THE FINAL ROUNDOur Bid for Lipa to Host The 101st Worldvision Song Contest The Final Round. The final battle to the top. The final sprint to victory. What does that represent to you?
For us at BAEN it's the magic that you can create on stage, the emotions that you can evoke from an audience and generating that golden moment that will sky-rocket you to victory. Who will be the next Almatsi Mustonen? We hope they will be holding up that trophy on the stage in Lipa...
The cultural and financial centre of Besen as well as the capital city, Lipa (pop. 3.6m) tends to be the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions our nation. The city alone is worth 34% of the country's economy and has been having a booming comeback in terms of both finance and also the arts, as we recover from a pandemic and a devastating recession, people are now bubbling with inspiration and their creative output is increasing massively. In fact, BAEN had been struggling to fund participation in the Worldvision Song Contest for a long time due to that recession, and at one point there were questions of survival for the broadcaster. But, now in a time of stability and flourishing vision for the future, the Worldvision team arrived at the head offices of BAEN to propose a bid to host the contest in the city. This comes after one of the most expensive participations, Jaza performing in Monterra at the centennial edition with her song 'Heart', where she came 6th in a highly rated group of songs, Todlichebujoku coming out on top.
We want to invite the world to this beautiful city of ours - one that we are extremely proud of. Whether it be the buzzing and energetic city centre, where business thrives and there are events and dazzling state-of-the-art constructions on every corner, or the alluring suburbs which has been a top tourist magnet for a long time, with its beauty pulling people in, and the kind and welcoming residents keeping them there (Lipa is one of the highest rated destinations on Airbnb). In fact, let me invite you to discuss our accommodation capabilities. We have a total number of 562 accommodation establishments, of which 98 are hotels. This makes up around 55,000 rooms total for visitors, of which the majority will be available for those coming to experience Worldvision as August and September have some of the lowest rates of tourists during the year.
There are an array of options for visitors for how they would like to access the city. For example, bus travel is available cheaply for 5 risas (around $4), accessed through an AutoGO card (you can get these in many places in the city, whether processed through the many automated machines we have or in person at any information centre in Lipa). With this you can access unlimited travel on any bus service for an entire week, and yes that includes tourists so don't expect any extra costs or tax just for not being from Besen.
Now, rail travel is effectively non-existent in terms of practicality for tourists and far more expensive in Lipa. So if you don't want to travel around by bus we can assure you that travel by car is also a cheap and stress-free way to get around. You can find many hire-a-car services straight away upon exit from Lipa International Airport, and you will be able to get a standard five seat vehicle for only 8 RIS/day. If you're an environmentally aware and conscious person don't panic. The government has made it law that 50% of these hired vehicles (in Lipa) must be electric, and again don't worry about there being no charging stations as there are many, and the city has spent a large deal of money to modernise these systems and make them widely available to the public.
The Lipa Dome, built in 2016, is Besen's largest indoor venue with a capacity to hold 42,000 people at its peak. It will hold 30,000 if it indeed does host the Worldvision Song Contest come August. It has been the perfect venue for many events, and it has become a staple for the bi-monthly 'A Night Of Music' musical television presentation, broadcasted by BAEN, to be held there every December since 2017. Countless concerts and some sports events have found themselves being held at the dome and it has even been used as an emergency hospital space for coronavirus patients during the pandemic.
It's located in the southernmost region of the city, and as we have mentioned before, the easy bus travel will make it no issue to get here quickly, and a bonus! You will be able to see some of the most alluring and dazzling attractions that Lipa has to offer on the way there. It's also in a location of low population density and for most of the time this means minimal traffic, and many green spaces that will eventually become the place where the bustling community of Worldvision fans will come to occupy in the days leading up to the contest as rehearsals kick off.
Press Pass for WV101
With tons of money being pumped into the renovation of the venue every year, the dome has pushed the boundaries of what a venue can achieve and showcase in the country. In fact, let's uncover how the stage will look come Worldvision time.
The main charming point of the stage design by Leonardo Viti is the pyramid/triangular shapes at either side and around the sides of the large LED screen at the very back. They will be able to perform various different stunning light effects, as well as being a space for projections. They are separated at each single triangle, leaving many possibilities for how your delegation would like to utilise them. The main stage is a fairly standard space for your performers to use, rectangular, and wide but still long enough vertically to be able to do what you like in terms of a grand performance. If the main stage isn't quite what you need to create your dream performance, you can utilise the secondary stage which is accompanied by two lengthy and wide walkways, and the stage (about fifty percent smaller than the main stage) angles out at its top right edge. This allows for an intimate moment with the standing audience who will be just a few feet away from the second stage. As well as this the floor of the secondary stage is LED-capable, whereas the main stage is not.
The walkways are the widest at their horizontal alignment with the main stage, and this means that within reason, many props will be able to be placed here. An example that was brought up was secondary LED screens that delegations could bring with them, or whatever other constructions they want to use as their performer makes their way across the walkway.
As expected from the Worldvision community in Besen, the popular presenting duo Leon Moon and Angel Cambari will be the hosts of the contest if Lipa's bid is successful. They have had a triumphant and fruitful career thus far as presenters of BAEN's flagship morning television programme 'Ciao Besen', in which they appear on 2.1 million screens every morning from Monday to Friday. They have been known to be fans of the contest, and even have had the chance to interview several entrants, last edition being Jaza from Besen and Los Hermanos Bailarines from Elejamie.
Leon started out at BAEN working his way up the ranks until he landed at Ciao Besen. His first presenting experience was for a popular children's programme, where he worked for four years before moving up several channels to BAEN1. This is when he began reporting on entertainment news in his own segment of the daily news programme, he began to gain traction and popularity with audiences at that point, and since 2018 he has been at Ciao Besen.
As for Angel, she once worked at BAEN's biggest rival broadcaster BSS, also having a decently long career in presenting, and in 2019 she began at Ciao Besen, and that was when the pair was formed and marketed together. She is otherwise most known as being the host of The Voice, which was unfortunately shelved after three series in 2018. She had gained most of her notoriety in the industry among the biggest stars and behind the scenes figures in this role.
We will work hard to ensure the confidence of the community that BAEN is very capable and wants to host semi finals for the 101st contest. As seen in the previous edition and showcased by Kalosia and Scotatrova as co-hosts, the format is an exciting and engaging new feature of the era. We hope to be able to make the process even more exciting for each nation involved, and here are our proposals for how we could do it.
36
Entries to trigger semi finals
3
Live draws
3
Shows 3 IC threads, ensuring the semi final running order is able to be determined by the host
10
Qualifiers from each semi final
6
Automatic Qualifiers Besen (HOST), Todlichebujoku, Britonisea, Izmedu, Kalosia, Ertzei Kishim (TOP 5 OF PREVIOUS CONTEST)
26
Finalists
Not only are we confident that we will be able to manage this workload effectively, we are excited for what this process could have in store. As well as this, we are sure that the proposals we have put forward will benefit the running of the contest, and we are ready for how it may change the timetable. If you are concerned about the changing of graphics which was experienced in the last contest, we assure that there will be a reasonable period of time that you will be able to make edits to those sorts of things. One thing that we are certainly not un-moveable on is the idea of 3 threads, so I urge the community to discuss this and whether it would make the contest clunky or too complicated - our reasoning for this proposal is purely aesthetic based.
OOC NOW
Effectively, the postcards will simply be a pixelated version of your nation's flag, an image of your artist, and the background will be a pixel background of my choosing based on what I think matches the vibe of your song. Ignore how WIP they look at this moment because they are. At some point and probably based on the amount of nations actually participate, I might be rearranging the design etc. They'll look pretty in the end!
Right, onto scoreboards and other graphics...
Ignore the ginormous size and if it lags, it's because it's like 40mb. Anyway I'm trying to give ESC 2011-2012 tease with the envelopes, I think it looks really cute. All this depends on if semis happen of course so these could be shelved forever... oh well. I think I'll probably be doing a Youtube reveal like Kalosia last time, it'll be more esc-like though methinks, no shade. I only say that because I imagine it would be hell uploading the gifs one by one - plus people like the Youtube stuff so let's go with that for #now! Final scoreboard now...
As you can see, I'll be doing some live voting moments for the final, although I probably won't showcase the jury voting graphics because it will take centuries. I might do a highlight reel of jury voting though, for example 1st voter, 10th voter, 20th voter etc. or maybe the most gamechanging voters I don't know quite yet. Either way there will 100% be live televoting reveal, using the scoreboard above. If you want to see what I can do in terms of graphics and animation you can check out my
Worldvision 72 voting revamp or my
teaser video for the graphics in this bid.
Well that's all I can think of that needs to be revealed at this moment! Hope you enjoyed this snappy and simple BID to host. Let's get involved and let's get to having fun, OK?!