer could achieve in 1988…at the insistence of the designer controlling it of course! You won’t see nice smooth animations here, this is pure computational power. Typefaces? Well, we turn to the early days of computer-aided -design. As I wrote back in 2020, there was a plethora of typefaces available in use (part of the fun of CAD), with Palatino (I think) making an appearance on the song name graphics. Although Helvetica was prominent in the design, when Palatino (the Contest’s logo type) wasn’t used was replaced with a lightweight Helvetica (note the changing logo behind the presenter’s heads). The logo on wikipedia looks like a recreation using Times New Roman as then lettering, but we can clearly see it on the high quality animation that opens the show. On the scoreboard an italicised Helvetica does the big numbers, but the country names are in ‘Dom’ or ‘Dom Diagonal’ in this case. Most text receives a heavy black shadow too. Dom is a 1950 creation, I think for the film industry. There’s an interesting history here: www.commarts.com/columns/typefaces-as-film-stars You’ll recognise it from TV shows such as ‘Only Fools and Horses’ and ‘Clarissa Explains It All’, to name just two. It was quite fun hunting the right typeface down for this one, as without it, the whole thing doesn’t look the part. Needless to say I’ve added ‘reorder board’ functionality such as ‘CanWin’ and some Irish too. Eagle eyed viewers will note I’ve replaced the lengthy reveal of the ranking in 1988 with something similar too, but in performance order to avoid just a column of numbers appearing. There’s one point in the voting where Pat can’t pull up the ‘Top 5’…a new innovation for this year…I’ve sneakily added that in for him, 35 years later.

[@thereorderboard]

TECHNOLOGY: There’s some confusion, I think, in the Irish newspapers about exactly what the ‘vidiwalls’ are doing. A journalist writes that the scoreboard is being generated ‘from them’, but this is misleading from a technical perspective. It’s true to say that the scoreboard is on it though - but the Vidiwall software mentioned in this particular piece isn’t generating the board (I’m fairly certain, anyway). Wige Data, who had provided the last couple of physical scoreboards were still involved, and my guess is that this is generated via an Aston machine, just as it would be 9 years later by RTÉ in 1997 (although with some hardware upgrades). Aston were dominant in the UK for electronic graphic generation for many years and by 1988 they were certainly capable of doing something like the Eurovision scoreboard. As you can see in the original (and I’ve mimicked), the output is keyed over the vidiwall for the TV viewer and animated towards the viewer via the vision mixer (the big desk of buttons in the swanky new OB truck that RTÉ bought from Sony). For those in the RDS, they were just watching the same Aston machine being fed to the vidiwall. It can be quite difficult to determine whether Quantel’s revolutionary Paintbox was used at all - this was first used by the BBC in 1982’s show, and I assume RTÉ would have had one (although they were very expensive). Astons were often used for sport and live events because of the paging system (you could call up saved names, often requiring floppy discs) - and becoming an Aston operator developed into a bit of industry skill…being able to find particular pages of graphics at short notice, only for a director to moan if you got it wrong. It was a job often not envied by others on the production. Operating a whole scoring system must have taken nerves of steel! The top 5 graphic was new, but separating the top 5 and even showing the rankings of all the countries on the board was not new…it appeared first in 1985…again provided by Wige Data. MICHELLE ROCCA: I think it’s great that the scoring was so dramatic, and open, and we didn’t have any shambolic behaviour…perhaps 1977 is still in my mind! I felt Michelle Rocca dealt with the Israeli spokesperson really well, and I must tip my hat to the graphic operator who also didn’t budge until the correct order was adhered to. Michelle Rocca’s dad was the first person to receive Irish citizenship as a non-native - he’d travelled to Ireland to help repair the Four Courts, where the top of the Irish legal system is based (it was destroyed in the Civil War of 1922-3). I read that there was some awkwardness that Pat Kenny was a judge in the 1980s Miss Ireland Contest. UK: The Irish papers reported that the UK delegation retreated to their own pub and didn’t really mingle after the result. Such a close result, and clear disappointment from the BBC team in Dublin meant a scapegoat was quickly found. Although France and (of course) Yugoslavia didn’t give any points to the UK, it was the Dutch that were rounded upon. Fitzgerald’s involvement in the show came whilst he was based in the Netherlands and was well known there, although not clearly liked by the jury in Hilversum! Shortly before the Contest, Julie Forsyth had to ‘angrily’ deny any plagiarism with an Italian song. The paper report mentions Italy’s 1974 Euro-hit, also entitled ‘Go’…of course, Italy’s 1974 entry was ‘Si’ and I can find no corresponding lyrics, so they must be referencing something else? The accusation came from Jonathan King, a music producer who wasn’t a stranger to these accusations. King went on to produce the UK’s Eurovision entries from 1995-98. To his accusation Julie Forsyth simply said: ‘I don’t respect King enough to worry about his opinions’. Probably fair. Bruce Forysth (famous father) composed a private little ditty at the party, which ended with some Tulips being shoved where the sun doesn’t shine - Jimmy Moir (Head of Light Entertainment, pictured in the crowd) invited Bruce to add some spectre to the occasion. Overall the UK delegation had a great time though, and praised publicly the security they had received whilst in Ireland. The newspapers rallied to Scott in the aftermath of the occasion and had made a great impression in Dublin. As Gordon Roxburgh notes, having sung in a lot of working men’s clubs, singing with an orchestra and on such a huge stage was a huge highlight for him, despite suffering from nerves before the big night. Scott went on ‘Open Air’ a few days after the Contest, and video evidence of which is on Gordon Roxburgh’s KZbin channel: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oXy2hHl4Zs-koLM. Scott’s son, Ki Fitzgerald (Fitzgerald is a stage name, by the way) was an original member of the band ‘Busted’ for a time, and amongst other things, co-wrote Saara Aalto’s ‘Monsters’, a song which I’ll never understand why it finished so low in Lisbon 2018!

[@thereorderboard]

SPONSORSHIP: As already mentioned, I’ve used @SvenskTV’s high quality footage, but the opening is from a BBC recording - mainly because I like the inclusion of the BBC One ident - and I want to see a masterclass from ‘Giselle’! However, we also see here the different opening - the rather incongruous slate the BBC output shows is where the ‘Sony’ advert was - contrary to BBC rules on ‘undue prominence’ I think. On @SvenskTV’s footage, which is the NOS (Dutch) transmission, we see just an extended NOS Eurovision ident board. I wonder too, whether the early appearance of the Eurovision board at the end is something to do with the sponsorship, or an eager finger in the gallery. This was the first year where the credits would roll over the final song (something I personally like) and Gordon Roxburgh writes that the BBC came out of the show early, probably when the RTÉ board appeared. Slightly after the board goes away, we start to see a more traditional ‘cue dot’ (the flashing square) telling the other broadcasters to opt too. ODD BITS: To clear up some other random points/thoughts: Overall I think Wogan was slightly wrong with his comment that the best singer and the best song won on the night. I’d be inclined to say the best singer won, but the best song was probably Scott Fitzgerald’s (Julie Forsyth’s). Overall the top 5 was interesting and near my personal wish list…I don’t think I would have put Luxembourg up there, although I can see why it is. Yugoslavia spent almost the entire run in the top 5 but then was pipped into 6th place at the last. I perhaps would have gone: 1. SWI, 2. GBR, 3. NOR, 4. ISR, 5. YUG. Sweden certainly had a harsh night in Dublin, and deserved much higher, but I also think the running order was awful. All of those innovations and what it needed really was a producer-led ordering! Three Nordics together, the two contenders well in the first half…Germany and Austria next to each other… dull Belgian and French entires (both in French) next to each other too. I think Yugoslavia profited from being a bit of fun…16 to 20 was a tough bloc. Denmark adds some fun to proceedings, and is probably the hardest thing I’ve had to apply lyrics too…how many apostrophes?! Wogan’s gasping laugh when his mic comes back on suggests he and a colleague may have been laughing for a lot longer than the guitar stunt. There’s no where else to put this, but I thought I’d mention that one newspaper report mentioned that Portugal’s RTP may well have shown a long advert break over the ‘Hot House Flowers’ interval act. LYRICS CLARITY / ISRAEL: There is some confusion on the lyrics, particularly with Belgium and France who may not have been singing the right line in the right place on the night, according to my lyric source anyway. Israel’s song is also interesting because of the same duel meaning of ‘man’ in English meaning both ‘human’ and ‘male’. I think the song sounds and reads better if Yardena Arazi is singing about ‘man’ and leaving the meaning ambiguous rather than specifically saying ‘human’, as Pat Kenny suggests in his introduction (and also in the translation from eurovisionworld.com). You’ll know that Arazi was in Eurovision 1976, and one of the presenters in 1979. By 1988 she was consulting an astrologer who told her a song in 9th position would win…which Israel were drawn in. With Cyprus’s withdrawal, Israel moved to 8th and Céline Dion sand ninth. andtheconductoris.eu's inteview with Eldad Shrem mentions that the delegation certainly had fun, liberated from the security issues of previous Contests: “We went to all parties of the other delegations, but afterwards, we went back to the hotel to continue making music around the piano in the lobby. I or one of the background musicians sat at the piano, with the rest singing along to the tune. More and more members of other delegations joined us in our sing-along. While the circle around us got bigger and bigger, we continued until three or four o’clock in the night. It was the complete opposite experience of what happened to me in Stockholm in ’75, when Shlomo Artzi and I were not allowed to have contact with anyone. In 1988, the entire festival community gathered around the Israeli delegation for the whole week.”

[@thereorderboard]

SWITZERLAND: Céline Dion had already released her first record in 1981 aged just 13. Certainly Scott Fitzgerald was aware she posed a threat and he reveals in Roxburgh’s interview that someone told him to ‘keep an eye’ on Switzerland and he duly watched Céline’s rehearsal - he could tell she was perhaps holding herself back. Dion’s international career wasn’t assured at this time though, ‘Ne Partez Pas Sans Moi’ wasn’t released in English and only achieved a #1 in Belgium. In France, it peaked at #36. Dion returned to Montreal early the following day, after completing a photoshoot in Dublin after having no sleep. Her win did convinced her management that an English album should follow soon. In Lausanne in 1989, Dion opened the show like Logan did this year, but this time singing an English song (‘Where Does My Heart Beat Now’) which would earn her a hit in the US, but not in the UK (#72). It was ‘Beauty and the Beast’ that really rocketed her English career, followed by the ‘Power of Love’. Her first UK number 1 wasn’t achieved until 1994 with ‘Think Twice’, some 6 years after (the admittedly small) UK audience were first exposed to her. Despite her chasing success in the Anglo-sphere, and in particular in the US, Dion has always described herself as French, turning down an award in Quebec for ‘English Artist of the Year’ in 1991. AUSTRIA: Wilfried of Austria took his 0 points badly, insisting that Europe was rejecting his song on a political level. Austria’s President, Kurt Waldheim (who had been UN Secretary-General) was being investigated by a special committee designed to look into Waldheim’s Nazi past. In February 1988 the committee concluded that had been "in close proximity to some Nazi atrocities, knew they were going on and made no attempt to stop them". The committee also noted that "he only had very minor possibilities to act against the injustices happening”. Frank Naef was quite strong in his response to the idea that politics had got in the way: ‘the fact they have to say that this [Waldheim] was responsible is proof the authenticity of the way the juries assess the songs. It is is proof their song was not good enough to be judged by any other way’. Mr Naef! It was the sixth time Austria had occupied last place (doing so firstly on their debut in 1957), and the second time it had failed to score, although 1962’s scoring system was quite harsh. They’d again fail to score in 1991 and in 2015, when hosting for the second time - a failure to qualify to the grand final in 2022 means Austria is enduring it’s longest stint out of the Eurovision final so far, having last competed on Saturday night in 2018. Back in 1988, Harald Neuwirth has spoken to andtheconductoris.eu: “Wilfried’s vocal performance was plainly terrible. “He had been tense all week”, Neuwirth comments, “but when the big night was there and he saw this giant arena filled to the last seat, his nerves must have turned into outright fear. Wilfried has always been someone for a small stage, where he can charm the audience by his presentation. This large, commercial event was simply too much for him. When he started singing, of course he noticed it was not good… and then he started thinking - which, given his lack of singing technique, was not the best idea, as he then lost the last bit of his natural charm and, while forgetting to breathe, sang even worse. He added insult to injury by trying to look relaxed, leaning against the piano. He tried to act a singer. Even in this song, he could have put in more of his soul by leaving alone the rhythmical, typically German approach, replacing it with parlando, something he was really good at. I can safely say that was the worst performance in Wilfried’s career. Already during the song, I noticed it was not good. I had one of the ears of the headphones off, so I could listen to him while conducting the orchestra. I really felt for Wilfried.” Neuwirth had subscribed to the Waldheim effect though: "Austria deserved to be punished for creating the Waldheim monster. I am convinced the rest of Europe felt the urge to take revenge on Austria in all sorts of ways. Wilfried and the rest of us had to pay dearly for this. True, ‘Lisa Mona Lisa’ was not a brilliant song, but it was certainly not the worst entry in the contest.”

[@thereorderboard]

SWEDEN: Talking of going down the pub (not with Brucie), a delightful line that could only come from contemporaneous newspaper reporting: A Dublin pub called Scruffy Murphy’s was rubbing it’s hands with glee when it had booked the Swedish delegation’s after party, and anticipated IR£2,000 of takings. Due to Tommy Körberg’s inexplicably poor showing, Scruffy’s took the grand total of IR£130. Anders Beglund spoke to andtheconductoris.eu : “Our week in Dublin was not as comfortable as it could have been… the Swedish gutter press was after Tommy Körberg all the time, because he had an affair with an English singer who he knew from the musical Chess in London and everyone wanted to find out more about him and this girl. On top of that, Tommy, who is a gorgeous singer, fell ill and lost his voice for a couple of days. Luckily, he recovered just in time for the Saturday broadcast.” NETHERLANDS: The Dutch had an unsuccessful night too: Harry van Hoof spoke to andtheconductoris.eu: “For once, the lyrics were not pointlessly complicated. Gerard, who is a great singer, did not really behave professionally, however, overburdening his voice and physical condition by flying back to Holland for some lucrative gigs. The song culminated in a high note, which Gerard usually hit without any problem, but due to fatigue and nerves he sang it one octave lower, simply in tune with the background vocalists. He did not want to run the risk of failing on the key moment. Still today, when Gerard and I meet, I like to remind him of his cowardice… of course in jest! He usually responds by bursting into high-pitched singing for me. Dublin ’88 was a missed opportunity for us.” Despite a disappointing end, the team had fun though: “Harry: “Meeting Noel at countless Eurovision Song Contests, I struck up a liking for the guy. The Irish mentality is somewhat similar to the English, with a pinch of phlegmatic temperament and dry humour added to it. At the contest, Noel and I liked drinking a glass or two, talking about good music or improvising at the piano in the hotel lobby or in some bar - and often leaning against the piano as the evening progressed! Usually, some conductors from other countries joined us, especially the British guys, Alyn Ainsworth or Ronnie Hazlehurst, matched our temperament well. To people around us, we must have made the impression of forming a fraternity clan, which did not take the world of Eurovision entirely seriously.” FRANCE: The French had improved somewhat on their past 2 finishes, as andtheconductoris.eu explains in an interview with Guy Matteoni: “Gérard did not want to sing the song himself”, Matteoni recalls. “He had submitted it to the selection board of French television with the intention of giving it to another performer. The committee then contacted him with a simple message: we will not choose your song for the contest, unless you perform it yourself. Gérard must have felt a little apprehensive about doing Eurovision, but in the end he agreed. We were left with very little time…”. Once in Dublin, they didn’t have much fun either, due to specific security threats that often beleaguered the Israeli delegation: “We were told we were one of three delegations seriously threatened by terrorist groups. The other two countries were Israel and West Germany. This is all that was told to us by Irish police; we were not given any details. The organisation did not take this information lightly and attached a security officer to each and every member of our delegation. This bodyguard was at your side from the moment you left your hotel room at the beginning of the day to the time when you returned there in the evening. The situation made all of us a little nervous. During our free time, we tried to escape our guards, but to no avail. One day, Gérard and I made a stroll in the centre of Dublin. Some Irish youths wanted to have a chat with us, but they were immediately sent away by our guards. As you can imagine, I did not get to see much of Dublin that week… which was a pity, because it is such a pleasant town!” Matteoni was disappointed the song didn’t do better: “He was always nervous until the moment he went on stage - that was his way. I was so disappointed for him… to my mind, he deserved more. The song was good! When I listen to it now, twenty-five years later, it still sounds fresh and modern to me - certainly when compared to ‘Je suis l’enfant-soleil’ by Anne-Marie David, which has really turned into a song of a past era. In the late 1980s, Gérard went through a difficult period in his career. His live shows still drew large audiences, but his record sales had plummeted dramatically.”.

[@thereorderboard]

NORWAY: The Norwegian delegation also enjoyed their night. Arild Stav explains to andtheconductoris.eu: “For me, it did not really come as a surprise we did well in the voting. After all, ‘For vår jord’ has very nice melodic lines, which are not too common for a pop composition; moreover, the lyrics are quite meaningful, giving the song some substance… and then there was this fantastic background choir which created a genuine soul sound. To be honest, I believe we could have picked up even more points with another lead singer, as the choir was simply too good for her: she was totally blown away by the sound of the four background vocalists. With a more experienced vocalist such as Anita Skorgan herself, we could have come closer to winning the festival. […] That week in Dublin could hardly have been better. For a start, the atmosphere in our delegation was great, as we enjoyed Irish hospitality to the fullest. Then there was this other thing: I won the bet of the Norwegian delegation, as I had put my money on Céline Dion as the winner and came closest to predicting the first five or ten songs on the scoreboard correctly.” GREECE: Over with the Greek delegation, and theconductoris.eu finds that vote swapping was evident, in an interview with Chris Andreadis: "What annoyed me about the contest in those days, was the trading of votes amongst the chief of delegations before the contest: “You give us five votes and we will give you six”. Things like that really happened. I am not saying that ‘Kloun’ did badly because of cheating, but these practices were simply unfair. The habit of Cyprus and Greece of awarding each other’s entries with high votes no matter what also appalled me. I am happy to say that I was never involved in proceedings like this, but one thing is for sure: not all songs received the number of votes they deserved. As for Dublin, I only remember the experience because the hotel room that was booked for me was not clean.” FINLAND: There were also some problems with the orchestra and some issues with Finland’s performance, as an interview with Ossi Runne found out (andtheconductoris.eu): “In an unfortunate twist of fate, the backing tape with pre-recorded rhythm elements faded out at the beginning of the first chorus. The situation visibly unnerved Boulevard’s lead singer Kyösti Laihi, whose vocal performance on the night was below par. Finland finished second-last. “There is nothing wrong with backing tracks”, Runne thinks. “I think it was necessary to allow them into the contest, because, with just an orchestra available, composers and arrangers who wanted to create songs in a modern style could not add the exact electronic sounds which they had devised in the studio. It is impossible to recreate that with a symphony orchestra. In Dublin, on the night, while the group was performing and I was in front of the orchestra, I noticed something was wrong immediately. Why could we not hear the backing tape? In rehearsals, there had been no indication that anything would go wrong. This was the only time of all my Eurovision participations that something went wrong with the music, but I would like to stress that it was not my mistake… the backing tracks were the responsibility of the production crew backstage.”

[@koksy]

What I love about this the most is how the board changes at 1980s computer speeds.😂

[@jamesmt142]

This is definitely your best work - incredibly faithful to the original. 1988 for me is still the high watermark of Eurovision, it kind of had everything. The production was light years ahead of its time, in my opinion it was a fairly decent lineup, the debut of the electronic scoreboard, the to-the-wire voting sequence and finally with that one single point, the launch of a Hell of a career. It still amazes me that this production comes a whole three years BEFORE Alloragate. I would definitely say have another crack at 1991 simply because of how little the original board actually featured. Although there's one thing nobody's ever actually attempted to do; and that's an English subtitling. I'm told Toto is, on occasions, actually funny - if you speaka da lingo. However, as anyone who made the trip to Turin can attest, the Italians still don't do English as a lingua franca; they're one of the few holdouts of French as the "mutual" language. (Turin is of course also very close to Francophone countries.)

[@JeSuisRene]

I’ve done some reading into the lingua franca issue in Italy, and I’ve found that French was the MFL taught in Italian schools until well into the 1990s, by which point they started to switch to English. So I’d assume people from younger generations would be more likely to hold a conversation in English than French as opposed to older folk, but the Italians are notoriously proud of their language.

[@morbidsearch]

The 1988 scoreboard must have looked fantastic at the time. Now it looks like an Excel sheet.

[@debonidaniel]

Was the first virtual scoreboarding on history.The idea of RTÉ was turn the festival more atractive for the youngers.

[@Markstubation01]

Time ages us all

[@debonidaniel]

was reading about the visual revolution that RTÉ made in this edition and with a clear aim of attracting a younger audience. Until then this was the biggest place to host the contest, the biggest and most expensive stage and also the more technologies available at the time. The director's genius was reflected with the cameras without straight angles and the transformation of the arena into a dark place to make it seem that the arena was much bigger than it looked.

[@alphajackman8656]

Who's here after Nemo has won this year?

[@Starfilter1]

Thanks for this and I love the retro scoreboard! I can't bring myself to watch the end of it though... (I'm very much on Team Scott for this one!)

[@JeSuisRene]

You’ve done a fine job in transporting us back to 1988 with the visual design, well done! Interesting how the Norwegian entry wasn’t high with the UK bookies but was with the Irish bookies… especially given that Norway received a high score of 12 from the UK jury!

[@JamieJooESC]

This is amazing to look at. Feels like you are back in time, but obviously a lot more readable. Yes it looks dated, but nostalgic at the same time. Another fine job from you. Always love your work. Given you are busy, when are you planning on redubbing another contest?

[@thereorderboard]

Thanks for the amazing feedback! I'm probably not starting another one for a good month or so unfortunately, and this one took ages. My 1980 approach will be to reuse the 1979 board, so it might be quicker. I'm mainly doing that one again because I want to get rid of the non-Franco flag that I used that everyone thinks is the Franco flag because it's so small!

[@nautilusshell4969]

36 years on - Happy Europe Day!

[@dreasbn]

Greg Davies could play Scott Fitzgerald in a movie verison LOL... what a strong year. So many good strong entries... so many big voices, incredible

[@tomsakmens5571]

And to my left, it's LITTLE CELINE DIOOOOOOOOOOOOON

[@ttheone3518]

i like the scoreboard in this one better, keeps the old presentation with a modern touch that i like! also, nice to have a high quality upscale of the original video!

[@thereorderboard]

Yes, not my work on the upscaling - the work of @SvenskTV

[@cdoakley]

What a great job you did with this Redux video! I was very surprised to see your retro approach to creating the original scoreboard in dynamic form, but you did it as competently and efficiently as you always do. All the extra footage and captions were an excellent addition too... 👍 I was rather taken by the German entry (the mum and daughter, Maxi & Chris Garden) whose song I don't remember hearing before. I thought it sounded a little Abba-esque in places and was all the better for it. A shame it only ranked 14th on the night.

[@thereorderboard]

Thanks Chris! Yes the pre-Contest hype was that they'd do well...and to me it sounds perfectly 80s. And it's quite unique sounding for Eurovision. Perhaps it was a just a little too out there. I remember editing it and thinking it went on a bit too lol, but I did have to watching it about 15 times.

[@cdoakley]

@@thereorderboard I dare say you end up thinking that about most of the acts on that basis!!

[@billanast]

WOOOOOW you're a hero!!!How did you make it????😎😎😎

[@manuelperez5266]

De los más intensos y maravillosos de la historia de Eurovisión

[@quizmaster85]

I think Terry Wogan was really lost for words with and humbled by the final result.

[@JeSuisRene]

I don’t think he was really humbled by it though. He was evidently very Team Celine throughout the show. It’s this reason why the British public were rather pissed off with Wogan in the days following the contest.

[@jacobnienhuysen2283]

Wow! It looks really good!

[@GioMonta17]

Holy shit! He's back!

[@erasmus5898]

Which program did you use for the preparation of this professional scoreboard? 😊

[@Pawhlen]

I LOVE it, great job :)

[@JeSuisRene]

My distribution of points has changed a bit since June 2020… 1p 🇫🇮 Finland 2p 🇱🇺 Luxembourg 3p 🇧🇪 Belgium 4p 🇮🇱 Israel 5p 🇵🇹 Portugal 6p 🇪🇸 Spain 7p 🇸🇪 Sweden 8p 🇳🇴 Norway 10p 🇩🇰 Denmark 12p 🇬🇧 United Kingdom

[@vellothedreepy5930]

We gotta need some redux versions of other scoreboards.

[@JeSuisRene]

My two pence on 88… - they should have got Michelle to host solo, she did an effortless job. I find Pat to be really overbearing. Someone described him once as “Ireland’s smuggest man”… fair enough. - Céline is a brilliant singer and she deserves all her post-contest success. But she’s very clinical in her approach to this song, and the song itself isn’t that great. It’s very ‘songwriting by numbers’. I genuinely suspect the fandom wouldn’t like NPPSM nearly as much had Céline not become as famous as she is today.

[@jasonwood3377]

Pat Kenny went on to present RTÉ’s number 1 show The Late Late Show but as demonstrated here he shouldn’t have near light entertainment, not only smug but wooden. He was an excellent current affairs broadcaster which is where he should’ve stayed though I’m sure his bank manager would disagree.

[@Dim4323]

Well i do know Sir bruce Forsyth wanted to put Yugoslavia intro room 101 cause they didnt give uk one point.

[@JeSuisRene]

It’s just a shame the host (Paul Merton) rejected the idea.

[@JCEurovisionFan1996]

Redux videos are better than original ones, hoping for more.

[@MiroHeinonen]

Despite you saying that this will replace the original version, the original is still available to watch.

[@JAN-qf5yt]

I prefer your previous job on the voting by a mile. Still both are truly great.

[@inezfeytons1764]

OMG thanks

[@alijabilalovic4937]

MY DEAR YUGOSLAVIA!!!!!

[@NiloxSim.09]

ESC 1992 with Redux pls

How did you make this fantastic scoreboard?

[@santibernardes-ki9kj]

1957 redux pls

[@dreasbn]

France and Luxemburg ignoring more or less Celine Dion... strange

[@CDCPH582]

Correct, how dare they... and to think Switzerland gave Lara Fabian douze points and considering Celine is biggest in France out of all the European countries!

[@benalanya]

Somebody should have told Michelle Rocca that there is no "r" in points - also not in French.