eurovision song contest Archives - Mark Littlewood autobiography

SEAN CONNERY and The Eurovision Song Contest

Even the late Sean Connery admired their technique.

Here we’re paying homage to the Edinburgh Fire Department and the Fire Crews that operated their High Lift Rescue appliance on our behalf. All were invaluable to our efforts to make Edinburgh look stunning on celluloid for ‘Sean Connery’s – Edinburgh’ dir. Murray Grigor. Prod. Lynda Miles.

These were the same fire crews that had helped me ten yearsearlier achieve some of the spectacular camera movements on my self-funded film ‘Beneath the Skyline: Edinburgh to Music.’ Which, as you know, opened the ‘1972 EurovisionSong Contest’ when the BBC broadcast it to the world from Edinburgh’s Usher Hall.

With very little film training these firemen were soon moving their colossal appliance across the sky with great filmicawareness and precision – just like ‘Key Grips’ on a movieset.

I thought mischievously, it would be quite appropriate to have ‘Key Grip’ as an additional skill on their application forms.We’d also had similar help from Edinburgh’s LightingDepartment.

It’s all in my book ‘Shaping the Shadows: A Picture Maker’s Story’. Available for £10 from the National Library of Scotland.

#BeneaththeSkyline #SeanConnerysEdinburgh#EdinburghFireDepartment #EdinburghLightingDepartment#HighLiftRescueAppliance #MurrayGrigor #LyndaMyles.

National Library of Scotland see: https://linkd.in/egEyBYFF

My web site www.marklittlewood.org.uk

and

Amazon.

BENEATH THE SKYLINE – EDINBURGH TO MUSIC Opens to the World THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST

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