I was lucky enough to get a ticket to one of the rehearsals of the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games - part of me can't believe I've just written that. We were asked to #savethesurprise and I did. By now you'll have seen the Ceremony so I thought I'd share some photos.The Opening Ceremony was spectacular and touching by turns. Beijing 2008 was amazing, with thousands of people all doing the same thing at the same time - London 2012 had thousands of people doing different things, telling multiple stories and I loved it. Wherever you looked around the stadium there was a different story and we only saw some of the them on the broadcast of the Ceremony.
That was particularly true of the pastoral scene at the start, and the move to the industrial revolution. The cricket, the football, the young ladies being blown along with their parasols, the Suffragettes throwing themselves in front of horses, the Jarrow Crusade... so much going on. The telly editors kept focusing down on the micro rather than giving us the macro picture, but it was a grand spectacle and full of surprises.
I loved seeing the lyrics to 'Pretty Vacant' spelled out by the lights in the crowd, the colour-washes across the stadium, the blasts of flame during 'Firestarter', light and spectacle everywhere along with very clear sound. There were still lots of surprises since we didn't get the full picture at the rehearsal so it was great to see the full show on Friday.
Here are some of my photos from the rehearsal. It's something that I will remember for a long time to come.
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