August isn’t the most topical month for a Eurovision Song Contest posting. At May’s content, juries were reintroduced to combat allegations of political voting, with each country’s votes being decided half by phone vote and half by a jury of “industry experts”.

The European Broadcasting Union has now revealed what the results would have been if voting had been by jury only. Norway would still have won, although not by as huge a margin. Here are the jury and actual votes side-by-side.

The most notable difference from a UK perspective is that the music industry experts put us two positions up, in third place. Perhaps they were more likely to be sympathetic to a Lloyd Webber track than Europe’s wider population? Phone voting alone would have placed the UK tenth.

Both Greece and Turkey – upbeat tracks with strong performances on the night – found more favour with the audience than with the juries, while France’s ballad and Israel’s “worthy” entry reach the juries’ top ten, but not the audiences’.

The EBU has also released full country-by-country breakdowns of the voting. The UK scored six 12s from juries, but only one by phone vote (and only one on the night). Here’s how the votes cast by the UK through telephone vote and jury vote compared.

I’m surprised to see that Germany’s swing number topped the UK’s jury vote – but the jury was outvoted by the audience, who managed to get the 12 points for Turkey while placing Germany ninth. Norway’s strong performance on both lists contrived to place it second overall, higher than on either. Again, Greece fared much better with the telephone voters, as did Lithuania, Denmark and Portugal.

If you take a similarly geeky interest in how the votes from each country were affected, you can download the full voting data from the Eurovision website.

For my birthday last month, Helen Duffett kindly bought me a ukulele. Well, it was kind to me; maybe less so to teh internets 🙂

I have been teaching myself little bits here and there, subjecting YouTube to my progress. I’ve putg rather more effort into the chords than the strumming, as will probably be evident.

Anyhoo, I quite enjoyed Sunday’s effort, so here it is for your viewing pleasure. Not the first take – my neighbours must’ve been sick of the noise…

If you really want to subject yourself to more, there’s a playlist (currently four songs) on my YouTube channel.

The Eurovision Song Contest is nearly upon us, so I have taken the bullet for you and watched videos of all of this year’s entries on the BBC Eurovision website. If you visit the site, do take a look at some of the breathtakingly sincere contestant biographies – for example this gem from Russia.

If you want detail and musical insight, Jon Jacob has reviewed the songs much more thoroughly than I have – I’m going to limit myself to a sentence or two for each. (For some even shorter comments, see Mike’s tweet-splurge.) I’ll also try to avoid commenting on the videos as we’d be here all night (some of them deserve posts of their own), but it’s hard not to let my view of the songs be swayed by them.

By way of introduction, I should add that, in this hyperconnected modern world, it’s possible that at least one of the entrants might Google for themselves and end up on this page only to find me being less than positive, so: if you catch me being mean about your song, don’t take offence – everyone else in Europe might like it.

I apologise in advance for my limited critiquing vocabulary, which will likely result in the overuse of some words and phrases, in particular: catchy, OK, nothing special, fun, dull, enough, Europop, forgettable, key change, better than X’s usual standard.

The Good
The songs that caught my eye, in alphabetical order:

• Estonia – Some nice strings, effective backing vocals and a strong rhythm drive this atmospheric track. A dark horse. (10th favourite on Betfair.)
• Germany – Germany goes swing and ends up with their best Eurovision song in goodness knows how long. Not a fan of the silly bit in the middle, but there’s a key change!
• Greece – What’s this? Sakis Rouvas is back! 2004’s third placed Greek entrant (he was robbed) and 2006 co-host is once again representing Greece. It’s a fairly standard dancy pop track – I prefer Shake It from five years ago – but not worse for it. Could be in with a chance (and it’s the 2nd favourite on Betfair).
• Hungary – Sakis is given a run for his money by Hungary’s own dancy pop from Zoli Ádok, which is a little catchier (although possibly only because the version on the BBC site was about a minute longer than it’s allowed to be on the night). Oh, I know I said I wouldn’t comment on videos but Hungary’s is the campest of the lot.
• Norway – Habitual Eurovision failures attempt to claw back some credibility with a child-faced male Norwegian Vanessa Mae. Alexander Rybak wrote the theme tune and sings the theme tune and I can see it getting lots of actual points. (Bookies’ favourite on Betfair.)
• Slovenia – More strings, with Quartissimo – a string quartet Il Divo – centre stage with Martina Majerle. It may be a bit of a gimmick but when did that ever cost you votes at Eurovision?
• Sweden – You will see further down that I diss pop opera when Bulgaria did it, but Malena Ernman kind of pulls it off. Will be interesting if it catches the imagination of the audience, ‘cos if it does… (8th on Betfair.)
• Ukraine – And nestling away in the penultimate position was this pleasant surprise. A fresh sounding production for a strong song. (5th on Betfair.)

Also worth a mention here are Belgium (with a traditional Belgian Rockabilly track that’s strangely endearing), Croatia (pretty good, as sweeping Eurovision ballads go), Ireland (girl guitar pop delivers Ireland’s first decent song in years), Montenegro (unexpectedly upbeat, energetic and fun), and Spain (another nation’s strongest song in some years, La Noche es Para Mi is a down-the-line euro dance thing so there’s something stiff competition for the down-the-line euro dance thing bloc)

The Bad
The trend for there to be relatively few abysmal entrants continues (disappointly). Nevertheless, there are some:

• Czech Republic – First (and only?) properly off the wall act of the year. Alas, can’t see this having any success.
• Denmark – Denmark’s answer to Ronan Keating turns in a song that’s only slightly more interesting than your average Ronan Keating track. (The correct answer to Ronan Keating is “Sorry, there’s no-one here at the moment.”) And after making that observation, I learnt from Jon Jacob’s blog that this song was actually co-written by Ronan Keating. That. Explains. Everything.
• Netherlands – OK, so whose idea was it to squeeze some permatanned middle-aged men who seem strangely familiar but who you know you’ve never seen before into white suits and give them a silly light ray special effect on their hands? And let them record a song? And then put Obama in the video? Sheesh.
• Serbia – I think there may have been an administrative mix-up. The Serbian entry appears to be a Two Ronnies sketch. (OK, it’s not that bad, but this section would be quite threadbare without it.)

The Boring
Some songs don’t particularly have anything wrong with them, but you still want them to be over please:

• Bulgaria – I am not, in turns out, a fan of pop opera. Sorry, Bulgaria. I’m as disappointed as you are.
• Israel – Just as you thought we might be spared Eurovision’s traditional outbreak of lyrical peace, love and understanding, Israel saves the day. All very worthy but I’ll be checking my watch for the next act with sequins.
• Lithuania – Oh, it’s another worthy ballad. Next.
• FYR Macedonia – Macedonia’s Bon Jovi fail to grab the attention with their dreary rock song.
• Poland – My lazy comparison for Poland’s Lidia Kopania is Christina Aguilera. Dull ballad.
• Portugal – Nice to see the band enjoying themselves. I wish I could say the same for myself. Still, nice to see an accordion out in public.
• United Kingdom – The moment you’ve all been waiting for, where I try to be polite about the UK entry. It’s not dreadful. The afraid of/made of couplet is probably the best bit. But while Jade Ewen puts in a good performance, it’s rather shrill, all a bit one note (despite there being lots of notes in it) and, yeah, a bit dull. (6th on Betfair.)

The Rest
The rest were neither particularly good, nor particularly bad, not dull enough to be in the third group. Here are comments on a few:

• Albania – Catchy enough, although the lyrics are pretty bland. Better than Albania’s usual standard.
• Armenia – Starts well (is this what eastern European dance music is like?) before descending into cliched “everybody move your body” fare.
• Azerbaijan – Very Europop. Catchy and not the first with a Shakira vibe, but ultimately forgettable. (But don’t take my word for it: it’s the 4th favourite on Betfair.)
• Bosnia & Herzegovina – Nice little song that repeatedly hints that it’s going to take off into something great but never quite does. (Tipped by Popbitch to give Norway a run for its money, it’s 9th on Betfair.)
• Finland – Self-proclaimed 1990s style dance pop. Which is just what the world needs more of. Does what is claims.
• France – After surprising the world with a very good entry last year, France have returned to safe territory with this ballad. Still better than many of their entrants, with a Patricia Kaas giving it a bit of Piaf.
• Iceland – Sweet and nicely performed but unremarkable. Best they don’t win anyway – could they afford to host it?
• Moldova – It’s bouncy, I guess. I admit that I was starting to flag at this point. I imagine this song (“Dance of Moldova”) will have some Moldovan dancing on the night. (You can have that prediction for free.)
• Russia – Unfortunately named singer Nastya apparently won Russia “Star Factory” competition, one of several reality TV graduates in this year’s Eurovision. It’s a plague. It’s certainly more catching than this song which demonstrates only intermittent virulence in the chorus, but not for lack of effort from Nastya.
• Slovakia – Nice enough little duet with more of the increasingly popular string backing and a dutifully include key change.
• Turkey – A typically competent entry from Turkey but I suspect this won’t achieve much. (I expect to have egg on face for saying that as it’s 3rd on Betfair and I’ve seen much more positive comments about it.)

So who’ll win? While I’ve based my comments on the videos, much of what happens on the nights (the semi-finals are on May 12th and 14th; the final is on the 16th) will depend on whether the performers do the songs justice and the spectacle of the performances, which can make a song memorable amongst a crowded field. I hope it’s not stating the obvious to say the outcome of the final will also depends on who gets through from the semis: will there be one big dance number for votes to coalesce around, or will they be made to split between lots of similar songs?

That said, Norway must be the favourite, and this is why:

Two weekends back, I took part in the Sci-Fi-London 48 Hour Film Challenge 2009. The name gives a pretty good summary of the objective: make a science fiction film from scratch in 48 hours.

There now follows a very laborious discussion of how we made our film. If you just want to watch it, I’d skip to the end…

On the Saturday morning, Simon and I joined the hoards at the Apollo cinema in Lower Regent Street for a briefing and to be assigned the three elements we would be required to feature in the film (mainly to prove that it really had been made that weekend).

Eagle-eyed viewers may spot us fleetingly at the beginning of this video about the challenge made by the Sci-Fi-London Film Festival team:

So the three elements I skilfully plucked from the metaphorical hats were:

• Title: Pressure Valve
• Line of dialogue: “I do not speak your language and you don’t speak mine”
• Prop: Five ring doughnuts

The other teams, some already laden with equipment, dashed off. Simon and I did what any sensible person would do faced with turning those three things into a film: we went to the pub.

We quickly threw together a basic concept and some key lines of dialogue (aka punchlines), inspired by our prop and the knowledge that we had no decent location in which to film (having spent most effort in preparation on choosing a team name), and then finalised the overall storyline. Matt joined us for lunch and we then headed to Covent Garden to try to source some key props, including the doughnuts. We bought a dozen in, er, case we needed, er, spares.

Shopping done, we jumped on a train back to south London and our own mini-Pinewood (i.e., my flat). Once there, I grabbed my laptop and started writing. An hour or two later the script was drafted, and that version is pretty much what we handed in at the end, save for some tweaks from the cast (they will insist) and some cuts for time (to which we shall return shortly).

Simon and I popped to his for recording equipment and to gather some more props and then we began the small task of converting a tiny corner of our garage into a secret government lab – a government lab so secret that it is based in a garage, apparently. Then Matt and I donned our costumes and at around 7pm Simon called action on the first scene.

We shot the garage scenes in order. With only a breeze blocked wall to film against, the camera angles had to be more 1970s sitcom than sweeping vistas. We recorded the scenes from several angles, ending with many takes of the final shot of the film (I think we ended up using the first). We wrapped the first day’s filming around 11pm (sorry, this is going a bit Andrew Pixley) and left the set intact in case we needed (and had time) to reshoot anything. Simon and I went back to his where he ripped the footage onto his computer and assembled a rough version of the opening.

Sunday began with more editing before we shot the two remaining scenes. Simon arrived with his voiceover (the first of two scripted) recorded and treated. We worked on fitting various shots together. These mostly worked, despite our fairly blasé attitude to continuity, and the first scene was completed by the time our one extra actor arrived to record hers. Looking at the running time so far, my main concern was now that we would run over our five minute maximum.

Filming in a car sounded like a fairly straightforward task but this scene ended up taking several hours. Disruptions included road noises, aeroplane noises, sirens, a car parking behind us causing big continuity problems, and, most significantly, my forgetting my lines and/or corpsing.

When we final had the scene in the can, we reviewed the rushes (as they say in the business) and decided that it would work better shot slightly differently and as one long take. We had fewer problems this time and managed at least two successful takes all the way through.

As it was a single shot, Simon didn’t have to do much editing on the scene – just trimming the start and finish and adding our flashback effect – but the one take also meant there was no scope to cut lines if we overran. We therefore chose the second, shorter take, despite some sound problems and a tiny fluff in one of my lines.

Assembling the final scene, we threw out my last line, a section of Matt pacing around, Simon’s second voiceover (the only bit of the script never recorded), and a second flashback – probably a whole page of the script in total. We had to cut back a little further so the action we had filmed still made sense without these parts. That still left us a fair few seconds over so we went through looking for any moments we could remove. We trimmed the title card, overlaying it onto the action; we reduced the beginning and end of the car scene; we shortened some shots; and finally we excised four seconds from one of my speeches, covering it by cutting to a new angle.

The film now dead on five minutes long, all that remained was for Simon to master the DVDs and then for us to get a copy to the church cinema on time. The DVDs were finished around midnight on the Sunday, resulting in this breathless 12seconds video:

We did it! #sfl09 on 12seconds.tv

I had taken the Monday off work to make up for not having had a restful weekend and so delivered the film to the Sci-Fi-London team with an hour or two to spare. And this morning, I went back to the Apollo and saw it on the big screen. There’s something quite cool about seeing yourself on a cinema screen, even if you are hamming it up. (Once all the films submitted are online, I’ll post up a link.)

So after that deeply insightful behind-the-scenes romp, you’ll be left wondering where this magnum opus is. Wait no longer. The Middlemen present Pressure Valve:

Update: Read about the making of another entrant, the Pink Bear Club’s Kromwell’s Theory on Robin Fry’s blog.