Eurovision 1987: Lasers, girders and geometric shapes | Super-cut with animated scoreboard

An edited down version of the 1987 Eurovision Song Contest in Brussels with a scoreboard using today’s technology. Nothing but a fun lockdown project.

This edit will give a flavour of the evening (9th May) with Terry Wogan’s commentary. I believe this is the first year I’ve watched where Wogan has become the act we came to know - he’s quick witted, warm, friendly even though some of the language is not 2020 friendly (comments on women). I also found there were lots of mircoedits in the YouTube versions! I searched for the spectacular computer graphics at the start of the intro, including the logo formation, only to realise that they’ve been blocked for viewing outside of Belgium on copyright grounds...see below. My special edit goes to the UK entry which I thought sounded great, but out of the four favourites pre-Contest, fared the worst. I think this is the first time the UK ends up on the ‘right side of the board’...a phrase that’s only come about with the new reordering!

Now, well, look, all 22 of the 1980s gang turn up for the show! It also happened to be on the EEC’s 30th birthday! No one wanted to miss the party at the mothership, clearly. I know Morocco appeared in 1980, but they made a sharp exit, and Malta and Monaco were involved in the 1970s, but they don’t make an appearance in this decade.

This high turnout led to a new cap on the numbers - something that would cause issues in the early 1990s. Brussels based rules you say?! Well, despite all the warm wishes for the EEC’s future, things at home weren’t great. Belgium doesn’t have a national broadcaster as such: it has a French service and a Flemish speaking service. Each broadcaster takes it in turn to pick the Belgian entry...87 is sung in Flemish, 1986 in French (although this year gets away with an English title and hook). Anyway, both broadcasters were due to co-produce the show but it didn’t go well: disagreements in Brussels you say?! But RTBF went alone and produced a great show, with lasers, girders and geometric shapes...although not all shapes were from RTBF it seems. The blocked flying plane and rocket are claimed on YouTube as copyright of the Flemish broadcaster...I assume it was VRT that provided these before the split, and they unfortunately appear over an RTBF logo. A sign of how bitter those disagreements must have been!

*DESIGN AND THE BOARD*
So this year is clearly all designed around the shapes that are prominent in early computer aided design - add a new fangled laser and you get a spectacular stage. It seems the scoreboard was a bit of ugly cousin that no one wanted. It doesn’t feature in the camera shots of the stage at all - Victor keeps looking to her hard left in order to view it...the vision desk then spun it on top of her via some sort of chroma key technique rather than show it in situ.

This was the last physical scoreboard in Eurovision. The rattling of the numbers changing is no more :-( For my design, I attempted to put a bit of a ‘physical board touch’ to the motion design, in tribute. More flipping! In fact, I was only going to flip every country and then I realised you really need the ascending country to fly up, otherwise you lose the visual language. I think it sort of works, but it’s not my favourite. I set the board in a 3D setting for a change, and to reflect what was going on on the stage. I feel this is perhaps what they would have liked to achieve if they had today’s technology.

Font wise, we go for utility. The lower thirds for the songs and names in the show had some really lovely design, including making them all right aligned. There was another script font, which I decided to eschew because it wouldn’t fit in many places, but the core font is Frutiger, designed by Swiss designer, Adrian Frutiger. Where have you seen it? Basically everywhere - it was designed in 1961-4 and is most famous in the UK for being the NHS font. You’ll see it in plenty of airports too...sort of ideal for the ‘physical board’ feeling - clear and legible.
*TRANSFER NEWS* (source: Wiki)
BACK: Italy and Greece turn up for the party! With Iceland joining in 1986 we had 20 last year, plus these two makes: 22.

*INTERVAL ACT*
A flutist flouting it about, all over Europe (Marc Grauwels). Wogan explains it all perfectly.

*CREDITS*
Eurovision Thailand Fanclub channel for the high quality rebroadcast...recording...if you get what I mean.
The wonderful Lukas ESC Archive for a Wogan commentary version
Yugoslav flag by Đorđe Andrejević-Kun,https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20854121
www.countryflags.com/en/ for all the free to use images of flags
The flashing phone came from www.flaticon.com
All Copyright goes to RTBF and the BBC.

00:00 Intro
05:03 Song super-cut
20:57 Interval act
22:22 Voting Intro
24:02 The reorder board 87
1:05:27 Recap and reprise of winning song
1:10:36 Closing credits

Видео Eurovision 1987: Lasers, girders and geometric shapes | Super-cut with animated scoreboard канала thereorderboard : Eurovision