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Opening Ceremony


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If there had been a 30-second power failure, I wonder if there was a contingency plan for the first thing seen by the audience at the end of the 30 seconds to be a jumbotron view of Rowan Atkinson, holding a bunch of cables?

No. That's why there is the tape of the final dress rehearsal. That is what will run until power is/was restored.

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If there had been a 30-second power failure, I wonder if there was a contingency plan for the first thing seen by the audience at the end of the 30 seconds to be a jumbotron view of Rowan Atkinson, holding a bunch of cables?

No. That's why there is the tape of the final dress rehearsal. That is what will run until power is/was restored.

Mehhhh- that works OK for the TV audience (except perhaps in "Pandemonium," where they might end up showing, for example, the cottages being removed twice) but for the stadium spectators it's a pretty clear and unsettling admission of catastrophe.

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Mehhhh- that works OK for the TV audience (except perhaps in "Pandemonium," where they might end up showing, for example, the cottages being removed twice) but for the stadium spectators it's a pretty clear and unsettling admission of catastrophe.

Well, that's a chance u take when you see it live. But it would not have been the end of the world. I mean the last Super Bowl (not that I watch it) still proceeded, brownout or not. It'll give the commentators something else to talk about. A brownout should've happened over the uninspired Frankie-June sequence. No great loss there had it happened.

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for the stadium spectators it's a pretty clear and unsettling admission of catastrophe.

Well, that's a chance u take when you see it live. But it would not have been the end of the world. I mean the last Super Bowl (not that I watch it) still proceeded, brownout or not. It'll give the commentators something else to talk about.

Screw up the Super Bowl and the attending VIPs from other states will try to keep a dignified face, while privately revelling in schadenfreude. Screw up the Olympic opening, and the VIPs are the heads of state of scores of nations around the world (USA not, of course, included; I wonder if Barack watched on NBC or used a dodgy hook-up to the BBC) ...

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Yes I’ve seen the Hetherwick Challis and also read that he has insisted that it somehow PROVES the London Cauldron design was his alone, which makes absolutely NO scenes whatever. What a laughable excuse by Hetherwick, and only illustrates why “methinks he doth protests too much”.

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This London project just seemed to get away from him, the entire design has many many questionable elements and choices that were made. It had the overall feeling that it wasn’t a completely finished vision; compromises may have been made due to unresolved design issues or physical requirements and poor choices resulted in lower impact than was possible, (I still wonder if this version was originally a prototype and that a larger version was not feasible due to time or structure issues). Though smallish, the elegant stems and petals were lovely and sexy in a 70s sculptural way. I wish they had just skipped Autopia’s idea of assembling them and just revealed a much larger stationary version that had more power and impact, one that was lit dramatically and remained so for the duration of the games as it should be. It’s still so unbelievable how the cauldron was treated by London; I heard all the reasons pomp and circumstance were left out of the ceremonies (mostly London’s FEAR of stereotype and rejection of it’s own traditions, no wonder the Queen was not impressed), but this was really just a big FU to us all and the games, and proved that this organization was unprepared to execute the ceremony with precision, planning and creativity.

Fear no more LOCOG……..you succeeded in smashing several key British stereotypes.

I'm amazed other people haven't responded to your post because as well as being complete nonsense, it's almost offensive.

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@mjb, what's your point in 're-quoting' paul's post?

mjb accidentally put the reply inside the quote box:

"I'm amazed other people haven't responded to your post because as well as being complete nonsense, it's almost offensive."

The thing is, of course, that people these days simply expect paul's comments on London 2012 to be complete nonsense and almost offensive.

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Newsflash:

An updated and very slightly illustrated version of my "By Strange Conveyance: Lots of stuff about That Opening Ceremony" is now available in mobi and epub formats (still free). Download links at:

http://www.pastpresented.ukart.com/marksnow/

The new versions include two (and a half) tables of contents: a basic one at the beginning and a detailed one at the end. Therein, I suspect, lies a problem. The mobi version seems to work OK, but does anybody have an epub reader they could use to check on a random sample of links from the Detailed Contents page? On my Firefox add-on epub reader, half the links don't work!

Also, if anybody spots any other blatantly not-working things in either version, please let me know.

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