The Eurovision Song Contest is once again upon us, so I’ve written a few words about my experiences with the 1972 version broadcast from Edinburgh. As you know the Eurovision Song Contest attracts vast audiences and is still one ofthe BBC’s flagship entertainment programmes. It also has the distinction of being one of the longest running programmes in the world. In 1972 the programme was transmitted from outside London for the first time and again for the first time, the BBC broadcast live to a worldwide audience. Attracting such prestige the broadcaster needed to excel in every way possible, so a high-quality opening film establishing Edinburgh’s magnificence to the world was essential, setting the tone and status of what was to follow. ‘Beneath the Skyline – Edinburgh to Music’ was chosen as such a film, with all the high quality the BBC was renowned for – except I’d funded the film myself. This was really my apprentice piece. My impressionistic interpretation of a wonderful city, passionately made on my independent shoe-string budget, and completed just as I left my teens. Fortunately for me the BBC producers couldn’t find such a film in their own immense archives. Strange, because the corporation had countless in-house film units. However, they couldn’t resist my self-funded independent film, ‘Beneath the Skyline – Edinburgh to Music,’ which I’d completed in 1967 aged twenty-one. The film had already been given the Kodak award for Outstanding Colour Photography. This was my view of Edinburgh, the city I knew and loved, no words, only music and pictures. Excerpts from ‘Beneath the Skyline’ can be seen on my web page marklittlewood.org.uk as well as on YouTube; ‘Eurovision Song Contest 1972 –
Opening Sequence’.
My book, ‘Shaping the Shadows: A Picture Maker’s Story’ is also for sale on- line at The National Library of Scotland and on Amazon.
http;//shop.nls.uk/shaping-the-shadows-2798-p.asp
