Alexjc Posted December 27, 2012 Report Share Posted December 27, 2012 2013 is a BIG year for the IOC!!! Wow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjb22 Posted January 1, 2013 Report Share Posted January 1, 2013 My video footage of the Cauldron dividing towards the end of the Closing Ceremony. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baron-pierreIV Posted January 1, 2013 Report Share Posted January 1, 2013 That music sure sounded like it was a track of LES MISERABLES! So what have they done with the remains of the cauldron now?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thepianoman Posted January 2, 2013 Report Share Posted January 2, 2013 All the petals have been given to the delegations now, so there's only really the base and stems left. I would assume it's probably in storage somewhere? Can't imagine they would just destroy it but it's not anything attractive to display on its own. Discovered this picture of the cauldron hiding under the stadium floor waiting for it's petals to be attached I still think it's amazing how well LOCOG managed to keep it a secret, especially in this day and age when everything leaks out eventually! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
runningrings Posted January 3, 2013 Report Share Posted January 3, 2013 I wonder if replica petals will be produced for the sake of preserving the cauldron, perhaps so it can go on display in a museum? I must admit I would love to see it in person one day, in a similar form to during the 2012 Olympics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Victor Mata Posted January 3, 2013 Report Share Posted January 3, 2013 I remember Heatherwick saying the cauldron would be more of a moment than a monument, as it was meant to be dismantled forever after the games closing as a symbol of the ephemeral olympic gathering. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
runningrings Posted January 3, 2013 Report Share Posted January 3, 2013 I remember Heatherwick saying the cauldron would be more of a moment than a monument, as it was meant to be dismantled forever after the games closing as a symbol of the ephemeral olympic gathering. Yeah yeah, I remember that. I was just hoping the "moment" could be bottled up and kept, even if it slightly dented Heatherwicks authenticity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athensfan Posted January 3, 2013 Report Share Posted January 3, 2013 That music sure sounded like it was a track of LES MISERABLES! So what have they done with the remains of the cauldron now?? Dances with Wolves actually. John Barry was English, but I still think it was kind of an odd choice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olympian2004 Posted January 3, 2013 Report Share Posted January 3, 2013 Dances with Wolves actually. John Barry was English, but I still think it was kind of an odd choice. No, the music from "Dances with Wolves" was only used when the cauldron was extinguished. The piece used for opening up the cauldron (as could be heard in mjb's clip above) was a piece called "Extinguishing The Flame" performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. It's also on CD 2 of the official closing ceremony album: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Symphony-Of-British-Music-Ceremony/dp/B008U7JREK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul Posted February 4, 2013 Report Share Posted February 4, 2013 ...might as well fire up this thread since we are drifting towards Cauldron talk again. I'm moving the following post here to it's proper home. I agree that the cauldron could have been spectacular, themultiple head idea and coming together had HIGH potential, and unfortunately itjust fell flat. As a creative professional it is particularly disappointing me when opportunities such as this are not fully realized. I blame the designer and the director. And I still feel something went horribly wrong in the cauldrons design process thatresulted in the fixture they ended up with, parts of it looked more like aprototype than a final version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baron-pierreIV Posted February 4, 2013 Report Share Posted February 4, 2013 I thot it was good, considering it was a bunch of 204 giant matchsticks thrown together,and something that was meant to be ephemeral; not to last. (And then adapted to 160+ for lympics, Part 2, the Paras.) The base is lying somewhere in some warehouse, if it hasn't already been dismantled for scrap. But I can't weep if that was the original vision. It just lives on in memories and fotos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athensfan Posted February 4, 2013 Report Share Posted February 4, 2013 ...might as well fire up this thread since we are drifting towards Cauldron talk again. I'm moving the following post here to it's proper home. I agree that the cauldron could have been spectacular, the multiple head idea and coming together had HIGH potential, and unfortunately it just fell flat. As a creative professional it is particularly disappointing me when opportunities such as this are not fully realized. I blame the designer and the director. And I still feel something went horribly wrong in the cauldrons design process that resulted in the fixture they ended up with, parts of it looked more like a prototype than a final version. Totally agree. Underwhelming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baron-pierreIV Posted February 4, 2013 Report Share Posted February 4, 2013 I liked it. It was different; and was hard to guess. It was like a birthday cake. Present and lit for the occasion. You eat it; digest it and only the memory and pictures remain. It was LOCOG's choice that they have no permanent reminder of it, so they have to live with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olympian2004 Posted February 4, 2013 Report Share Posted February 4, 2013 Even if I repeat myself: But the cauldron's main design was brilliant, original and impressive, even if it was a comparably small cauldron. But it had deep meaning and the idea behind it was very clever on several levels: 1) Letting the participating countries "contribute" to the cauldron and then take their "contribution" back home as souvenir, 2) symbolising the coming together of the world 3) the message that many small flames can create together a big warming fire and shining light for the whole globe, 4) making it a blossom that blooms for the duration of the Games and then wilts and de-composes into its pieces at the end of the Games The ill conception about it, though, was that Heatherwick and LOCOG respectively the ceremonial team apparently underestimated (or never really cared about) how important for Olympic tourists and the cameras of the world it is that the cauldron sits on top of the stadium or even outside it, with the flame burning for everyone to see (and to take pictures ). The other slight ill conception was that they had to move the cauldron and therefore extinguish and relight it. One might call it also an ill conception that there won't be an Olympic cauldron on display in London's Olympic Park. But the more I think about it, I like the idea of having a temporary cauldron that remains only a memory after the Games. It's, as I stated above, a great and even rather philosophical idea. And the great Olympic Park and all the other still used venues are probably a much, much better souvenir of those Games than a mostly defunct cauldron could have ever been. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Athensfan Posted February 4, 2013 Report Share Posted February 4, 2013 I liked the cauldron as a sculptural concept -- just not as a cauldron. I'm repeating myself too but... having the cauldron so small, making it invisible to spectators for the first week of the Games, intentionally extinguishing it and relighting it, tucking it in a corner where it looked all but forgotten -- these were failures of design. The symbolism of the petals, their entrance into the stadium, and the animated opening and closing of the cauldron do not come anywhere close to compensating for other significant shortcomings of the design. At least, not in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baron-pierreIV Posted February 4, 2013 Report Share Posted February 4, 2013 The ill conception about it, though, was that Heatherwick and LOCOG respectively the ceremonial team apparently underestimated (or never really cared about) how important for Olympic tourists and the cameras of the world it is that the cauldron sits on top of the stadium or even outside it, with the flame burning for everyone to see (and to take pictures ). The other slight ill conception was that they had to move the cauldron and therefore extinguish and relight it. I think the re-lighting, relocation episode upset only the Olympic nerds. I mean everybody was supposed to forget what was going on behind-the-scenes and focus on the sporting events already going on in those first few days. People are really TOO nosey. I mean if this had been held in Beijing, there would've been a NEWS BLACKOUT on any tinkering with the cauldron!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Rols Posted February 4, 2013 Report Share Posted February 4, 2013 I think the re-lighting, relocation episode upset only the Olympic nerds. I mean everybody was supposed to forget what was going on behind-the-scenes and focus on the sporting events already going on in those first few days. People are really TOO nosey. I mean if this had been held in Beijing, there would've been a NEWS BLACKOUT on any tinkering with the cauldron!! I do tend to be a defender of the cauldron, and the London OC in general, but the location and the week's blackout of the cauldron was IMO, one of the shortcomings. I don't think it was just Olympic nerds upset by it - it should have been obvious that one of the big photo-ops anybody visiting a games wants is a pic of that cauldron and to see it burning over the park. Hiding it away, for whatever justification, was just a huge misjudgement IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul Posted February 5, 2013 Report Share Posted February 5, 2013 The cauldrons shifty whereabouts and the fact that Londondecided it was OK to just blow it out so it could migrate to the hallwayappeared on most national new here in the US, so I think it was a bit moremainstream news than just amongst us Olympic dorks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olympian2004 Posted February 5, 2013 Report Share Posted February 5, 2013 Very true, Paul. And the pictures of Austin Playfoot relighting the cauldron (I won't mention the infamous cherry picker he did that from ) made rounds, too. Maybe only or almost only Olympic nerds were really upset by it - but it was at least a topic also outside our circles. The question "Where will the cauldron go?" was quite an important topic on the day after the opening ceremony here on German TV, for example. And just for the record: It didn't really upset myself - since we've seen or read worse already (remember the cigarette lighter used for relighting the cauldron in Montreal or the absolutely fake pyrotechnic "lighting" of the cauldron in Torino). At least they used the original flame in both cases (in the opening ceremony and later at the little cherry picker ceremony) in London and unlike Montreal and Athens (where the flame was blown out in the night after the opening ceremony), they at least behaved transparently and showed to the public how the cauldron was relit. I just mentioned that story because it created controversial reactions among quite a few other people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baron-pierreIV Posted February 6, 2013 Report Share Posted February 6, 2013 Athens (where the flame was blown out in the night after the opening ceremony),. Didn't know that. But then again, ATHOC must've presumed that since the flame came from some 300km away, no precautions were to be taken. ("That's the Mediterranean way of doing things...") What if the reefer fulcrum wasn't working a la Sydney and refused to bend down again? I wonder how they would've relit that thing? Shoot an arrow? Latter thought on London's. I think when Heatherwick conceived it and the IOC, LOCOG and Ceremonies signed off on it, the die was cast. It had to be a stadium-floor piece and non-T&F spectators just had to resign themselves to NO cauldron foto opp. The cauldron & lighting would NOT have played out its full visual impact if it had been placed on the roof of the stadium or outside. As I made allusion to earlier, it was like a birthday cake w/ moving candles...so it had to be in the center of the room; and it wouldn't have looked great on the roof or at some higher plane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olympian2004 Posted February 6, 2013 Report Share Posted February 6, 2013 Latter thought on London's. I think when Heatherwick conceived it and the IOC, LOCOG and Ceremonies signed off on it, the die was cast. It had to be a stadium-floor piece and non-T&F spectators just had to resign themselves to NO cauldron foto opp. The cauldron & lighting would NOT have played out its full visual impact if it had been placed on the roof of the stadium or outside. As I made allusion to earlier, it was like a birthday cake w/ moving candles...so it had to be in the center of the room; and it wouldn't have looked great on the roof or at some higher plane. Additionally, the cauldron would have lost a big part of its symbolism. It was positioned deliberately right in the centre of all those athletes from 205 nations - so that the 205 petals could rise from the people who sort of had "contributed" them to the cauldron and that the symbolism of all nations uniting to respectively around one flame could be stressed even further. Also the visual impact for the audience (and not only for the TV cameras) would have been less intense if those 205 little flames hadn't risen apparently from out of nowhere, without any support, from within the infield, but could have been seen only from below, on the roof or on some other prominent high structure. See this video in order to understand the visual effect I mean: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paul Posted February 7, 2013 Report Share Posted February 7, 2013 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baron-pierreIV Posted February 7, 2013 Report Share Posted February 7, 2013 Paul, what did you post? A period? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scotguy Posted February 7, 2013 Report Share Posted February 7, 2013 He posted a photograph of what the cauldron looks like today lol nothing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
baron-pierreIV Posted February 7, 2013 Report Share Posted February 7, 2013 He posted a photograph of what the cauldron looks like today lol nothing Well, yeah. I didn't expect anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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