Visual effects and props – are they taking over the Eurovision Song Contest?

Day six was just any random day with rehearsals. But it was a day that showed us a lot of different performances – most of them with so complicated plans that delegations spend more time on that rather than focus on the actual song.

The morning started with Estonia having to come in early to get their green screen right. Victor Crone and his song Storm, while vocally perfect has been fraught with issues since the rehearsals began. At the tine of writing it is unclear whether this will be fixed for tomorrow.

Croatia were the first country to officially rehearse this morning, and again while the vocals were perfect, most of the time was spent trying to find a way for the dancers to slip the wings on to Roko seamlessly.

Malta with Michela Pace and Chameleon had to scrap part of their staging altogether as they are finding it impossible to do as they had originally planned. Aside from the staging, the Maltese head of delegation said that the sound is not correct and that adjustments need to be done. For a song contest that should be the first priority, one would say.

Russia, with their elaborate staging had to have Sergey Lazarev and Scream, call rehearsals to a halt as the tube pumping the water into one of the boxes was not working correctly. Again a visual adjustment received more rehearsal attention than the song.

In an ironic twist of fate, The Netherlands who have gone with simplicity this year, so that the song is the focus, ended up having to give up on an effect with light bulbs as they couldn’t get it right.

Albania had an eagle in their first rehearsals but after the disastrous way that it looked, they have removed this.

In the end so much time is spent on visual effects, the question is have they become more important than the song?

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