Damn that Opening Ceremony was amazing
August 9, 2008So I finally watched the first part of the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics last night. The artistic part, I changed channels when they got to the parade of nations part. But for that 75 minutes or so, I was in awe. That had to be the most amazing thing I’d ever seen, I feel bad for London because now people will have much higher expectations for their 2012 ceremony.
I think my favorite part of the Beijing ceremony was the moveable type — those gigantic blocks that moved up-and-down to create 3-dimensional moving art. Like when they did a water drop rippling across a pond, it was such an amazing thing to see. And then of course at the end of that part when you found out it was actually just people under there, not some huge mechanical pistons, it became even more impressive. To think how long those guys had to practice, and somebody had to choreograph the timing and the height of each human pixel to get the desired effects.
Clearly what we saw is what happens with vast resources, both human and financial. It’s like they just told the artistic director “Look, you have 75 minutes to fill. Here’s a blank check, make it something the world has never seen before.”
Bravo to the Chinese Olympic Committee, that was an amazing technical and artistic achievement.