Going back a couple of days and awful opening ceremony - the worst of all the ceremonies I've seen in the last 20 years. The IOC need to ensure an indoor ceremony never happens again - the cauldron thing was an absolute farce, whether it failed or not. We know the cauldron often isn't actually "lit" by those given the honour of lighting it, but it usually appears to do so and lighting an indoor cauldron which would burn for 20 minutes or so was just an insult to the tradition.
Good commentary from Hazel though, and I hope Huw Edwards is let nowhere near the mic for London 2012. If they want a male voice, I'd opt for Hugh Porter - easily the best commentator the BBC have got.
BBC coverage wise and the schedule changes don't help, but so far so good - though I think they only really need two main presenters out there - Claire for primetime then Hazel for overnight - though I guess with Sue Barker commentating that's effectively what they've got. And although annoying that Freeview viewers only get the one stream, the highlights programme is very good - but just wish they'd schedule them on BBC1/2 (say an Olympic Breakfast from 8.30-9.15am during the games) rather than just loop them on the red button.
Disagree completely on the ceremony. Certainly looking back over the last 10 years this is the one I've enjoyed most. There was a fantastic shot from a helicopter coming round the corner of False Creek heading towards that barge with the Olympic Rings on it, right at the very beginning, which the BBC all but missed. They'll have to do something like that with the Thames in two years time. And the full sequence with the snowboarder (which again got butchered in the highlights) was a great concept with first-rate editing (if you watch it back you'll see they constantly shifted the speed, and the section with the torches and the maple leaf was extended - including several great tracking shots.) I'm yet to hear anyone say a bad word about the whales and I also really liked the stuff with the dancers and the tree (the rising projection on that was a rather effective optical illusion.)
I watched the "pre-show" on the EBU feed - which was mostly an audience participation rehearsal. Some of that wasn't very successful - they rehearsed the countdown sequence several times - the audience had to stand as each number from 10-1 was projected on the area they were sitting in. However they didn't really do so quickly enough and the difference in colours on the packs they had to hold aloft - light for the area covered by the number, dark for the areas not - was pretty much lost at least on SD. Also there was a vision mixer (or camera operator) error towards the end which meant a couple of numbers were never shown. However I thought the torches were very successful - each person in the crowd had one of four coloured gels and the ushers showed them which coloured torches to turn on at a particular time, and how to move them about, so the patterns of light were consistent around the stadium.
Whilst I liked the songs I'd personally have preferred it if there was more evidence of a camera rehearsal for most of them, and if the cut rate had been a bit faster.
Overall, as mentioned by Hazel and Robin Cousins in the commentary, there was a sense that less is more after Beijing. I preferred the ground based display to the 'rolled up' digital parchment/scroll, for example.
I don't think the torch was such a disaster as you make out because (a) they were going to light it again outside afterwards anyway and (b) I'm convinced they fully planned for this eventuality - crucially if one of the four 'legs' failed the rest of the mechanism would still work and it wouldn't look too bad (which it didn't really - they managed to get some favourable camera angles from the other side of the stadium.) But the uncomfortable delay was nothing compared to the agonising
four and half minutes Cathy Freeman et al had to endure back in 2000 when there was a computer fault and the mechanism shut down (incidentally if Youtube is correct,
that
cauldron is now
this water feature opposite the stadium entrance.)
In Vancouver, my interpretation was that the four poles had to be installed *during* the ceremony because those sections of the stage almost certainly housed the totem poles used at the start, so they could not fully test them beforehand. The only official reason that's been given thus far is hydraulic failure, but I heard a couple of rumours from people in the stadium who claim they saw technicians trying to release one of the doors in the the floor of the stage.
Last edited by william on 15 February 2010 3:09pm