Point Form thoughts while I watched the 2012 London Olympic opening ceremonies.
This will be the fourth summer Olympics I’ve paid attention to the opening ceremonies. I don’t care much about the sports, but I love a good big show.
It started very confusing, but I think I can blame that on the camera work. The show was designed as a full stadium show with so many things happening, the TV viewer didn’t quite see the full scope. I actually missed several things I think, and kept wishing they’d do more long shots.
It looked like a lot of stuff happening, but there was no smooth flow or story. Quickly, we learned it’s going to be a historical, starting with early green fields and pre-industrial revolutionary England. It didn’t flow. It didn’t have a story. Just a lot of people doing things, not well synced.
I didn’t like the first act at all, but the stage changed to the industrial revolution and the set change was gradual and spectacular. I still found the dancers out of sync, and even the people marching were not to a set rhythm. Marchers?!? Out of sync. Come on. I don’t have to compare it to the spectacular synchronization of the Korea games… but it really looked worse than the dancers on AMERICA’S GOT TALENT. I’m a bit anal about dance sync. I want every dance group to be as tight as I remember the Jackson 5 being as a kid.
When you watch a show, and the best comments you can give are on the set change, that’s not so good.
I found the video segments odd too, placed in for the TV audience to cover set changes I suppose, but it made this event seem almost like a TV show – not a stadium spectacular live show. I was curious to know what the live audience was seeing.
Bond picking up the Queen? Really? It reminded me of the first year they helicopter lifted Jeff Probst, host of survivor from the last tribal council to the live show. They only did it once. I won’t even mention the day-night difference that made the entire build up video segment not make any sense at all.
I was sad to see the queen not smile. I love our Queen. I want to see her smile.
The musical bits were ok, but I found the shift in tempo disturbing. I was toe tapping, and then I couldn’t. I had to mentally re-adjust to the new tune. The choirs seemed to be singing in a foreign language… or at least accents so rich I could not make out the words. Even during the musical medley number, only a small percentage of the tunes were familiar to me. Even Tubular Bells, which I love, changed to some unknown melody within a few minutes.
My Canadian announcers were always giving away the next scenes before hand.
I did laugh at Mr. Bean, which is rare because I usually don’t laugh at him at all.
The whole show seemed more like a Howie Mandel MOBBED flashmob sequence.
Overall, I don’t think I can say I experienced a single WOW moment. The last few Olympic opening ceremonies have had several WOW moments. WOWeee WoW Wow moment.
I didn’t really understand the story behind the yellow show during the unknown solo artist.
Why were the announcements in French first? Was that just on CBC?
Overall, my least favourite OPENING CEREMONIES in decades. I’m sad.
