Paris 2024 Ceremonies

[GBModerator]

Just now, baron-pierreIV said:

You should be!! 

This is a bannable post - next of topic post you will be banned.

[Tatsh]

National broadcasting of the OC and games starts now

[GBModerator]

3 minutes ago, Shiruba98 said:

My thoughts exactly, I'm sick of his inconsistent babbling bullshit. He's literally a psychopath!

This is a bannable post - next off topic post you will be banned.

[sebastien1214]

H-2.30 : meanwhile, in line for the opening ceremony:

You will never guess the nationality of these tourists.

[kevzz]

Shall we all move to the live chat now?

[yoshi]

Danish 

Also I don't know how it's taken so long but I've just realised how much Tony Estanguet looks like Gareth Southgate 

[GBModerator]

1 minute ago, kevzz said:

Shall we all move to the live chat now?

This is a bannable post - next off topic post you will be banned.

[sebastien1214]

Just now, kevzz said:

Shall we all move to the live chat now?

I agree. It's better that everyone is on the same thread, for the clarity of the exchanges between members I think (otherwise it's like there are two parallel partys, it's a bit cringe). Is it possible to temporarily lock this thread @GBModerator until the end of the ceremony so that everyone switches to live chat?

[Shiruba98]

7 minutes ago, baron-pierreIV said:

You should be!! 

All cos your feelings got hurt? Oh, poor you...

[Aussie bum]

Ceremony T-shirt now available in the shop https://shop.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/the-olympic-collection-opening-ceremony-graphic-t-shirt-white/t-21814810+p-246635114101220+z-9-3732404137?_ref=p-SRP:m-GRID:i-r0c0:po-0

[Shiruba98]

Just now, Aussie bum said:

Ceremony T-shirt now available in the shop https://shop.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/the-olympic-collection-opening-ceremony-graphic-t-shirt-white/t-21814810+p-246635114101220+z-9-3732404137?_ref=p-SRP:m-GRID:i-r0c0:po-0

Very minimalist but keeping with the river theme. Very nice.

[Shiruba98]

14 minutes ago, sebastien1214 said:

H-2.30 : meanwhile, in line for the opening ceremony:

You will never guess the nationality of these tourists.

The next host country in 4 years time?

[GBModerator]

12 minutes ago, Shiruba98 said:

All cos your feelings got hurt? Oh, poor you...

Banned for 6 hours. Please let this be an example.

[yoshi]

Ending with Marie-Jose Perec? Interesting...

[baron-pierreIV]

Couldn't think of a more appropriate chanson today than this . . .
 

 

[synergy]

AERIAL BEAUTY SHOT OF TROCADERO

COURTESY OF OBS

[Juso]

Hi All, it's been a long time, I am holding judgment, but like many of you, I have been skeptical of the format out of the stadium. That said, I never expected the production value to be so mixed, inconsistent and strange, there is really no focus and the flow is very odd, it is really like a series of creative vignettes and ideas that are missing good transitions.

On paper it sounds good to blend the athletes parade into the whole running time, but i am really not sure it works - as others have said it makes it feel longer.

Above all I think the lack of formal MCs or annnouncements (and lower third graphics for performers) or fanfares is making it feel alot less professional, pompy and specular than it should. 

Performing the national anthem in a rooftop seems awesome and is a great storyboard concept - but have we really got to a point where we are not even pretending that we are not miming and not even pretending to have mics. (maybe this is more fair and mature). 

I never thought a stadium was an intimate venue, until now, and I missing one 80,000+ crowd that can see everything happening at once and react together - perhaps that is why it feels flat? (as objectively many elements are great

Also way too many pre-recorded scenes. Though this slope started many ceremonies ago. 

My opinion is far from qualified of course, and I genuinely appreciate the pushing of the envelope but I am verybconflivted. 

Shame about the weather for the creative and production team (visually seems to get better as it gets darker) though I think it is runsheet, impossible scale and execution incosistency - not rain that is holding it back so far. 

 

[olimpicgamer]

The ceremony was alright, but underwhelming for something that cost $1.5 billion.

I like how it took place in a different setting. But I would have concentrated on most performances and cauldron in the same area, such as in front of the Eiffel Tower. 

I hated the dark tone elements in some parts, such as the representation of blood and death (sometimes with little historical context/explanation). Everything had to be focused on the quirky and rebellious, but the classic was trampled upon. What has happened to beauty? Why have Europeans turned to celebrating darkness in a lot of their ceremonies? And so much screen time given to drags dancing with children. Seriously? It is very hard to watch. Nothing to do with sports and celebration of unity. 

And that fashion show went on and on. It was boring. The same for the torch relay and boat rides. They should've shortened the route. 

The camera work was terrible!  In fact, camera work should take most of the blame since editing and camera angles can do wonders to sell a good ceremony. 

The lighting of the cauldron looked good, but it lacked the excitement of a crowd. (I love the concept of the ceremony outside the stadium, but it still needs the crowds!) To me, the cauldron looks boring and uninspiring during the day. No real fire, are you serious? 

On a positive note, I enjoyed some of the mini-artistic segments and decorations placed during the parade of nations. However, there was not enough time to appreciate the athletes, their flags and attires. 

The rain did not interfere that much. But likely, had the weather been good, we would have had more aerial shots of Paris, more drone shows, etc.

The laser show was amazing! It was my favorite part of the ceremony. The soundtrack was great too. The Eiffel towel looked incredible and so did the stage set in front of it. Celine Dion was excellent (it was grandeous), and Lady Gaga wasn't bad (shame It was prerecorded). But I really missed the fireworks display!! I know the French can do incredible firework shows, so weird they didn't do it this time.

All in all, kudos to Paris for taking the ceremony out of the stadium. It was a nice one, and it did have very memorable parts! But shame on them for missing the chance to showcase the beauty of France and humanity. To be closer to people. Everything felt distant and disconnected from the public and reality (like the rendition of the national anthem. My goodness, they botched it. Their anthem is amazing, imagine a scene with all the people singing it that grandeous song, maybe some fireworks and or planes in the sky).

I hope in the future organizers will stop this ideological nonsense, stop focusing on death and darkness, and turn to the light and goodness.

[BigVic]

It also rained in Vancouver for the Opening Ceremony but BC Place then was a domed stadium with an air bubble escaping the elements. 

[BigVic]

https://x.com/i/bookmarks/all?post_id=1814278226539078037

 

This was the cauldron before it was lit during the Opening Ceremonies 

[sebastien1214]

@Sir Rols 

I compiled the information from quite a few interviews with members of the ceremonies team and I have to admit that being quite tired tonight, I don't necessarily have the strength to copy/paste all the links to the videos, apologies.

So, regarding the sequences cut or adapted because of the rain, which was confirmed by the various members of this team:

- There were supposed to be orchestras and dancers on the rooftops of Paris (the sequence with the fixed shot on a dancer from the Paris Opera. It wasn't supposed to be a fixed shot, it was supposed to be a drone flyover with these orchestras and dancers)
- The scene with the skateboards on the floating barges was considerably lightened compared to what had been planned

And I have the feeling that there were other fairly light adaptations. I would say that they had to change about 15-20% of the ceremony because of the rain.

Otherwise, in the other things that I learned, the Conciergerie was the prison that welcomed Marie-Antoinette just before her execution. The Conciergerie... is the building that served as the setting for the scene on the revolution. With the guillotined women. Literally in the same place as Marie-Antoinette's cell 231 years ago.

The scene in the library with the 3 characters who seduce each other is a tribute to French literature and theater which has a habit of telling stories that tell a love triangle (hence the book covers that we saw).

For Celine Dion, not only was it not lip-syncing but live, but she also rehearsed the day before at 3am at the Eiffel Tower.

[Sir Rols]

Thanks for that. I suspected a fair chunk had to be cut. I remember in La Grand Seine, the TV producer already saying the rooftop scene couldn’t work in the rain. Sigh… such a loss.

I real think something must have been lost as well amongst those final segments before the Trocadero. It just dragged a bit there.

8 hours ago, sebastien1214 said:

The scene in the library with the 3 characters who seduce each other is a tribute to French literature and theater which has a habit of telling stories that tell a love triangle (hence the book covers that we saw).

I thought they carried that off very well. That story was pretty clear to me. 

8 hours ago, sebastien1214 said:

For Celine Dion, not only was it not lip-syncing but live, but she also rehearsed the day before at 3am at the Eiffel Tower.

As I’ve said before, she was worth every cent of her payment.

I was talking to my sister and her husband yesterday, and they both said they were close to tears watching and hearing her (doesn’t take much to reduce my sister to sentimental tears).

Edited July 29 by Sir Rols

[sebastien1214]

4 hours ago, Sir Rols said:

Thanks for that. I suspected a fair chunk had to be cut. I remember in La Grand Seine, the TV producer already saying the rooftop scene couldn’t work in the rain. Sigh… such a loss.

I real think something must have been lost as well amongst those final segments before the Trocadero. It just dragged a bit there.

I thought they carried that off very well. That story was pretty clear to me. 

As I’ve said before, she was worth every cent of her payment.

I was talking to my sister and her husband yesterday, and they both said they were close to tears watching and hearing her (doesn’t take much to reduce my sister to sentimental tears).

I think I will always regret that there was no good weather during the ceremony. It would not have erased all the flaws far from it, but a lot of the problems we saw were related to the rain. Of course, the adaptations were not improvised since we knew that they had plenty of backup plans regarding the weather, but they were necessarily degraded plans. In fact for fans of plan B, we can say that in a way it is.... one of the plan Bs that we saw for this ceremony.

On the other hand, I do not think that we lost things at the Trocadéro. For me, all the things lost were mainly during the day segments, since they involved potentially dangerous things (roof/facade), which would in any case be difficult to see at night.

I will just add another reading grid, concerning one of the scenes that we ultimately talked very little about, which is that of Eurodance. Because I think that this ceremony was the most political of all the recent ceremonies, and where many people just saw a bizarre concert on a barge, it actually fulfilled a much more political function than we imagined. Well, it was not hidden either with the huge European flag at the beginning, but there has been a political will in France for several decades, mainly the 80s-90s (this is perhaps the case in other EU countries) to seek to build a common European identity, a feeling of belonging to the EU, and this scene clearly fit into this political project in my opinion. It is still a hell of a political choice to make a "European Union" segment, I mean who could have imagined it? It is also for the same reason that at the time of the statue of Simone Veil, in the French comments (and I imagine that this must have been the case in quite a few countries because in my opinion it must have been specified in the "storyboard" sent to the media), it was mentioned that she was president of the European Parliament whereas in France, that is not really what we remember her for.

(If I were the director of the European segment, personally, I would have followed through with the idea if the intention was to do something clearly political, by including this Eurodance "concert" in a sort of Erasmus nightclub scene, because it speaks to millions of Europeans, and while I was at it I would have interspersed video extracts of important moments such as Schengen, the abolition of borders, still a message of peace that clearly fits into the typical Olympic ideals, peace beyond borders. And I would have really liked to see Farage's reaction afterwards just for a laugh.)

[olympian.br]

On 7/28/2024 at 4:55 PM, sebastien1214 said:

@Sir Rols

 

For Celine Dion, not only was it not lip-syncing but live, but she also rehearsed the day before at 3am at the Eiffel Tower.

She was NOT singing live, it's very noticeable in certain parts actually when her mouth and her voice are not in sincrony at all, but that's okay, it's very understandable in events like this.

[sebastien1214]

15 minutes ago, olympian.br said:

She was NOT singing live, it's very noticeable in certain parts actually when her mouth and her voice are not in sincrony at all, but that's okay, it's very understandable in events like this.

False, Victor le Masne himself confirmed it. He has no reason to lie, especially since he "admitted" that for Lady Gaga it was recorded and that for Aya Nakamura it was playback.