Paris 2024 Ceremonies

[Olympics2028]

18 hours ago, baron-pierreIV said:

Olympics2028 - you should just open up your own Special Events firm and bid -- instead of just blathering on and on here about what you think this, what you think about that, etc..

I thought this forum was to discuss users' opinions on the Olympics, regarding the 2024 ceremonies in this thread in particular?

SeriousPotato, if I complained that a rock concert involved too much jazz, that wouldn't be similar to saying the "Olympics" included too much "Cirque du Soleil?"

I don't associate "Olympics" necessarily with the format made famous by an entertainment group out of Montreal decades ago. But since it keeps being used into just about all ceremonies for both summer and winter games, I guess you do have a point there. But I think it dates back to mainly the 1992 games in Barcelona. In comparison, rock has always been rock.

[Olympics2028]

 

If 2024 does a segment like this, it's something that more people will be able to both understand and find entertaining. It's formal but updated. It's ceremonial but not stiff, and without a lot of "huh?! or "wtf!?"

 

 

 

[jtrevino]

On 2/13/2022 at 8:57 AM, Olympics2028 said:

 

My opinion is that LA and other hosts need to start going in the direction of KISS: Keep it simple, stupid.

i think you wrote you didn't like the idea of the 1932/1984 cauldron being used again in 2028. I guess in a way that too wold be "same 'ol, same 'ol." But since I like tradition and history, and prefer major aspects of the old-time format of decades ago, that's one same 'ol, same 'ol I wouldn't mind.

Using the same cauldron from 96 years ago would be incredible.  If so, it would be appropriate to just continue that tradition as it’s still there, and I suspect that they will. It seems clear they’ll play up the living history they have to the Olympics as they should. 

 LA’s plan is already simple, but the OC doesn’t need to be. It’s supposed to be a show/spectacle. London hired film director Danny Boyle for the OC and I'm assuming both Paris/LA will follow suit with a well-known stage/film director. With LA, they could easily hire a world-creating visionary like Tim Burton or Steven Spielberg. My opinion is LA should lean into it’s advantage of local talent and just go big. It did create Disneyland after all. \

I’m reading mention of Paris’ underwhelming World Cup show, but I don’t see any relation or foreshadowing.  Different directors, different vision. 

 

[Sir Rols]

24 minutes ago, jtrevino said:

I’m reading mention of Paris’ underwhelming World Cup show, but I don’t see any relation or foreshadowing.  Different directors, different vision. 

 

Yeah, it’s a very spurious comparison. World Cup ceremonies and Oly ceremonies are two different beasts. WC ceremonies are just very short segments before the kick-off of the opening match. Not meant to be or designed to be anything near the scale or scope of an Olympics opening.

Buenos Aires YOG opening, not that I’ve seen it, might be a closer comparison, then again, I’d imagine the scale is significantly smaller also.

[Olympics2028]

9 hours ago, jtrevino said:

 LA’s plan is already simple, but the OC doesn’t need to be. It’s supposed to be a show/spectacle. London hired film director Danny Boyle for the OC and I'm assuming both Paris/LA will follow suit with a well-known stage/film director.

1996 hired a major figure from the Hollywood community and what he did for those games was to me a case of "wtf?!"

However, all organizing committees for years end up hiring people who follow the fairly same template. Some of that is because the entertainment industry is connected worldwide. For example, I believe some of the major figures of the 2000 games worked on other games too. One of them was even involved in the 1984 Olympics.

To me, the ceremonies for years - both summer and winter - have become one big blur. But that's because each host likes to riff off on what the other hosts have done.

[Olympics2028]

If people think that, for example, a 2004 games is somehow very much a by-product of the host city and fully reflects local people, local tastes and local customs, not necessarily. Or guess again.

"Athens" might just as well have been "London office." Or "marketing agency."

I know the cauldron for the 2016 (which I wasn't a big fan of) was designed and crafted by a guy based in the US, not Brazil. 

https://www.bizbash.com/venues-destinations/united-states/new-york/media-gallery/13471366/behind-the-scenes-of-the-2004-olympic-opening-ceremony

 

Quote

Despite doubters from around the world, David Zolkwer and the team from Jack Morton Worldwide produced an artistic Olympics opening ceremony that drew international raves. Here he gives us a blow-by-blow account of putting on the big show for the 2004 games in Athens.

Title: Director of Jack Morton Public Events, Jack Morton Worldwide
What He Plans: Zolkwer handles large public events—usually one biggie a year—as well as the occasional corporate event, from the London office of Jack Morton Worldwide, the New York-based international event marketing agency. Most recently, he led the team responsible for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2004 Olympic Games. Zolkwer was project and artistic director of the Bafta-winning 2002 opening and closing ceremonies of the 17th Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England.
.
Budget: “I can tell you three things: Our budget was 33 million euros [about $43 million] when we pitched, the budget did increase significantly, and we came in under budget.”

 

Because Paris is more of a hub city and has more of its own cultural scene and local talent, the producers for 2024 possibly will be locally bred and born. But not necessarily.

[SeriousPotato]

 

On 2/15/2022 at 8:11 AM, Olympics2028 said:

SeriousPotato, if I complained that a rock concert involved too much jazz, that wouldn't be similar to saying the "Olympics" included too much "Cirque du Soleil?"

I don't associate "Olympics" necessarily with the format made famous by an entertainment group out of Montreal decades ago. But since it keeps being used into just about all ceremonies for both summer and winter games, I guess you do have a point there. But I think it dates back to mainly the 1992 games in Barcelona. In comparison, rock has always been rock.

What you're calling "Cirque du Soleil" has a different, simpler name: Theatre. That's been around for a long time stretching back to Ancient Greece and even before that. Artists have been doing all these things you call "Cirque du Soleil" for a very long time before actual Cirque du Soleil formed.

You may not associate art with the Olympic Games, but art and sport have always been intertwined. Every Olympic Games has a vast cultural program, including music, fine art, graphic design, performance, sculpture, architecture, and more. The Ceremonies involve theatrical rituals, and the modern large-scale Ceremony format goes back to 1980, 4 years before Cirque du Soleil formed. This isn't just a modern thing, the Ancient Olympic Games were a place that artists of all practices came together to display their work.

If the Olympic Games were simply about athletes, they'd be called "World Championships" and the symbol might be, say, a bar-bell or something. But the Olympics are more than that, hence why the symbol is not of a barbell, but of 5 rings interlocking.

4 hours ago, Olympics2028 said:

If people think that, for example, a 2004 games is somehow very much a by-product of the host city and fully reflects local people, local tastes and local customs, not necessarily. Or guess again.

"Athens" might just as well have been "London office." Or "marketing agency."

https://www.bizbash.com/venues-destinations/united-states/new-york/media-gallery/13471366/behind-the-scenes-of-the-2004-olympic-opening-ceremony

You're linking to the producers which is a different crew, different job than who leads the creative direction: in Athens' case, Dimitris Papaioannou, a Greek theatre director. You can see some of his other work here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rK-PLdnQZg&ab_channel=DanceUmbrella

There were an enormous number of Greek artists and performers involved in the production, from the creative team building the high-level ideas, to the people creating and directing the props, costumes, choreography, music, and so on. 

So your linking that, to say that the production was not really Greek, is like saying "Stephen King didn't write this book. His keyboard did!" 

You're very quick to say that this is wrong and that is wrong and you don't like it; yet you seem to lack basic understanding of what it is you're criticizing and why it is the way it is.

[Olympics2028]

 

1 hour ago, SeriousPotato said:

The Ceremonies involve theatrical rituals, and the modern large-scale Ceremony format goes back to 1980, 4 years before Cirque du Soleil formed. This isn't just a modern thing, the Ancient Olympic Games were a place that artists of all practices came together to display their work.

 

But were segments like the following ever a part of Olympic ceremonies before Barcelona 1992? Maybe there was.

TBH, I've never seen most ceremonies, certainly from their start to finish. My opinion on this may be off due to ignorance.

Because the last Olympic games in the US were in Salt Lake City in 2002, and with talk the same city may follow the games in 2028, I zipped through vids of 2002's ceremony. I've never seen it before.

However, I had a vague sense that "Utah" possibly meant an event that was a bit less bizarre (or less Cirque de Soleil-ized) than other games.

Their ceremony, of course, had a fairly well-featured choir. Hey, there's something called the "Salt Lake City Choir!" And the parts of the event I saw overall did have seem to have a slightly less artsy-fartsy tone about them. But only a bit less.

Can you find other ceremonies before 1992 that had segments like this?:

 

 

^ Lots and lots of fabric. Abstract shapes galore. And lots and lots of fabric.

I sometimes think fabric manufacturers must have a special in-house contract with the IOC.

 

[Bear]

37 minutes ago, Olympics2028 said:

TBH, I've never seen most ceremonies, certainly from their start to finish. My opinion on this may be off due to ignorance.

No wonder you make ridiculous statements such as "I think the 2012 Opening Ceremony affected public attendance!!!", or calling everything "cirque de soleil"... 

[Olympics2028]

 

31 minutes ago, Bear said:

No wonder you make ridiculous statements such as "I think the 2012 Opening Ceremony affected public attendance!!!", or calling everything "cirque de soleil"... 

 

What type of name would you give that look or creative format?

Is there a video that shows a similar costuming style used in 2002 in other openings well before 1992?

If I'm being ridiculous, I'm willing to be educated to make things correct or accurate.

Also, I admit I don't care for the "Cirque du Soleil" format. But if you do, great. That's perfectly fine. To each his own.

But in my case, I think scenes where participants are wearing a lot of colored fabric in odd shapes has been overused and overdone. It has been incorporated for decades in most Olympic ceremonies.

I've said I think the big sound of a large choir gives a heroic vibe to a ceremony. But if every Olympics for the past 30 years had been using that exact same feature, I'd say it too was becoming worn-out and overdone.

 

[AustralianFan]

49 minutes ago, Olympics2028 said:

 

 

What type of name would you give that look or creative format?

Is there a video that shows a similar costuming style used in 2002 in other openings well before 1992?

If I'm being ridiculous, I'm willing to be educated to make things correct or accurate.

Also, I admit I don't care for the "Cirque du Soleil" format. But if you do, great. That's perfectly fine. To each his own.

But in my case, I think scenes where participants are wearing a lot of colored fabric in odd shapes has been overused and overdone. It has been incorporated for decades in most Olympic ceremonies.

I've said I think the big sound of a large choir gives a heroic vibe to a ceremony. But if every Olympics for the past 30 years had been using that exact same feature, I'd say it too was becoming worn-out and overdone.

 

Olympics2028, this has nothing to do with Paris 2024.

Again you’re flooding yet another thread with your past Olympic Ceremonies dreams and fantasies.  

Stay on topic.

This is Paris 2024.

 

 

[baron-pierreIV]

So much bandwidth is wasted on O-2028 here.  So much. 

[Olympics2028]

9 hours ago, baron-pierreIV said:

So much bandwidth is wasted on O-2028 here.  So much. 

 

Which is odd too since you'd think gamesbid's forum was a place to discuss the "Olympics."

Maybe I should start posting photos and videos of my family vacations to Hawaii or talk about what I ate for dinner last night.

 

[FYI]

10 hours ago, baron-pierreIV said:

So much bandwidth is wasted on O-2028 here.  So much. 

Pretty sure that spamming Gold medal goes to someone else around here lately.

[SeriousPotato]

11 hours ago, Olympics2028 said:

What type of name would you give that look or creative format?

It's a good question (and AustraliaFan raises a good point this discussion should probably be taken to a different thread). 

There isn't (to my knowledge) a unified term for the particular kind of dreamlike storytelling and theatrical rituals that you see in Ceremonies. I'd be inclined to just call it Ceremonial Theatre. The "Cirque du Soleil" style that you're responding is an agglomeration of many influences that date back centuries, from avant garde theatre, to the big-top circus, to Carnival and Latin festivals, and also to ceremonial rituals from the African continent just to name a few. There's not really one genesis point, virtually every human culture around the world has variations of ceremonial theatre in its history.

http://edito.nicematin.net/AM/images/Carnaval-Nice-60-80%20(7).jpg

These all possess much of the same style of dreamlike storytelling that influences both the Olympic Ceremonies and Cirque du Soleil.

I'd avoid referring to it as "Cirque du Soleil" though. It's like calling traditional Polynesian art "Moana-style" art after the Disney movie. Well, the Polynesian art came thousands of years earlier than the Disney film. It was Disney that was influenced by it, not the other way around.

 

11 hours ago, Olympics2028 said:

 

Is there a video that shows a similar costuming style used in 2002 in other openings well before 1992?

 

That's Peter Minshall's costume design. He worked 1992, 1996, and 2002 Opening Ceremonies. He also did the 1987 Pan American Opening Ceremony in Indianapolis.

He's a Trinidad Carnival artist and he's been active for a long time, since 1976.

A quick way to think about it: 1980 was when the artistic segments of the Olympics became mass-scale, 1992 was when they became more dream-like in their storytelling. But this is only in relation to the Olympics; mass-scale performance and dream-like storytelling like below existed long before 1980 and 1992 in other non-Olympic festivals and performances.

 

[SeriousPotato]

Oops, I forgot 1936.. that was actually when "mass-scale" started, but after World War II, 1948-1976 the ceremonies were simpler again, each getting incrementally larger and more innovative. 

[baron-pierreIV]

Actually, just 2 years after Berlin 1936, the Czechs staged one of the largest mass display ceremonies in their Spatakiades at Velkhy Stadium outside Prague.  These continued even after the end of WW2.  Below is just one image from the 1938 edition. Like Moscow 1980, it was mass gymnastics display.  

[Olympics2028]

2 hours ago, SeriousPotato said:

It's a good question (and AustraliaFan raises a good point this discussion should probably be taken to a different thread).

 

To me, that's like griping that, in a forum devoted to the subject of "Food," a thread about carrots shouldn't include discussions about why carrots mixed with raisins can be good. Or not good. Or why the subject of "beans" shouldn't include discussing "pork," as in - ta-da -pork and beans.

 

2 hours ago, SeriousPotato said:

There isn't (to my knowledge) a unified term for the particular kind of dreamlike storytelling and theatrical rituals that you see in Ceremonies. I'd be inclined to just call it Ceremonial Theatre. The "Cirque du Soleil" style that you're responding is an agglomeration of many influences that date back centuries

These all possess much of the same style of dreamlike storytelling that influences both the Olympic Ceremonies and Cirque du Soleil.

I'd avoid referring to it as "Cirque du Soleil" though. It's like calling traditional Polynesian art "Moana-style" art after the Disney movie. Well, the Polynesian art came thousands of years earlier than the Disney film. It was Disney that was influenced by it, not the other way around.

 

A quick way to think about it: 1980 was when the artistic segments of the Olympics became mass-scale, 1992 was when they became more dream-like in their storytelling. But this is only in relation to the Olympics; mass-scale performance and dream-like storytelling like below existed long before 1980 and 1992 in other non-Olympic festivals and performances.

 

But the overall look and format of Cirque du Soleil weren't as common before the 1990s, and certainly wasn't a style used for any Olympic ceremonies before possibly Barcelona in 1992.

I call it "Cirque du Soleil-zed" because the format of lots of colored fabric in odd or bizarre shapes was introduced or most popularized by the group out of Canada.

[Olympics2028]

1 hour ago, baron-pierreIV said:

Actually, just 2 years after Berlin 1936,
 

I wonder if I should complain that this thread is about "2024 Ceremonies"?

BTW, last night I had a really good chicken/vegetable combo for dinner. Not sure what I'm going to eat for lunch.

[Sir Rols]

Look, @Olympics2028, it’s really not too hard to grasp.

Just about every thread on this site pertains to the Olympics, which means it would be a right old mess if comments got posted willy nilly.

If you look at the title above, it says “Paris 2024 Ceremonies”

Now, I think you take that to mean you post things about everything EXCEPT the Paris 2024 ceremonies, but it is actually the complete opposite.

It means people like to come hear to learn read about news or comments directly relating to the ceremonies coming up in Paris in 2024.

That does NOT include musings about things you didn’t like in 1992/1996/2000/2004/2008/2012/2016/2020, or the use of fabrics in 1992/1996/2000/2004/2008/2012/2016/2020, or the song lists in 1992/1996/2000/2004/2008/2012/2016/2020. Appending something like “and I think the Paris 2024 organisers could learn from this” or “all ceremonies have common elements so it pertains to Paris 2024” does not make it relevant.

A bit of thread drift is okay, but not continued deliberate hijacking of threads.

Lots of other new members, of all ages and levels of knowledge or interest about the Olympic Games, seem to grasp these notions well. You seem to be unable or unwilling to conform or be confined by such quaint notions.

I think I’ve posted this link before, but I do believe this is a far more appropriate place to post musings on Olympic ceremonies in general. And to post clips and pics of them to your heart’s content. It’s very active (indeed, this is version 3 of a long continuing discussion). You will possibly spark some good discussions with other ceremony fans.

 

 

 

[Olympics2028]

Peter Minshall's

30 minutes ago, Sir Rols said:

Just about every thread on this site pertains to the Olympics, which means it would be a right old mess if comments got posted willy nilly.

If you look at the title above, it says “Paris 2024 Ceremonies”

 

 

So you're saying that posts above, such as the ones giving a brief rundown on Peter Minshall or Prague 1938 - which I found interesting - are somehow ill-fitting to this thread?

Your description of the ins and outs of gamesbids.com would make more sense if this forum were being posted to by hundreds of people per day, much less per hour. And if the subject of "Olympics" were similar to the subject of "Let's Identify all the Different Fingerprints from the NYC Police Crime Lab."  

The "2024 Ceremony" thread also isn't exactly being posted to by dozens and dozens, and dozens, of users.

[baron-pierreIV]

xx

Edited February 19, 2022 by baron-pierreIV

[Circle]

On 2/17/2022 at 8:14 PM, Olympics2028 said:

If people think that, for example, a 2004 games is somehow very much a by-product of the host city and fully reflects local people, local tastes and local customs, not necessarily. Or guess again.

"Athens" might just as well have been "London office." Or "marketing agency."

I know the cauldron for the 2016 (which I wasn't a big fan of) was designed and crafted by a guy based in the US, not Brazil. 

https://www.bizbash.com/venues-destinations/united-states/new-york/media-gallery/13471366/behind-the-scenes-of-the-2004-olympic-opening-ceremony

 

 

Because Paris is more of a hub city and has more of its own cultural scene and local talent, the producers for 2024 possibly will be locally bred and born. But not necessarily.

Thanks for sharing the interesting post.  You are correct in that most of the technical aspects of the Athens 2004 OC where created Jack Morton Worldwide, however the original concepts for the ceremony where conceived by Dimitris Papaioannou who is Greek.  So Papaioannou came up with the ideas/story and Jack Morton Worldwide where contracted to bring those ideas/story to life.

You can see some of his original sketched at: http://www.dimitrispapaioannou.com/en/recent/birthplace-2004

[Circle]

I'm not worried in the slightest about the Paris 2024 OC. 

The idea of the ceremony on the river intrigues me greatly. 

Also the last OC on France, Albertville '92, is my third favourite OC after Athens 2004 and Baku 2015.

[SportLightning]

On 2/17/2022 at 12:14 PM, Olympics2028 said:

If people think that, for example, a 2004 games is somehow very much a by-product of the host city and fully reflects local people, local tastes and local customs, not necessarily. Or guess again.

"Athens" might just as well have been "London office." Or "marketing agency."

I know the cauldron for the 2016 (which I wasn't a big fan of) was designed and crafted by a guy based in the US, not Brazil. 

https://www.bizbash.com/venues-destinations/united-states/new-york/media-gallery/13471366/behind-the-scenes-of-the-2004-olympic-opening-ceremony

 

 

Because Paris is more of a hub city and has more of its own cultural scene and local talent, the producers for 2024 possibly will be locally bred and born. But not necessarily.

Well i already did the cauldron design that i made.