London (Sainsbury's) Anniversary Games

Much talk about "Legacy" this weekend so what do you think the legacy for broadcasting has been.

We do take it for granted the coverage of things like the Swimming and Rowing World Championships which before London won the bid was pretty much non-existent - but week in week out I'm not sure we're seeing more Olympic sport on TV at all - and pretty much none of it is outside the BBC.

Also viewers don't seem to be lapping it up as much as I thought they might, with less than 4m watching the athletics last night on BBC1. There might be more interest in the World Championships where there is more at stake, but that remains to be seen.


P.S. Other than perhaps the London Marathon is this the first time the BBC have used Paula Radcliffe as a pundit. Andrew Cotter in the commentary box too.

Remember some of the BBC people have been in Lyon with the C4 Crew, talking of which there must be an enormous logistical exercise on for C4 to reposition most of their Paralympic team from Lyon to Stratford overnight.

Think C4 and BBC are sharing presentation tech facilities in Stratford (as they did in Birmingham) - so whilst in-vision talent (and possibly some production) may be moving overnight - quite a lot of the people working tomorrow are already there.

I guess it'll just be the commentary team and possibly Sonia McClaughlin then as the hosts will be different.

Surprised at how much I enjoyed Paula's punditry this weekend, like Colin Jackson a natural without being annoying like Denise Lewis who once again mimicked Grace Jones with more than just her hair.

I thought she was rather good to and she'll be part of the team in Moscow as well. Haven't been her biggest fan in recent years but that was more down to Steve Cram and co. not realising she was passed her best than Paula herself. The BBC seem to be trying Colin in other roles now - seems to do more commentating and interviewing now than punditry.


Great to rewatch the opening ceremony and the BBC probably missing a trick by not replaying the Games Today (or an edited version of) every night over the next couple of weeks, even if just on the red button. Must say the few elements which did seem to be added as part of the "directors cut" (I don't remember the photos in the opening sequence the first time round) probably detracted rather than added to it, so I think the host broadcaster (one of the Scandanavian broadcasters for the Opening Ceremony - Finland I think) made the right call there, however much it might have upset Danny Boyle.

Trevor Nelson's "commentary" was no better a year later.

Re. the production company for the Opening Ceremony, Done and Dusted Productions did most of the Boyle stuff, with OBS doing the official stuff. Of course there was some overlap, and Danny Boyle expressed his dissatisfaction with OBS for some parts in his commentary on the DVD, but was very complementary about D&D's director who did a very good job.

As discussed here: http://www.doneanddusted.com/the-making-ofs/project/filming-the-london-2012-olympics-opening-ceremony

They managed to fix a few things in the OBS coverage/events management area.

When the 7 young athletes ran round taking turns to hold the Olympic Flame that Sir Steve Redgrave ran in with, the stadium commentators got the names totally out of sync. They removed that bit of audio entirely in the directors cut, and instead used captions...

They also did something to cover the most obvious opening ceremony glitch - which was Kenneth Branagh standing in the area surrounded by cameras, which presumably were supposed to flash and timeslice?

They also fixed the rather annoying vertical timing error that seemed to be present on all the content cut by Done and Dusted in their truck, but that wasn't present on the stuff cut by OBS (i.e. the OBS stuff didn't have a black bar at the top live, but the D&D stuff did...)

Best thing about the official Blu-ray is that you have a choice of 2.0 audio with commentary, or 5.1 without. It's much nicer without...

Noggin - as a complete novice here - how does it work when they had effectively two production teams? (OBS and Done and Dusted) Did they have two trucks and the feed was switched between them, or was it more complex than that (I'm guessing it was!).

I must admit I find it all fascinating, how one successfully televises a big event like last year's opening ceremony. I've just spent far too long engrossed in the various videos on the Done and Dusted YouTube channel with various behind the scenes videos of concerts they've directed.

Done and Dusted had their own production team and resources team (truck, camera crew, sound crew etc.) This provided a mix of the "artistic" elements of the ceremony, which was then provided as a source into the OBS truck which also had its own cameras and crew, and provided coverage of the Olympic ceremonial aspects. The output of the OBS truck will have been the feed that most broadcasters will have taken (though NBC may well have done their own thing...) So OBS will have cut to their feed of the D&D coverage, and then cut to their own cameras for the ceremonial stuff. (The feed from the D&D truck into the OBS truck didn't appear to be vertically timed - hence the black bar at the top of frame on the D&D coverage that wasn't present on the OBS stuff)

There will have been some overlap I suspect (some cameras may have been available in both trucks, and I suspect effects mics etc. may have been shared)

I think sometimes Eurovision has worked similarly - with two trucks present - one used for music, the other for presentation, with one director in each truck. The two trucks also provided redundancy (as you could do the entire show from one truck).