Welcome to the press centre! The first four rehearsals of this year’s Eurovision are here – and this is how Shi saw them:

CYPRUS
It’s the first day of rehearsals, and it might have been a while since I’ve last been but even I know that the first day is always a victim of total press center chaos. Therefore: we’re still waiting for sound. But we did get the visuals all the way through Tamta’s rehearsals, and forget about whether this is another Fuego or not: it looks good. And it doesn’t look like Fuego. It’s a slick black-and-white presentation with smart camera work and quick shot changes. You didn’t need the sound up to see the Replay Replay Replay part, which is, well, replaying camera shots. Tamta pulls off her popstar looks easily, showing off legs and sparkly tassels and the wet hair look. Not that I was ever in doubt of this qualifying, but it was a very obvious qualifier even with the sound off. It looks almost ready, which is to the credit of both the Cypriot team and the production.

CZECH REPUBLIC
Montenegro and Czech Republic switched places, so we got to hear Albert’s morning singing voice as we finally got the sound going. Keeping up with last year’s performance, the Czech have once again opted for the videoclip look, and in similar degree of success. The background is made of the basic bright colors – yellow, red and blue – and Albert is his usual charismatic self as he runs around stage. The camera work is clever and switches from the stage into small colored boxes stacked on screen which creates a memorable visual. The runthroughs have been fairly identical and comfortable all the way. A great start for the Czechs who seem poised for the unthinkable achievement of qualifying two years in a row.

All smiles from Tamta

FINLAND
I could have lived with the sound disappearing for this one. I generally don’t pay attention to vocals in rehearsals, but Sebastian’s vocals were never his forte, and pretty much everyone here uttered a very loud “ouch” as soon as he started singing.

The woman from the the national final is still there, albeit with a different green outfit and no box. Instead there’s a small platform she appears on while Sebastian roams around the catwalks aimlessly. I tried to play a game called “where’s Darude” because I kept not seeing him on stage, which is very dark throughout most of this. The most interesting part about this rehearsal was getting to see some of the stage functionalities, as the columns and big triangles shifted into a different position, making the technical setup look very different from the preceding performances. There’s a gorgeous sunset backdrop at the end of the song, but honestly: nothing is going to save this. Next.

POLAND
Every year we talk about how countries start at different points at the first rehearsals. Some are pretty much ready to go, and some still need work. Poland is very much the latter. The vocals in the first runthrough were very rough, and they were missing shots and singing cues in the next ones as they were working out the camera transitions. They sounded like themselves from the second run through onward, but visually it’s a tricky one. They are in identical and very colorful costumes with a impressive gold structure as a headdress. While the overall color scheme of red and gold is very pretty and photogenic, it doesn’t change much throughout, and the backdrop that is made from a very high-res videos of the girls’ faces doesn’t offer much visual development either.

Static performances are always difficult to stage, and even though they try to use the camera work with sweeping shots around the round platform the girls stand on, it still lacks enough visual action to grab the viewers’ attention for the three minutes.

Czech out this jump

All images from eurovision.tv