The UK Hosted a Song Contest! (Reflections on the OGAE Song Contest 2019)
*SPOILER ALERT* Please do not read any further if you have not gone and watched this year's OGAE Song Contest or if you have any interest in the result. As this article will explore, a lot of work went into this contest by various OGAE UK members including myself and it would mean a lot for you to watch the finished product before reading about it which you can do so here.
The story of the OGAE Song Contest 2019 began of course with the previous year's contest. I watched the results from the Australia-hosted contest from Clapham Junction station in the brisk November cold as I made my way back to Chichester from London. To my great surprise, Steps had defied the odds to win OGAE UK a song contest, the first in my time as an OGAE member! There was something incredibly surreal hearing the phrase "And our twelve points go to the United Kingdom" from nations across Europe, something that is indicative of my country's current form at the main contest. In the excitement surrounding this moment, I received an email from Martyn Clarke, the UK OGAE Song Contest coordinator. You see, I had previously told Martyn that I would be up for getting more involved with the UK's involvement in the OGAE Song Contest but nothing truly prepared me for the full gravity of what was about to happen. A phone call between us a month later confirmed what I expected, he was passing on the coordination baton and I would be the one to take over.
Following the phone call, I spent the next few months trying not to think about how much work would be required to put everything together. The national selection for the UK alone seemed like a significant amount of work but then there was figuring out ScoreWiz, regularly checking the relevant email addresses, coordinating with all the clubs and then there was actually putting the song contest together. As a long-time fan of the OGAE Song Contest, I certainly had ideas for how the competition could transform and be innovated to become more like a fan-created version of the main show, but to take these ideas and bring them into reality required time and effort in a situation where I didn't know where I would be living when the contest got released. In May, I spoke again with Martyn and OGAE UK President Alasdair Rendall and after many assurances that I would be supported throughout the process, I began the planning for the contest.
The first thing that needed to be done was fairly simple, coordinate the UK selection. This consists of noting down every nominated song suggested by members to compile one playlist of songs together - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWyN8ISpszhA4QA6F0xT9W4qn4v5ibaN5. As you can see, the playlist included a wide variety of styles, genres and even languages. This year, we additionally included a German and French jury into the UK voting, a scheme we look forward to running more often with our OGAE counterparts. In the end, Scottish crooner Lewis Capaldi took the victory and the ticket to represent the UK on home soil.
This is of course when the actual reality of organising a full-fledged song contest becomes a clearer reality. Similarly to the main contest, this meant coordinating the participation of each club and then making sure they submitted all the relevant material for us to prepare the contest page on the OGAE UK website. Alasdair was instrumental in this happening and worked tirelessly in contact with every club to not only keep everything ticking over but also to stick to the firm deadline that OGAE International were holding us to. Meanwhile, I was getting the chance to do less fun, more logistical setting up of a dedicated Facebook page for the contest alongside the more fun, less logistical allocation draw for the 28 participating nations to decide which half they would be presented in, which would be followed by the creation of a producer-led running order. The draw took place outside Usher Hall (venue of Edinburgh's only hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest) on a blustery September afternoon in a presentation that was so lo-fi that the nations were drawn out of a literal hat (which were then placed in a battered deliveroo bag when they were drawn) all filmed on an old iphone 6 that was connected to a portable charger the entire time. In the spirit of this, my lovely French non-biased partner drew the United Kingdom's position and low and behold Lewis Capaldi was handed the deadly second slot on home turf (I don't think a host nation has ever performed second in the main contest). Having then listened to all the songs, compiled a running order together and passed it along to Alasdair, we were ready to make a short and simple introduction to the contest video complete with last year's winner, running order and logo.
The most special element of creating this contest was undoubtedly the coordination of the postcards. I had chosen to give the contest a theme ('Under One Sky') and I wanted to create postcards to go with each music video which captured this theme whilst also doing a Eurovision-style showcasing of the UK. At first, I was nervous that I would basically end up doing all of them but after posting on the OGAE UK members Facebook group, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who wanted to get involved with this project from an incredible variety of locations around the country including all four of our sub-nations. Fortunately, in collaboration with my filmmaker partner, we designed a way of shooting the postcards which would mean that they kept the same style whilst also being made by different people in different places all whilst trying to keep it simple and easy to film on a phone. The results were absolutely astounding. I encourage anybody who hasn't watched the full contest just to scan through the main bulk of the video to find the postcards because they are absolutely beautiful and showcase the United Kingdom in a way that feels so honest and true and real to everybody's unique identity of what it means to be British. My partner edited the footage together and I stuck some nice instrumentals behind it, but everything you see is the pure hard work, effort and selflessness of all the wonderful people who devoted time to the cause.
Organising the vote was an interesting process as there ended up being three parts to the entire process. Firstly, we had to coordinate the British votes which was easy enough to do as it was basically the same process as the national selection. Keeping track of the OGAE Club votes proved slightly trickier with several clubs missing the deadline to submit the materials. All of that felt miniscule in scale to the part where Alasdair and I had literally no idea as to how to present the voting with out best idea being to screen record a ScoreWiz. That's when David White came along and answered all of our prayers by offering to make some fantastic graphics for the contest that would go nicely alongside all the other content. I hope you will all agree that David's work was absolutely superb in this regard. As I was the middle-man between the OGAE Song Contest email and David, I was constantly keeping tabs as to who had submitted their votes and videos and after much nervous waiting, we eventually got everything over the line in time.
However, the OGAE Song Contest 2019 adventure was not yet over because even though we had an exported file, we had to get it online and that proved tricky. Initially, the file we managed to export was just over 7 GB. This was not a problem to upload to YouTube as they had no size limits however, the scheduled video release was almost immediately taken down owing to copyright issues. It turns out even if you credit everybody, they definitively will not allow you to play the music in another video. This set a slight panic in motion, we had two days to get the video online before the planned release on November 7. Eventually, I exported the file as something smaller (4.7 GB) and Vimeo came to our rescue owing again largely to the help of Alasdair who arranged a Vimeo account for OGAE UK and paid for it all at very short notice. Proof truly that a) the show must go on and b) it is truly darkest before the dawn.
And now to the result itself, which felt truly special. It would never happen at Eurovision that the host nation would draw themselves in second and then storm to victory. It was also nice to see a Scot win the contest, seeing a) as quite a lot of the contest was shot in Scotland and b) that according to ESC Insight, the last Scot to represent the United Kingdom at Eurovision was Scott Fitzgerald in 1988. The OGAE Song Contest will subsequently be hosted in Edinburgh in 2020, so it is nice to put the city I now call home firmly on the map. I have loved the process of putting this contest together and given that it is difficult to imagine the UK winning Eurovision again in my lifetime (I was interestingly born in May 1997), it was extremely emotional to be part of the UK hosting any kind of song contest and to see us win it on home soil. I am really looking forward to getting the band back together next year as I reconvene with the amazing people with whom I put this contest together this year to do it all again next October. I will leave you as one only can with the OGAE Song Contest 2019 winner...
Thank you for reading this post. Don't forget to give us a cheeky subscribe and to share this post around. We will be back very soon with an article on next year's MelFest, until then, settle in, make some tea and enjoy your winter!
The story of the OGAE Song Contest 2019 began of course with the previous year's contest. I watched the results from the Australia-hosted contest from Clapham Junction station in the brisk November cold as I made my way back to Chichester from London. To my great surprise, Steps had defied the odds to win OGAE UK a song contest, the first in my time as an OGAE member! There was something incredibly surreal hearing the phrase "And our twelve points go to the United Kingdom" from nations across Europe, something that is indicative of my country's current form at the main contest. In the excitement surrounding this moment, I received an email from Martyn Clarke, the UK OGAE Song Contest coordinator. You see, I had previously told Martyn that I would be up for getting more involved with the UK's involvement in the OGAE Song Contest but nothing truly prepared me for the full gravity of what was about to happen. A phone call between us a month later confirmed what I expected, he was passing on the coordination baton and I would be the one to take over.
Following the phone call, I spent the next few months trying not to think about how much work would be required to put everything together. The national selection for the UK alone seemed like a significant amount of work but then there was figuring out ScoreWiz, regularly checking the relevant email addresses, coordinating with all the clubs and then there was actually putting the song contest together. As a long-time fan of the OGAE Song Contest, I certainly had ideas for how the competition could transform and be innovated to become more like a fan-created version of the main show, but to take these ideas and bring them into reality required time and effort in a situation where I didn't know where I would be living when the contest got released. In May, I spoke again with Martyn and OGAE UK President Alasdair Rendall and after many assurances that I would be supported throughout the process, I began the planning for the contest.
The first thing that needed to be done was fairly simple, coordinate the UK selection. This consists of noting down every nominated song suggested by members to compile one playlist of songs together - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWyN8ISpszhA4QA6F0xT9W4qn4v5ibaN5. As you can see, the playlist included a wide variety of styles, genres and even languages. This year, we additionally included a German and French jury into the UK voting, a scheme we look forward to running more often with our OGAE counterparts. In the end, Scottish crooner Lewis Capaldi took the victory and the ticket to represent the UK on home soil.
This is of course when the actual reality of organising a full-fledged song contest becomes a clearer reality. Similarly to the main contest, this meant coordinating the participation of each club and then making sure they submitted all the relevant material for us to prepare the contest page on the OGAE UK website. Alasdair was instrumental in this happening and worked tirelessly in contact with every club to not only keep everything ticking over but also to stick to the firm deadline that OGAE International were holding us to. Meanwhile, I was getting the chance to do less fun, more logistical setting up of a dedicated Facebook page for the contest alongside the more fun, less logistical allocation draw for the 28 participating nations to decide which half they would be presented in, which would be followed by the creation of a producer-led running order. The draw took place outside Usher Hall (venue of Edinburgh's only hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest) on a blustery September afternoon in a presentation that was so lo-fi that the nations were drawn out of a literal hat (which were then placed in a battered deliveroo bag when they were drawn) all filmed on an old iphone 6 that was connected to a portable charger the entire time. In the spirit of this, my lovely French non-biased partner drew the United Kingdom's position and low and behold Lewis Capaldi was handed the deadly second slot on home turf (I don't think a host nation has ever performed second in the main contest). Having then listened to all the songs, compiled a running order together and passed it along to Alasdair, we were ready to make a short and simple introduction to the contest video complete with last year's winner, running order and logo.
The most special element of creating this contest was undoubtedly the coordination of the postcards. I had chosen to give the contest a theme ('Under One Sky') and I wanted to create postcards to go with each music video which captured this theme whilst also doing a Eurovision-style showcasing of the UK. At first, I was nervous that I would basically end up doing all of them but after posting on the OGAE UK members Facebook group, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who wanted to get involved with this project from an incredible variety of locations around the country including all four of our sub-nations. Fortunately, in collaboration with my filmmaker partner, we designed a way of shooting the postcards which would mean that they kept the same style whilst also being made by different people in different places all whilst trying to keep it simple and easy to film on a phone. The results were absolutely astounding. I encourage anybody who hasn't watched the full contest just to scan through the main bulk of the video to find the postcards because they are absolutely beautiful and showcase the United Kingdom in a way that feels so honest and true and real to everybody's unique identity of what it means to be British. My partner edited the footage together and I stuck some nice instrumentals behind it, but everything you see is the pure hard work, effort and selflessness of all the wonderful people who devoted time to the cause.
Organising the vote was an interesting process as there ended up being three parts to the entire process. Firstly, we had to coordinate the British votes which was easy enough to do as it was basically the same process as the national selection. Keeping track of the OGAE Club votes proved slightly trickier with several clubs missing the deadline to submit the materials. All of that felt miniscule in scale to the part where Alasdair and I had literally no idea as to how to present the voting with out best idea being to screen record a ScoreWiz. That's when David White came along and answered all of our prayers by offering to make some fantastic graphics for the contest that would go nicely alongside all the other content. I hope you will all agree that David's work was absolutely superb in this regard. As I was the middle-man between the OGAE Song Contest email and David, I was constantly keeping tabs as to who had submitted their votes and videos and after much nervous waiting, we eventually got everything over the line in time.
However, the OGAE Song Contest 2019 adventure was not yet over because even though we had an exported file, we had to get it online and that proved tricky. Initially, the file we managed to export was just over 7 GB. This was not a problem to upload to YouTube as they had no size limits however, the scheduled video release was almost immediately taken down owing to copyright issues. It turns out even if you credit everybody, they definitively will not allow you to play the music in another video. This set a slight panic in motion, we had two days to get the video online before the planned release on November 7. Eventually, I exported the file as something smaller (4.7 GB) and Vimeo came to our rescue owing again largely to the help of Alasdair who arranged a Vimeo account for OGAE UK and paid for it all at very short notice. Proof truly that a) the show must go on and b) it is truly darkest before the dawn.
And now to the result itself, which felt truly special. It would never happen at Eurovision that the host nation would draw themselves in second and then storm to victory. It was also nice to see a Scot win the contest, seeing a) as quite a lot of the contest was shot in Scotland and b) that according to ESC Insight, the last Scot to represent the United Kingdom at Eurovision was Scott Fitzgerald in 1988. The OGAE Song Contest will subsequently be hosted in Edinburgh in 2020, so it is nice to put the city I now call home firmly on the map. I have loved the process of putting this contest together and given that it is difficult to imagine the UK winning Eurovision again in my lifetime (I was interestingly born in May 1997), it was extremely emotional to be part of the UK hosting any kind of song contest and to see us win it on home soil. I am really looking forward to getting the band back together next year as I reconvene with the amazing people with whom I put this contest together this year to do it all again next October. I will leave you as one only can with the OGAE Song Contest 2019 winner...
Thank you for reading this post. Don't forget to give us a cheeky subscribe and to share this post around. We will be back very soon with an article on next year's MelFest, until then, settle in, make some tea and enjoy your winter!
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