EUROVISION
Above: The competition in Kyiv was billed as a celebration of diversity; The IEC was packed to the rafters on the night of the Grand Final; Switzerland’s Timebelle made the most of the imposing stage.
least, but the solution was hand-picking a team with massive Eurovision experience - we didn’t have the time to teach them about it - and making sure we built a much bigger team than usual. Those were my demands from the outset. The first thing I said to the crew was to promise them an adventure and everyone has agreed that I kept my word!” Although funds were a major consideration for Melzig in this situation, it was also essential to strike a balance between standing firm on some aspects and retaining the will to compromise on others. He said: “It’s not that different from most other jobs - you always have some kind of budget and time is always money. We compromised with as few things as possible and there were a number of elements that I made sure we could secure early on in the process.” An example of this was the 7.6mm LED floor that was build into Unbranded’s stage structure. Melzig explained: “There were other shows trying to get it, which would have been a catastrophe because it is the best of its kind in the world. The pitch is super sharp and it’s lined with the right kind of glass so you can walk and dance on it.” He continued: “Starting this late has absolutely impacted the budget so we’ve had to kill some darlings. We were supposed to do augmented reality but there was no way we could in this timeframe. To be honest I’m not convinced there was ever really a focussed idea on how to use it - it was one of the ideas that still hung around for a while from the previous organisation.”
A UKRANIAN PRODUCTION Rather than being a chance for Melzig to better his previous Eurovision outings, Kyiv presented a completely different kind of challenge. He explained: “Stockholm last year was the perfect storm; it was only three years since we hosted the competition in Malmö, with the same team, a fresh memory, and a long list of potential improvements. Two years would have been too soon, but three was just right so everyone was hungry to better the success we had in 2013. Unless you get that same situation again, in a country just as experienced as Sweden, you will never beat Stockholm. “But that was never the goal here,” Melzig asserted. “We are making a Ukrainian show. There are other values in place here and, although the current state is a young country, this is a very old country with old traditions that it is extremely proud of, and should be.” In order to ensure that these elements remained a focal point throughout the production, Melzig made the decision to bring in a number of local crewmembers. “We brought in a creative supervisor, who is actually a cultural attaché, to help with the legacy aspect of the show, which included the style of the pre-act postcards, the opening VT, and the interval acts,” Melzig said. “We wanted everything to have a distinct Ukranian flavour and the only way to achieve that is to involve people from within the country - you can’t have an outsider tell that story. The first organisation tried, and it failed miserably!” This ethos extended to Melzig’s inner circle, more specifically to the 32