Opening/Closing Ceremonies Discussion

[SpongeG]

the reruns i watched had way more commercials

neither broadcast showed the fireworks which i heard were as good as or better than the summer festival ones...

they really dropped the ball on that they should have started the fireworks within minutes/seconds of gretzky lighting the outdoor cauldron so it could be shown on TV

[Echoes]

The prairie sequence was especially moving for me, having grown up here. Can anyone tell me who's rendition of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now" that was? It was great.

I was so happy to see Lt-Gen. Romeo Dallaire help carry the Olympic flag in, too. He's a true Canadian hero that I'm glad they included.

[SpongeG]

that was joni mitchell singing - she redid that song herself a few years ago

[Echoes]

^ Thanks, I didn't realize it was actually Mitchell (but by then I was a few beers deep).

[Smooth]

I'm not sure about you guys but I feel like driving Wayne to Coal Harbour was even more high risk than some of the other torch lighting (e.g. the ski jumper with the torch or the archer shooting a lit arrow into the cauldron). That could have gone so bad. Especially since he ran out from Terry Fox plaza where just a few hours earlier all the nut jobs were protesting.

I'm sure the protesters were probably choked about blowing that giant chance to cause a ruckus in front of millions.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they did the lighting that way. But I think I had my breath held there for about 5 minutes. Especially with the crowd being allowed to get really close to the truck.

[Overground]

Highlights for me were -


- Athletes arrival. Plus I thought the Japanese athletes holding Canadian flags along with their own was a nice touch.

- the Orca whales.

- Jacques Villeneuve! One of my heroes too. I also agree that he is one of the most under recognised Canadians. Unfairly in my opinion considering his achievements in sport.

- Donald Sutherland. His command and especially his enunciation of classic Canadian English the way it used to be pronounced.

- Olympic Hymn

- Gretzky in any form regardless of mishaps is a win! Sensational I thought, even the truck relay.

[GeeCee]

Originally Posted by Ayreonaut

Perhaps this morning, but I don't think so last night. My mom watched it again this morning and she said they cut out a lot from the live one last night. She told me they didn't even show the orcas this morning.

The broadcast last night showed everything.. when they went to commercials nothing was going on, as they were resetting the stage for the next scene. I was at the dress rehearsals and nothing happened during those times (before fiddling, etc). Dunno about this morning's broadcast though.

[Yume-sama]

Another photo I am particularly proud of


http://www.flickr.com/photos/syume/4353861079/

Notice everybody wearing their fashionable bibs! The things we had to do to give you guys a good show

[jsbertram]

An average 33 million viewers in the U.S. turned to NBC for the network’s coverage of the opening ceremony, according to overnight Nielsen ratings estimates. That’s a jump of 17 million viewers — or 47 per cent — when compared to the opening ceremony at 2006’s Winter Olympics in Turin.

In Canada, an estimated 13.3 million viewers watched the entire opening ceremony, making it the most-watched TV event in Canadian history, according to a release issued Saturday by CTV.

The figure eclipses the previous mark, set by the 2002 Salt Lake City gold-medal hockey game between the U.S. and Canada, which was seen by 10 million viewers in Canada.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/20...+view+from+down+there/2561788/story.html

[MechMike]

I kind of like our marshmallow roof now, kind of makes us more special, nooooooooo I don't want a retractable roof now!

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by Holden West

I'm sorry but I don't get the pre-recording thing. These singers are true professionals that perform in front of crowds for a living. They can handle anything. Seems to me more can go wrong with the recording than with live singing.

I really hope I'm able to cross the strait and take in some of the atmosphere downtown before this is all over.

It's not in case the artist flubs; Its done to give a seamless 'perfect' performance to the TV audience. Too many other technical faults can happen with the live performance regardless of the experience and professionalism of the artist

some that I've lived through:

Artist grabs (or is given) wrong mic
Mic loses power
Mic gets unplugged
Mic loses antenna
batteries fall out of mic
Artist sings into wrong end of mic
stage monitors fail and artist can't hear music to sing along with
earpieces fail and artist can't hear the music
wireless interference ("roger Delta 9er, we have you on guide slope to land")
audio guy fumbles on the board
Artist starts singing the wrong verse. or forgets their cue, or forgets the lyrics
Wind blows sheet music off of orchestra's music stands
Guitar string breaks
Violin (or other string instrument) bow breaks
Artist is fighting the flu - makeup are pre-recorded vocals can hide that for the TV cameras, but you can't hide the horking sound in the voice in front of the live audience.

With pre-recorded tracks, the TV audience may not notice these problems if they happen.

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by nova9

haha, it's not like your standard retail projector that you can move around. I think this thing might be mounted to something - perhaps the building across which would be the Chapters building.

If they are projecting it on the west wall of Sears, the projector would have to be somewhere in Robson Square.
Perhaps they are right up to the Robson steps of the VAG & can't get back any further?

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by dreambrother808

Watching on TV, I really can't believe that KD was lip-synching. Everyone else definitely was though.

I was really proud of the ceremony. Parts were definitely stunning. The quotes read by Donald Sutherland were poetic and spiritual. KD brought her huge, amazing voice as per usual. I loved the use of a Joni song, as I am a big fan.

I found the sound to be a much more rich and full on NBC as opposed to CTV, but otherwise CTV is impressing me so far in ways I didn't expect.

My major complaint was the First Nations opening segment. Much more could have been done with that. It came across as boring. I would have loved to see something re-enacting the Bill Reid creation myth sculpture at the Museum of Anthropology.

I originally thought that NBC is doing separate audio mixes for the HD signal and analog signal, even though the US is supposed to be all digital by now. Then I wondered there is a bad re-mix happening when the NBC signal from KING Seattle is coming through Shaw & getting down-converted to analogue for cable. I'm leaning towards a crappy signal conversion to analog cable by Shaw.

I'll be at an Oly party tonight, and I know the host has spent $$$$s on a new installation from Legend, so we may do some A-B testing between the different satellite channels to see what's up.

[jsbertram]

Originally Posted by Ayreonaut

Perhaps this morning, but I don't think so last night. My mom watched it again this morning and she said they cut out a lot from the live one last night. She told me they didn't even show the orcas this morning.

Not a surprise to me.
The live show went on for as long as it needed to, so the CTV national news went on after midnight in Toronto.
The 'rebroadcast' had to end at a specific time so CTV could start the daytime live coverage, so the Opening Ceremonies were edited down to the essential 2 hours.
That's what may end up on the official CTV souvenir DVD box set.

[jlousa]

I was in the dome for the show and agree with what most others have stated, rewatching it at home in HD wasn't nearly as impressive as being there (I was expecting it to be somehow better on tv but it wasn't) The most obvious was the prairie segment, it really looked real in person, on tv the cameras made it look bad, the wires, the belt, none of that was visible in person.
Another thing is the broadcast didn't give a true impression of the sound level when the Georgia team and the Canadian team came out. Even the US team received an incredible welcoming.

I was disappointed by our anthem, not by her singing ability but by the rendition. It's one of our Canadian traits, we do not mess with our anthem. When it comes to out anthem I am a purist.

I also felt that they were asking for way too much crowd involvement, Ben Mulroney and Tamara Taggert did a terrible job coaching the crowd. The effects still worked out but it was painfully obvious to those in the crowd that everything went out the window as most people didn't follow the instructions.

[ozonemania]

I watched the CTV and NBC broadcasts of the opening ceremonies and they were both good. NBC did better than I expected. Their commentaries were much better. They allowed the artistic segments to speak for themselves more, with longer continuous runs of footage and better editing of camera angles. Case in point is the Prairie dance. NBC did a much better job capturing the essence of that performance. Editing overall was good, even with the commercial breaks.

Sucks they didn't broadcast/film the firework display at the Jack Poole Place cauldron. Luckily I was able to watch them from my window.

[ozonemania]

Originally Posted by jlousa

I also felt that they were asking for way too much crowd involvement, Ben Mulroney and Tamara Taggert did a terrible job coaching the crowd. The effects still worked out but it was painfully obvious to those in the crowd that everything went out the window as most people didn't follow the instructions.

I was thinking the same thing. When I attended the dress rehearsal, during the kd lang segment the audience was asked to light their candles row by row outward from the centre as the song progressed. Did they change that for the actual night? I remember thinking during the rehearsal 'you're asking too much of the audience; they'll be so involved in the ceremonies they won't do any of this right.'

[Ayreonaut]

Originally Posted by jlousa

It's one of our Canadian traits, we do not mess with our anthem.

Actually, it seems to be more of a Canadian trait to bitch about any alteration to the anthem.

[Waders]

David Atkins just appeared on CTV talking about the glitch related to raising the cauldron.
It was an electrical signal issue. The signal couldn't get to one of the cauldron rod so it couldn't be raised. He mentioned that a split decision had to be made whether to abandon the flame igniting segment and just asked the Great One to light the external cauldron. At the end, they managed to get the cauldron to work.
When I was watching the cauldron raising in BC Place, my heart almost stopped as only 2 out of 4 raised without issue. The 3rd one paused for a few seconds half way and the 4nd one didn't moved at all. I am surprised that there was no redundant mechanism built into the system.
Wow! I would say it was pretty close to "disaster" for the event.

[Pinion]

I thought the anthem singing was one of the only good parts, along with the orcas, and the rest was really bad.

Think about it: the show ended with a morbidly obese "slam poet" spewing nationalistic garbage, a mechanical failure during the lighting of the cauldron and Gretzky riding through downtown on a back of a pick up truck looking like he's going to puke. And that's just the end. I won't even get into the fake punk fiddler crap. If someone said that's what the opening ceremonies would consist of ahead of time, you'd be laughed off the board.

I had low expectations and it still disappointed me more than I could have possibly imagined.