Eero makes life complicated for himself

After reading the task brief, Eero comes up with the idea to make himself appear to have a moustache using camera perspective, rather than just sticking something onto his face (in the studio, Eero desperately tells his past self to stop).

As he decides to take this different direction, Eero is the only contestant who is shown doing any preparation. He grabs a furry vase from the top of a nearby set of shelves, and heads outside. He places the vase on a table, and then starts crawling around on the grass, attempting to find the right position to align his face and the vase on camera, and make it appear that he has a giant, furry moustache.

For some reason, Eero gets the idea in his head that in order to meet the “from a distance” requirement of the task, he needs a second camera to film the camera filming his moustache. This additional self-inflicted challenge just seems to complicate matters and confuse him. He takes hold of a digital viewfinder to observe himself on camera in real time, but is unable to understand how to position himself behind the furry vase to make his idea work (at one point he comments “I’ve done something stupid”).

Eventually, Eero gives up on the vase and settles instead on using a stick. After holding it up to his face, to line up the shot, he hands the stick to Pilvi and has her walk away from him with it at the same level, intending to use perspective to make it appear much larger. However, what Eero fails to take into account is that the camera cannot keep both him and the stick in focus at the same time, as the distance increases.

With his time running out, Eero just holds the stick against his face, and then tells one of the camera crew to film the viewfinder screen, before slumping to the table in defeat.

In the studio, Eero spins a fanciful justification for his attempt, claiming that he was inspired by magical realism, and specifically the films of the Italian director Federico Fellini. Jaakko makes no comment on Eero’s claim, instead informing him that his final picture was too blurry to get a still to display in the studio. However, he compliments Eero’s willingness to think about the task in a different way.

Jaakko awards Eero last place, before correcting himself, saying that the score was an “optical illusion”, and bumping Eero up to joint third place.

(Written by Jenny R and proofread by Karl Craven)

(Illustrations collected by Jenny R and adjusted by Karl Craven)