Eurovision 1968: Cliff, edged | Animated scoreboard

An edited down version of the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 from London, with a scoreboard using today’s technology. This all started as a lockdown project!

This edit will give a flavour of the evening (Saturday 6th April) with Norwegian commentary from Roald Øyen. The reasons why are mentioned in the video.

For many fans, 1968 is a watershed. I’ve wanted to see whether it’s just because of the electrifying nature of colour television arriving or whether something else happens in London. One of my reasons for doing each year chronologically is to chart the progress of the show and I even thought about watching this one in black and white. I think overall, the songs don’t take a massive leap forward, but they somehow seem more accessible with colour. This is ultimately a robust collection of songs though, with some real strong players vying for contention. The BBC production team seemed to take some of the best of 1963 in terms of camera shots and a focus on the performers.

It’s easy to say that the strongest contender was Cliff Richard (27), although I am wary of being too UK-centric. He’d had the biggest career, certainly, and had been in several films – the most enduring being ‘Summer Holiday’. The problem was, Cliff was struggling stateside – even ‘Summer Holiday’ was unfortunately released just after JFK’s assassination and subsequently flopped. Nevertheless, as you can tell from the pre-selection show, he was incredibly popular with teen fans and ‘Congratulations’ went into Eurovision as a UK number 1, an unusual event (apart from Shaw the previous year). Meeting him, to face the jurors, was former champion Isabelle Aubret (29) with a spellbinding song that appears to be about a gang-rape. Not usual ground for Eurovision and in stark contrast to Cliff’s chirpy number. Nevertheless, no country had successfully defended their title in Eurovision.

Spain’s eighth Contest preparations weren’t ideal. ‘La, La, La’, was written by the members of the Dúo Dinámico (Dynamic Duo) who had achieved Beatles-esque popularity in Spain in the early 60s. They had selected their friend Joan Manuel Serrat, but even though there was some liberalisation of language rules in Spain, RTVE weren’t going to send a Catalan-sung entry. Massiel was drafted in just one week before London. Spain’s average placing before Raphael was around 12th, which has risen to 6.5 over 1966/7. Victory was going to a big leap, but Massiel’s excellent vocal performance with a catchy tune was something else.

We know now that allegations of the result being rigged haven’t been successfully proved, if it was, it was a master stroke to do it so subtly. The voting almost perfectly shows dominance by France in the first third, the UK in the second, and Spain in the third, although Spain had been gaining points with the UK in the middle – but it was the 6 from Germany that took it over the top. Cliff was hiding in loo, Aubret in tears. You can tell from the addition of the reaction at the end that this result delighted Spain, a country that was experiencing significant change throughout the 1960s. A shock! As the audience shuffled out whilst Massiel was singing, it was Cliff who had been edged out, and the UK were left once again befuddled by continental tastes.

*DESIGN AND THE BOARD*
If you want to fix readability of the scoreboard then just make it massive. This must be the biggest in size so far. We lose the ‘points this round’ functionality, and we swap to a BBC engineering staple of the time, the split flap board which I hopefully have faithfully created digitally – even down to sheering off the ‘1’ from Gill Sans – the typeface used. Full review of the original from @mrjdsworld’s blog: https://euroscoreboards.wordpress.com/2021/07/09/london-1968/
I’m sure the BBC didn’t get some French polished high-quality wood to build the board, but in fact left it to the painting dept, so I did the same in Photoshop. I’ve used ‘Brygada1918’, a free download from a Polish foundry, with Gill Sans and some Eurostile for the very small text, as this was used in the show and reads best at small sizes. You’ll notice I am in HD for the first time – mainly because the source footage had been upscaled. I won’t be able to do this every time, but if it makes sense, I will. It’s all brass and wood, but for the moving backing I looked to both the Eurovision stars and the lovely, tiled stage. I really wanted it to be black and white, but it wasn’t appropriate for the first colour edition!

*TRANSFER NEWS* (source: Wiki)
None.

*INTERVAL ACT*
The music is called ‘London Medley’ and I think the film is called ‘Impressions from London’ – a bit of a step back to what I think is a ‘stock’ Interval Act.

*CREDITS*
Original video from @SvenskTV
Spain reax: @Festival de Benidorm, Cilla: @Euro Cafe
Flags: countryflags.com

00:00 CILLA
03:20 Intro
06:18 Song super-cut [SHORTENED]
06:49 Voting intro
08:32 The reorder board 68
27:39 Recap, data & reprise
32:41 Spain reaction

Видео Eurovision 1968: Cliff, edged | Animated scoreboard канала thereorderboard : Eurovision