Writing a video postcard from Finland

Helsingin Sanomat launches alternative video competition to present Finland in the run-up to Eurovision

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By Jussi Ahlroth
     
      Fancy your skills at capturing and bottling Finland in a one-minute video? Well, maybe not the entire country, warts and all, but something essential or amusing, an interesting or off-the-wall vignette - now that could surely be crammed into a sixty-second amateur clip.
      At the Eurovision Song Contest finals in May, Finland will be shown off to an audience of around 100 million Europeans via a series of 40-second video postcards. They will be directed by a collection of professionals, and the pros' work will soon be complete.
      Helsingin Sanomat would like to offer its readers an alternative channel - a means of showing what sort of image of home the locals would send to the European viewers.
     
From today [Friday 6.4.2007], on the Helsingin Sanomat website at hs.fi/videopostikortit, browsers can find a "Suomemme maa" (Our Country Finland) video competition, to which anyone - at least anyone except the professionals - can send in their own Suomi-As-I-See-It presentation, provided it is not more than one minute in length.
      The videos are accessible by any and everyone, and viewers are invited to discuss them with other visitors to the site. It is also possible to send e-mails from the site inviting others to go and follow the links to a specific video that takes your fancy for one reason or another.
      A panel from the HS Domestic News desk will keep an eye on the discussions about the videos put up, and will pick a selection of video clips for the final competition, which will be judged by a jury of professionals
     
The winner will be rewarded with an all-expenses paid trip for two to the city hosting the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest - a destination as yet unknown. The video competition will run until May 8th, and the winner's name will be announced on May 10th, the day of the 2007 Eurovision semi-finals. Four other runners-up will receive consolation prizes.
      "Having the Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Finland is a historic and allround unique event in Helsinki. And we want to get involved in the stir it will create", says managing editor Kaius Niemi of the origins of the video postcard project.
     
"Eurovision for the Finns has always been encumbered with a certain amount of self-doubt and other baggage - ‘How come we've never done well, even if the Norwegians and the Turks, too, have managed to win the thing?' - but this is an excellent opportunity to put Finland up there front and centre, though hopefully without taking matters or ourselves too terribly seriously", notes Niemi.
      If you don't happen to have a videocamera or a camera-equipped mobile phone in your pocket, it is also possible to make your own video with the assistance of Helsingin Sanomat's own street teams.
      These will be heading out into the city offering their services in a few weeks' time. The schedule will be published in the newspaper. The videomaking teams will also be on hand at the Helsingin Sanomat stand at the Media Fair in the Helsinki Fair Centre on April 13th.
     
The host broadcaster for Eurovision 2007, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), has not yet made public the names of the directors of its professional video postcard offerings.
      What is known is that there will be a total of fifty-two of them made, to be inserted before each song.
     
There are 28 entrants in the Song Contest semi-final, with the best ten finishers going forward to join 14 others who have qualified for the final round based either on their showing in 2006 (in this case a top-ten finish) or on their size and clout within the European Broadcasting Union.
      These last-mentioned "Big Four" countries, the largest contributors to the Union, are Great Britain, Germany, France, and Spain.
      Since 2000 they have qualified automatically for the final round, regardless of their previous year's ranking. In 2006 all four of them failed to generate enough voter warmth to finish in the top 15, let alone the top 10. Italy, by the way, has not taken part at all since 1997. And it should not be necessary to say that Finland is among the 14 guaranteed finalists, courtesy of last year's runaway win in Athens by Lordi and Hard Rock Hallelujah.
     
Kaius Niemi says that all Finns are naturally curious to see what kind of image of the place - and of its inhabitants - is going to be served up to a potential TV audience of 100 million when May comes around.
      "YLE has been keeping its cards very close to its chest over the video inserts, so HS is keen to offer readers a free hand to present some personal viewpoints of the current state of things in this little northern corner of the continent."
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.4.2007
     
     
Note: This article is one in a series following the way in which Helsinki morphs itself into a Eurovision host city. The 2007 Eurovision Song Contest final will be held in the capital, at the Helsinki Arena in Pasila, on May 12th.


See also:
  Suomemme maa ("Our Country Finland") Video Competition (Website in Finnish)

JUSSI AHLROTH / Helsingin Sanomat
jussi.ahlroth@hs.fi