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There is a great deal that goes on behind the scenes in preparing a show stopping performance for the Eurovision Song Contest. Jon Jacob caught up with the UK entry's creative director, Dan Shipton to find out about 'Joe and Jake's' progress at this year's competition in Stockholm.

What is your role for the 主播大秀 and UK Entry at Eurovision?

I am employed by the 主播大秀 as creative director for the . This means that I work closely with the rest of the creative team to conceptualise, manage and deliver the creative vision for our entry. I make sure that every creative element of the staging from stage design to the lighting, screen content, costume and camera angles come together to enhance Joe and Jake’s performance and make sure we do our country proud.

Why did they choose you?

After ten years of working in TV entertainment I moved onto stadium spectaculars, which included Take That’s Progress Tour, the London 2012 ceremonies and also Sochi Winter Olympic ceremonies. A few years ago my business partners and I established Black Skull Creative to bring together the years of experience we had garnered from the industry and pass it on to our clients, which include a wide range of major music artists and brands. We regularly collaborate with Ellie Goulding, Years and Years, Jess Glynne and many major TV shows such as the 主播大秀 Music Awards, Royal Variety Performance and The X Factor to bring their shows to life. One of our proudest achievements is creating Ellie Goulding’s Delirium world tour, which is currently out on the road. When I was approached by UK Head of Delegation Guy Freeman to join the Eurovision team it was because he wanted someone who had a broad creative and technical knowledge that could bring our Eurovision entry to a world-class level.

So what is the creative process?

When Joe and Jake won  I knew instantly that we had to find a creative concept that would match their energy and the vibrancy within the music. We wanted an idea that would feel cool and effective without being overly complicated and distracting. 

We began by deconstructing their performance on ‘You Decide’. What had worked? What hadn’t worked? What could we capitalise on?

From the very beginning we wanted to make sure that every performance that Joe and Jake did felt part of the same concept. We knew we had to shoot a music video that would become the anchor to the campaign and would be the first opportunity we really had to establish the key look.

We wanted the boys to put on a stadium style performance that would feel epic. The song is so vibrant and energetic we felt that using light and colour to transmit the energy across would be a great idea and so the wall of ‘magic dots’ (small moving lights) was born. 

The other important thing for us was to find a way of visualising the key line “You’re not alone, we’re in this together”. We wanted to directly bring fans from all nationalities into the performance and so we felt that using selfies to form our chorus screen content would achieve this perfectly. To up the anti we also wanted to take this a step further by turning the cameras on the audience in the arena and putting them in the screens live on the night, making sure that literally everyone was part of Joe and Jake’s performance. This was all a challenge but one which we wanted to rise to.

Once I had shot the music video and the creative looks had developed into reality I wrote a ‘look and feel’ document, which has to be submitted to SVT (the host broadcaster) for approval. This included detailed designs for our staging pieces and a full script which breaks down the song into sections, giving detailed notes on what should be happening in the screen content, lighting and performer movement, whilst also suggesting some notes for how we would like to see the performance captured by the TV cameras. 

At this point SVT take all of our notes and do a ‘stand in’ rehearsal where local singers learn the song and movement (when we submitted the look and feel document we also provided a video of Joe and Jake performing the song so the director knows the movement). They then send a link of the performance to us and we have 24 hours to give all our notes back to SVT. This is the first time we get to see everything in reality and there are invariably a lot of changes to be made. We unpick every detail and then put it back together again sending in pages of notes that we then work through with the SVT team.

Meanwhile, Jay Revell (our choreographer and performance coach) and Yvie Burnett (our vocal coach) are also working daily with Joe and Jake and the backing vocalists to make sure we are going to guarantee the best performance on the night. The rehearsals before we leave the UK are extensive so that the boys are flawless in both their vocal and physical delivery by the time we reach Stockholm. We know that unlike other shows as soon as we step on stage at The Globe Arena and do our first rehearsal this will be watched by the world's press and also put on the . We need to make sure our first rehearsal is near perfect because really, it is our first performance. 

For the first rehearsal we get twenty minutes on stage to run through the song three times with full production. We have a few minutes in between each take to give notes and so we have to think quickly and give concise comments that keep improving the output each run through. After the rehearsal we go directly to ‘The Viewing Room’. At this point we get 15 minutes to watch the third take back and give detailed changes for lighting, screen content and analyse the detail of every camera shot. After all, the juries and voting audience are watching Joe and Jake on TV so the way the performance translates through the camera can make or break our position on the leader board. 

I’m pleased to say that the relief after our  was immense. SVT had implemented all of our notes and the performance was almost unrecognisable form the stand in rehearsal tape we saw. Joe and Jake had also given us a brilliant performance and looked so comfortable up on stage. The worry had now been replaced by excitement.

Since then we’ve had a second camera rehearsal where we refined the performance even more and will then perform at the Semi Final Jury show. This time it matters even more as voting delegations will be watching. 

Could we win?

The Grand Final feels like the day of reckoning for all of our Eurovision hopes. Will we do well? Will we get praised or slated? Could we be left hand side of the leader board? Could we be in the top ten? Could we win? Anything is possible – look at Leicester City lifting the Premier League trophy! But more than winning, I live in hope that the rest of Europe will realise how seriously we have taken the competition and how hard the team have worked to create something amazing that the rest of Europe will love and more importantly, that the UK and everyone watching back home can be very proud of. After all, we are in this together.

Dan Shipton is creative director for the UK entry at Eurovision 2016.

• The  will be broadcast live on 主播大秀 One and 主播大秀 Radio 2 on Saturday 14 May from 8pm.
• Visit the  for more details about the contest.
• Read Hugh Goldsmith's ''.