After a long night, we’re back in the arena for tonight’s semi-finals. Last night, dress rehearsals ended around 11pm, and some of the lighting, rigging, and video crew (and at least one editor) trekked out to see the Eurovision finalists from Sweden, The Arc, perform at a local club in town. There was dancing and general merriment, and everyone seemed to get home unscathed. Thankfully, there are no photos to share of the evening’s festivities. I have yet to make it to Euroclub, the official hot spot for parties for the crew and talent, but I understand that’s the place to be, and we’ll probably get to the after party there this evening.

This afternoon, production manager Ola Melzig shared with me some interesting facts about this year’s Eurovision Song Contest at Helsinki’s Harwall Arena. Over 1,600 people are working on this production. The generators for the show generate a total of five megawatts of power. Lighting and video consume 1, 537,350W. It takes crew of 30 people just to run lighting and video, using 22,016 control channels on ten grandMAs and two grandMA Light consoles.

There are 400 moving lights and 620 conventionals, and 38 of the 281 rigging points are Cyberhoists for moving trusses. Fourteen Hipporizer media servers, 200 square meters of Barco MiTrix for a video backdrop and 125 square meters of Barco OLite 510 in the stage floor. Check out the full equipment list here.

Here you can see the Barco OLite in the stage floor.

Once the final show is broadcast, the crew will have spent 3,780 hours of programming lighting and video.

It takes 85,858 meters of cabling to feed it all. The outside HD broadcast truck cost about 10 million Euros, and it can operate up to 28 cameras. The production is using 21, with three in press center.

Semi-finals are tonight, and we’re starting the countdown. More to come, so check in regularly to see what’s happening.

I arrived today in Helsinki for the Eurovision Song Contest. It’s a spectacle of a production, to be sure. The sheer scope of the thing is astounding. I arrived at the arena and was treated to a tour by Spectra’s production manager Ola Melzig and production assistant Joan Lyman and ran into PR maven from the UK, Louise Stickland, who is also covering the production for several of her clients who have gear on the show.

The rig is absolutely massive, with 281 rigging points holding 98 tons of gear and covering most of the roof of Helsinki’s Hartwall Arena. The FOH area alone looks like a technological war room, with a slew of MA Lighting grandMAs controlling various aspects of the visual production. More to come on that in my full feature in the July issue.

The view from just behind FOH position.

I’ll be covering the show live while onsite through Sunday, so stay tuned. We’re presently waiting on the second dress rehearsal of the day, with semi-finals broadcast tomorrow and finals Saturday. You can view it for yourself at Eurovision TV. Just launch the MediaCentre, and you can watch the stream live at these times:

Semi-Finals

Thursday May 10 3:00pm EST

Live broadcast, appx. 2:45 length

Finals

Saturday May 12 3:00pm EST

Live broadcast, appx. 3:15 length, followed by winners interview