Name: ‘50 Seconds of Madness’: Behind the Scenes at Eurovision 2024
Uploaded: 2024-05-10T04:01:00Z
Duration: 5 min 42 s
Description: Eurovision’s stage crew has just 50 seconds between acts to transform the set with new props, lighting, pyrotechnics, and artists. We go behind the scenes of the world’s largest live song contest to see how they do it. Photo: Matthew Gormly

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Eurovision’s stage crew has just 50 seconds between acts to transform the set with new props, lighting, pyrotechnics, and artists. We go behind the scenes of the world’s largest live song contest to see how they do it. Photo: Matthew Gormly

https://m.wsj.net/video/20240510/1a6c3665-4864-4630-94b0-f7282d342083/3/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

‘50 Seconds of Madness’: Behind the Scenes at Eurovision 2024

Narrator: Imagine if "American Idol" met the Olympics and then was broadcast live to more people than the Super Bowl. That is Eurovision.

Director: And we're going in three, two, one.

Go.

Go.

Narrator: In just 50 seconds, this stage crew needs to disassemble giant props, roll them down a ramp, wipe the floor down, escort the previous artist off the stage, build the next set and get the next performers on stage, all before the cameras cut back to live TV.

We have to do five minutes' work in 50 seconds.

Interviewer: Is that normal?

Not really, but it's Eurovision normal.

Run as fast as you can and hope for the best.

Narrator: Here's how months of prep leads up to Eurovision's 50-second stage change. Eurovision is essentially a giant singing competition between 37 different countries, from Azerbaijan to Australia, broadcast live to more than 150 million people around the world. It's kind of like a lot of very different halftime shows performed back to back. This year's contest is being held in Malmo, Sweden where tens of thousands of visitors from 90 countries have traveled to experience it for themselves. Here in the arena, roughly 1,500 people are working behind the scenes to keep the wheels on this massive technicolor machine moving. When it comes to the crazy stage change, there are many, many people making it happen, but there are three very important people running the process that keeps the whole production running. Pernilla works on stage right, managing the floor and bringing each artist onto the stage.

Myself, together with my colleagues, are trying to make sure that everything that the producers and camera directors decide that that actually happens on stage.

Narrator: Tobbe is over on stage left directing the movements of all the props on and off stage.

Everyone needs to know what they're gonna do, where they're gonna do it, and you just hit the mark and run.

Narrator: And back here is Julia, the show caller. She's the one counting Pernilla and Tobbe down to their next cue over the headset. Anytime an LED cube is lowered from the ceiling, that's her cuing it. All three of them work together simultaneously to coordinate this highly choreographed stage change. Now with up to 26 countries plus interval acts performing live a night, a lot of planning has gone into the time between acts. Over behind stage left is a massive prop room where all the countries store their sets.

We got mountains on stage, we got rooms on fire, we got blue chickens.

Everyone has so big ideas all the time, and my job is to sort out what's doable.

Narrator: As each country is about to take the stage, an LED screen door slides open and allows the props to be rolled through and onto the stage. Meanwhile, over behind stage right, the artists are moving through a carefully planned maze of pit stops on their way to the stage.

You have to stand in a line to get in a line to get in a line for a soundcheck. Then you get in a line to get the microphones, and then you get in the line to go on the stage.

Narrator: Out on the stage itself, the team uses a digital labeling system on the floor to mark where props for each country should go.

It's just a computer with a program that we draw in and set positions in stage. Microphone stands, stars for the singers or background vocals or whatever it is. Pianos and everything.

Narrator: When you've gotta change the set more than 20 times a night, something like this is a lot easier to follow than sticking different colored tape on the floor for each act. Now, all of this coordination goes entirely unnoticed by the viewers at home who are instead shown a 50-second prerecorded video called the postcard, which introduces the next country to take the stage.

That is basically when all hell breaks loose for us. I've got top of the stage manager and his crew, making sure that we got all sorts of weird and wonderful things coming on stage.

As soon as the song ends and we're at postcard, the floor is lit for the new country. Doors open, everyone runs out, hit the mark, clean everything you can, run off. It's like a bunch of ants coming out to eat.

I'm running like a blue-arsed fly onto the stage with the artists.

They push out these lead walls we have and then they put them together. The cubes come down after that.

I need to make sure that I get thumbs up that we are set to go, and then I tell Julie, our show caller, and then she tells everybody else that we're set to go.

And then they tell us, "All right, it's your turn."

Okay.

And we're like oh, okay.

So the postcard, 50 seconds of madness. And then when we come out with postcards, there we are. We've got wonderful people on stage and hopefully everything and everyone are in the right place.

Narrator: Even once the act starts, the stage crew are getting the next set ready, or even hiding in the props on stage, counting down until their next cue when the song ends in less than three minutes. Then they do it all over again.

‘50 Seconds of Madness’: Behind the Scenes at Eurovision 2024

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