This year I’ve had the pleasure of working on a few videos for the Guardian, on the subject of Technology. The big one was another of the emerging “Made Simple” animated series, drawn by the clever people over at Scriberia. The Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger wanted to demystify and explain the NSA revelations in a simple way for people who hadn’t yet engaged with the story because of it’s complexity. Comissioned by Multimedia Editor Paul Boyd, the video involved working with the paper’s head of technology Jemima Kiss, and Guardian US’s special projects editor, James Ball to plan and script, then record elements for the video.
This had followed work I’d done earlier in the year on one of the first “Made Simple” guides – this time on the future of search engine technology – which as you can see, proved to be a good setup for the one on the NSA later in the year. The process was very similar, but this time involved working on two other videos in a series on innovation in technology to a brief for a commercial client. The subject of one was Hakitzu, an app by Kuato Studios which aims to teach kids a basic understanding of coding through a very impressive app:
The second was a pilot for a more permanent series which offers hints and tips on technology issues – this one showing you how to save time while typing on your iPhone or iPad. Try it – you might be surprised…
Jul/Aug – Returned to Front Row and helped round off the Cultural Exchange
I am quite happy with that list so far!
Update: I’ve gone retrospectively published a few blog posts about some of these projects on the dates they were completed – and I’ve updated the links here to point to those posts too. And added a picture.
I spent much of this summer in Broadcasting House (and New Broadcasting House) working back at Radio 4. I worked on Front Row as an Assistant Producer a few years ago, and it was nice to return there after the team have moved into their new office in what is probably now called the Arts Hub on the 7th Floor of NBH, alongside the other programmes from Radio Arts, the News Online Arts and Entertainment team and the Culture Show. It was also a good refresher in sites and software I’d not used for a long time – and some I’d not used before. It was a good intro to tools like iSite and Highlander, and a good refresher on things like Scheduler, Sadie, Podcast Maker and iBroadcast.
This period on Front Row came about after bumping in to my old boss, the Editor of Front Row whilst working on the old part of Broadcasting House the previous month. While there I’d spent the month with the Radio 4 interactive team collating highlight clips from programmes across the schedule, manned the Radio 4 socialmedia accounts, newsletters and iPlayer Radio app, published many of your favourite blogposts and podcasts, and got quite deep into iSite while doing some maintenance on The Archers character profiles. It’s safe to say that I am now an expert on Lillian and Paul’s affair!
My second Radio 1 documentary was broadcast recently – this was an idea by yours truly, and was called Selling Out?
Whilst flipping through the TV music channels a year or so ago I realised that some scenes in many current videos are pixelated – and I couldn’t work out why. It wasn’t until I searched out the same videos on YouTube and watched them there that I realised the blurred scenes were protecting viewers from product placements and promotions. Once you realise this is the case you suddenly start seeing the music world in a quite different light. Music channels will sometimes recut a video to remove a plug for a brand – which can result in strange narrative jumps in a video, or quite unusual pacing – where a fast moving video may slow down for a few seconds or repeat camera shots in an unusual way during a video. It can be to cover over scenes containing product placements – and often isn’t done very well.
But it led me to think – how and why are artists able to plug brands through YouTube and their websites and social activity if they can’t through TV? If artists can start earning significant amounts of money from these areas – but can’t promote things through traditional media channels, then will ‘old media’ remain as important to them?
It also raised some other important questions: If Pitbull can do this and sing this, then how can the track be featured on radio without his track being censored? And if artists are making significants amount of money creating not just music but physical products for companies, could an artist jump out of the cycle of releasing an album every 18 months, instead releasing an occasional single to support their new clothing range or fizzy drink?
So I spoke to the experts. Jennifer Hills at Universal Music has tied up many deals with brands for her artists – she explains how they come about. Mike Mathieson from the agency Cake talks about which brands and artists are best at these brand partnerships – and what considerations either party has to make when cutting a deal. Dumi Oborota is Tinie Tempah’s manager – he explains what brands he would and wouldn’t promote – and why. And Peter Robinson of Popjustice.com tells us what we really want to know – how much the artists get paid!
There’s a Storify of some of the tweets from the hashtag #r1sellout that took place during the programme and which can provide a bit more context about it, and if it’s a subject that interests you, get in touch – there was plenty more thinking, more discussions and more interviews that could fit into the programme that I can share with people if there is an interest.
This is actually the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street at Centrepoint. Looks the same further along the road though.
Photo by Gwydion M. Williams on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
I’m so agitated by something, I had to write it down.
I work from home a lot more now and so I make far fewer trips into the centre of London. And so when I do, the changes I see are a lot more dramatic than if you saw them slowly evolve every day. I know times are tough on the high street and people are doing a lot more of their shopping online, but my god, if you wanted to tempt people out, Oxford Street would not be your model.
Last time I was there before the Olympics I was amazed by how much of a dump Britain’s premier shopping street was – undoubtedly the construction of Crossrail has caused a lot of this – but to have craters in the street and 6 foot high wire barriers herding shoppers from one side of the street to another just before the world lands in your town – not good. I’m sure it got tidied up a bit before the tourists landed, but still.
I should own up to being a bit of a low level nerd here. I’m clearly a radio anorak, but I’ve found that many colleagues have a secret interest in something a bit weird like this (curiously often to do with maps and the London Underground). I’m no exception. It’s been joked about plenty of times and made out to be the most boring subject ever, but I own up to being slightly interested in town planning. Not so much as I’ve ever done anything other than do a little bit of reading, but whenever I visit somewhere new I always like to take in and compare the surroundings, see the different types of street furniture and designs and so on. Yes, I’m that sad.
So in the last fortnight I’ve had to visit Oxford Street twice, and my impression both times is that is has been allowed to become a right mess. There’s nothing worth visiting east of Berwick Street and west of Selfridges, and both ends are quite scuzzy. And have you ever actually taken in Oxford Street before? When was the last time you looked up at the buildings? Time is usually a bit precious there and it’s all hustle and bustle, so you’d be forgiven if you haven’t.
(You might want to click on some of the picture links in the following few paragraphs. They aren’t Creative Commons, so I can’t embed.)
There are some AMAZING buildings on Oxford Street. Have you seen H&M’s store next to HMV, east of Oxford Circus? That building is beautiful! It looks stately, clean, and the conversion of it into a shop has, I think, been done quite sensitively so that it fits in to the surrounding buildings, gives visitors a sense that there is some history in the area, and is a pleasant experience for shoppers – plenty of pavement outside, bright and spacious inside. I couldn’t believe this was here when I saw it the other day. For years I had walked past this building and not taken it in and it made me wish more was done to highlight these beautiful buildings in populated areas. Could we not light the exteriors along Oxford Street to attract attention to them and hopefully encourage more work like this?
So. Now look across the street to Boots, which I now realise is a new frontage by Future Systems on a 1960s building. Who let this happen? Presumably the thinking wasn’t to make the building blend in with the surrounding shops – it is LITERALLY unmissable: look at the Boots shop front design, could it BE any bigger? From memory, I think the front juts out diagonally into the pavement – the shop even gets in your way. The colours are dark and grim and on a rainy day make the street seem really depressing. All that glass makes it look like a crystal block has been lumped on top of the chemists. And why not squeeze ANOTHER storefront for Muji in there as well!?
And now look at the building that its next to. The McDonalds designer shouldn’t escape criticism either for the frontage on their store but, thankfully, they at least kept it small and left the upper floors to match the other historic buildings on the street. I’m sure there is a view that things evolve, and that it creates interesting contrasts. But, not wanting to sound like Prince Charles or a architecture snob here, that building is so vulgar is obliterates everything around it – when what should catch your eye is the fact there is a perfectly preserved building from 120 years ago on the street. This is the same reason why I don’t like The Shard.
Which brings me on to this new building further up Oxford Street. WHO thought it was a good idea to construct this next to a load of 100 year old buildings? This is a bit to the west of Selfridges on the opposite side of the street, and has just been finished – apart from a Bershka all the premises are empty (though an Urban Outfitters is apparently coming soon).
Don’t get me wrong – I like the design and am happy that one whole ‘block’ of the street has some uniformity instead of a mishmash of styles, but how does this fit in with the rest of the area? It is huge, the size of a factory. I realise the designers want to start laying down some modern history on Oxford Street so in the future people can see what our era came up with. But in seven or eight years time all those glass panels on the outside of the building will be dirty and covered in bird crap. Bershka’s ‘video wall’ above the main entrance will have stopped working and need repairing. It will age terribly. And so there will be more junk sat next to historic buildings, on the the capital city’s main throughfare. But a building like Selfridges still looks great after 103 years.
That’s it. I had to write this down somewhere as it was getting me really worked up as I walked along Oxford Street. I’m not against new designs – I even like both those buildings above. But Westfield is the place for in-yer-face experimentation with shop architecture. I like the designs at Westfield – the glass paneled wavy roof looks amazing (though if you look up, plenty of those panes are shattered and broken) but an area like Oxford Street should protect and reflect some of the history that’s there with a gentle touch. It makes me quite worried about what will happen when Crossrail is completed – what will the buildings look like that fill the bulldozed plots of land on the street? Can Westminster Council protect the area better and refuse some of the ridiculous frontage on the street? Just look at the history that is being uncovered!
Photo by mark.hogan on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
In my earlier post about how I got involved in the Opening Ceremony, I mentioned that once we had been selected we were shown a video montage of news footage, still pictures and movie clips from famous moments in history which Danny Boyle was going to feature in the scene we were to take part in. As the scene started, it was obvious it was going to be about the Industrial Revolution – Isambard Kingdom Brunel featured heavily in the clips.
I’d seen the BBC’s Great Britons programme about Brunel in 2002, and remember Jeremy Clarkson giving an impressive account of why he was the most important person in the country’s history – building trains and tunnels and factories and steamboats that changed the face of Britain. But as with some of the others near the top of the list who I had expected would be featured in an event like this – figures such as Nelson, Cromwell and Churchill – I wasn’t sure about how I felt about celebrating Brunel. Yes, like those other figures, he was responsible for some of the country’s greatest achievements that we should be thankful for – Brunel helped build our railways and revolutionise modern engineering. But just as a war victory includes death and pain for all involved in it, so it was with the Industrial Revolution. It wasn’t welcomed by every Briton – the move from a more simpler, pastoral way of living must have been a massive shock to the people who lived and worked off the land at that time. What I had not realised at that point was that in Blake’s poem which makes up the song Jerusalem, he references the ‘dark Satanic Mills’ of Albion Flower Mills in Southwark, London – the capital’s first factory. People hated factories like these so much because of the change it introduced to their lives, and Albion Mills burnt down (likely deliberately). So why celebrate something that although was an impressive development that Britain gave the world, was also something that caused so much pain?
As the video rolled on, and the montage expanded and rolled through the years, up popped footage of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks, then the Notting Hill race riots in 1958 which I had been researching for a programme just a week earlier. Then there was the Sufferagettes and Emily Davison stepping out in front of the King’s Horse at the Derby. And then, amazingly, footage of the Jarrow Marchers on their long trek to the Houses of Parliament. Conditions for them before or during their march, certainly weren’t something that would make feel-good entertainment.
But the fact that these poor men from this tiny town a few miles from my home was being celebrated to the world made me feel a little bit proud. Their achievements haven’t been forgotten and they were going to be marked out as one of the country’s most important moments 70-odd years later. To me, that seemed really clever, and it was clear that once these elements of the director’s vision had been rehearsed and staged to the scale and standard of an Olympic Opening Ceremony, they would look amazing. He was standing here in front of us telling how yes, those chimneys would actually be rising 200 feet into the air with men crawling up the side of them – how could that not look fantastic?
So I was quite happy that the scene I was in was a bit of a curveball – and as I’m a leftie, it was good enough for me that it didn’t appear to be a jingoistic embarrassment before the world’s athletes would have to walk into the stadium. But as the rehearsals went on, it was clear it was a theme that was going to continue, and that’s when it started to make sense. We were going to be telling a story of our triumphs, but also of pain.
The Industrial Revolution scene had been divided up into groups who had specific roles and parts to learn (bold). At the start of the scene, the Green and Pleasant cast are playing cricket and looking after their animals, but when the Brunels arrive (led by Kenneth Brannagh), they kick off the revolution. The Working Men and Women and Warriors come out and start stripping the land for the Weavers, Forgers and Smelters to start their work – and then they forge the Olympic Rings.
During rehearsals in our Dagenham car park the job was mainly to experiment with the ways of removing the fences and astroturf and in what order. The stage had been divided into ‘counties’ depending on what was in them – crops, grass, animals, ponds and so on. Each county had a group of Working Men and Women who would, say, strip off the grass and pass it on to the Warriors who would dispose of it off the stage. We worked with county F (codenamed ‘Fife’) and our grass had to be placed in our dumps 9 and 10. The Warriors of dumps 9 and 10 were talking one Sunday afternoon as we waited for a run through when Danny Boyle wandered over. He chatted a bit about the rehearsal, asked how it was going and how we were finding what we had to do – get rid of the grass. It had been pouring with rain that day which made the grass really heavy to move. At that point the plan was to drag the grass off with handles that were sewn into the turf and people had found their own way to do manage it that made it easier and not get wet, but the director gave some feedback. “Make it look really hard. Over your shoulder, like you’re really struggling under the weight of it. We want to see your pain.”
Under the Olympic Tor. Photo: Pez Cuckow
As future rehearsals went on we were given more instructions to monotonously march to our positions in time with a click track, show no emotion and wear a kind of thousand yard stare as we went about our business. When we moved into the stadium we found we were to make a grand entrance to the Field of Play by jumping down Glastonbury Tor. For this we sat inside the grassy hillside that had been built on the stone steps of the stadium underneath in dank darkness for hours. While we were there, over our FM radios on which we received instructions, we would hear the anthems and speeches that preceded our scene (emphasis mine):
Jerusalem
And did those feet in ancient time.
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand: Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land
Flower of Scotland
O Flower of Scotland, When will we see your like again
That fought and died for
Your wee bit hill and glen.
And stood against him,
Proud Edward’s army,
And sent him homeward
To think again.
Danny Boy
Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side The summer’s gone, and all the flow’rs are dying
‘Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide. But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow
‘Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny boy, I love you so.
(After his island becomes occupied by Prospero and his cohort, Caliban is forced into servitude.)
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.
Then we would hear the directions being given to the Green and Pleasant land actors and children in the pastoral scene outside as our tree was ripped out of it’s roots: “Look at the tree… what’s happening? Look scared… you don’t know what’s going on…”
Warriors during rehearsals. Photo: Ben Delfont
As the weeks went on it started to become clear that the scene was as equally about the landowners and workers who were affected for the worse as much as it was about the ingenuity of men like Brunel. Then we learnt other things about the scenes in the ceremony as rehearsals continued and we got to sneakily view the other scenes – hundreds of nurses, our fantastic stories, the Brookside lesbian kiss, the world wide web and the amazing music (with New Order, Frankie, Soul II Soul, the Happy Monday and Prodigy as choices – no Oasis!).
Finally, an answer to the question ‘what is Britishness?’ #olympics
I saw that Tweet about 30 minutes after finishing our performance, walking back through the queues and queues of athletes that were so happy to be hear and see us and have their picture taken with us. That tweet somehow summed up what I’d not been able to work out during the months of rehearsals. Thinking about those Green and Pleasant workers, the Jarrow Marchers and the NHS, Tim Berners Lee, Beth Jordache and Keith Flint – that was how I wanted to be represented to the world, and not only had the world just seen that, but I had been part of it! There are many things people say we should be proud about – who we are, how we are, what we do, where we’re from. I’ve never felt strongly about any of those things. But after finishing on Friday night I was proud that I had been a part of it. I was proud to have worked with a brilliant set of people – from director Danny to our brilliant mass team Vicki and Carla, and of course the dump 9 and 10 guys. But I think for the first time I was undoubtedly proud of the country, for being responsible for all those things. I could now understand why, for the last few months, while standing on a spiral staircase underneath that tree with 187 other blokes, I’d be moved while listening to the choir singing the anthems before we went ‘over the top’.
Dump 9 & 10. Photo: Ben Delfont
Even after the ceremony I keep finding out lovely things about the ceremony – apparently relatives of Emmeline Pankhurst and the original Jarrow Marchers were in the stadium. When the torch entered the stadium, the men and women who built the park lined the way in. When Danny Boyle said he wanted the ceremony to be human, he certainly achieved it.
Going into the Tor for the final time. Photo: Pez Cuckow
It’s over and it’s sad now. Danny also said something to us that I was reminded of in this account by one of the Working Men and Women: “There will be an emptiness that you’ll now have to fill with some other part of your lives”. It’s only 48 hours since the ceremony, but it’s completely true. I’ll see my rehearsal friends less, there’ll never be the excitement of walking up that staircase to come down the Tor for a full strike again. There will never be that fantastic atmosphere inside the stadium again. For months it was OURS – nobody could come in to it and find out our secret. You could turn yourself off from the outside world for a weekend and be a kid again – prance around doing warm ups, have a packed lunch and then loads of fun running around with props and bits of grass, wearing costumes, putting on silly make up. It was great to share it with the world, and to get the reaction it did, but it’s over and I can’t imagine ever doing something as amazing as that again. We were told at the start that people who have been in the ceremonies before travel the world to take part in each new one, and now I can completely understand why.
If in future you find me sobbing at Jerusalem or Danny Boy or Flower of Scotland, it’s not because I’m a rugby fan. I’m remembering those final 30 seconds before stepping out when Steve spoke over FM channel 3, told us we were now part of the country’s history, and then said “Hey guys! Remember all those wet rehearsals in Dagenham? Well this is what it was for. Have a good time. Remember – friends for life.”
I was THERE.
2012 Warriors before the Opening Ceremony. Photo: Pez Cuckow
Update: (3rd Aug) Corrected the fact about Emmeline Pankhurst’s relatives being in the stadium – I’d originally heard it was Emily Davison’s relatives. Also added that relatives of the Jarrow Marchers were there too – a fact I didn’t realise until even later. And corrected the fact about the builders lining the entrance to the stadium for the torch – it was men AND women, who built the whole park and not just the stadium.
I’m writing this in a marquee in Eton Manor in the Olympic Park, just a few hours before the final rehearsal of the opening ceremony for the London Olympic Games. On Friday night, billions of people will be watching thousands of us volunteers do our thing, in front of various heads of state, the media, celebrities, sportsmen and women. Every time I think about that fact I just can’t take it in. I’m not worried about it at all because it just doesn’t seem real, like it could even happen.
The whole experience started in December, when considering what I could plough my time into after leaving the Guardian, I decided to apply for the Opening Ceremony. I’m pro-Olympics, and wanted to take part in the games after missing the big ticket ballot. Underworld did an amazing set on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury years ago, and after hearing that they were going to be musical directors of the ceremony, and that Danny Boyle – whose films always have great soundtracks – would be in charge of the show, I was up for it. Imagine being in the stadium in the middle of a massive rave with the music blasting away while the world watched. How fun would that be?
An email came back a short while later with an invite to audition, and I wondered if I’d made the right decision. It was going a big commitment – there could be constant rehearsals during the summer months which we would need to be free for. What about work? Or holidays? I went along to the audition thinking that I’d go through the process, but that if anything major came up, I’d drop out.
There were three auditions at 3 Mills studios in Bromley-by-Bow. The first was a bit of fun where a lovely man called Steve gathered us round. We all shouted where we were from (there are LOTS of people who aren’t from the UK who want to have the experience too) and we tried to go through the memorable and fun moments of the Olympics, remembering moments like the archer lighting the flame in Barcelona (I never realised it was faked), moving swiftly over the ones that didn’t go well. They told us how the performance area is called ‘the Field of Play’, and the secret of moving so many people around is a grid and number system that is marked onto the field – that way, everyone knows the where they should be. They got us running to different spots on the floor depending on numbers we had been given, months we were born, star signs and so on. All the while a table of people to the side sat watching, like they do on X-Factor making notes of the numbers we’d been given to wear, craning their necks to see around people to the other side of the room.
Then panic – dance. A line around the edge of the room, just following the person in front and groove to the music. Yikes. There was a bit of bhangra, some Beyoncé (slowjamz only), a lot of Hi-NRG house, the only decent track they played was ‘Moves Like Jagger’. There was body odour. There were a few show offs, trying too hard to impress, but not as many as expected.
A few days later, another audition – this time we were taught to mime to a beat with our hands. We didn’t know what this was for, but it transpired these were some of the moves that would be used in the performance. The moves got nicknames: ‘shut boot, sliding door’, ‘levers pull’, ‘hammer-chisel’ and so on. I was really late to this audition, and when it came to my chance to perform, I blew it and messed the moves up completely. All of a sudden, it was over, you can go. We’ll call you.
I thought that was it. And it was actually disappointing, because like always wishing I could drum, I always wished I could execute something like this – and thought this was my chance!
Weeks went by, there was silence, and I thought that was it. But after completely forgetting about it, another email – I was in. We were called back to the rehearsal studios, and there in the room was Danny Boyle. After being told at the outset that we’d not know what the ceremony was going to be for a very long time, here he was, meters away, showing us that fantastic model of the set. Next, Rick from Underworld was introduced. Then Toby Sedgwick, the man who choreographed the movement of the horse in War Horse. And then, a video – a rough montage of pictures, clips from movies and the specially composed score.
That was definitely a wow moment. Everyone sat forward in their seats. The idea was massive, and the video seemed to go on forever. There were some things that seemed to be bonkers that couldn’t possibly fit, and some which really stirred up emotions. There was a few seconds of stunned silence at the end of it while people seemed to think “How can I fit into that?”
But it was clear that it was going to be huge and that’s when I knew I was doing it right till the very end.
Rehearsals started a month later. A trip along the District line to Dagenham East every Saturday and Sunday, to assemble on the waste-ground of Ford’s old car plant. Two identical stadium layouts had been marked on the ground to the exact same scale of the performance area so that two different scenes could be rehearsed at any one time. As you might see when you watch the performance, we were part of a specific sub-group of performers with a specific job to do. It was clear there wasn’t going to be dancing. But there was going to be lots of movement. And lots of choreography.
The ceremonies (and presumably mass movement of people in general) involve a lot of order, surprisingly, some maths, and it passes back a lot of responsibility to the participants. It’s really clever, because, otherwise, you would have a completely unmanageable group of people to work with. So teams rehearsed in ordered lines, equipment was collected in numerical order by designated people, even things like a tea break and the route to get to the tea machine has an order. It’s also clever as it makes your group bond together and get to know each other really quickly, and allows you to work in the way that suits your team of people best.
Eventually it became clear what our job was – you’ll have to watch the performance to see what that is. But each time we practiced it, we refined it, we honed it, and got better at it and became closer.
The most unifying force however, was the rain. Oh, the rain. How it has rained. It rained as we stood in a blustery car park near the Thames in Dagenham. It carried on raining as things stepped up and we moved into the Olympic Stadium. It rained on our supplied ponchos as we worked where Usain Bolt will be crossing the 100 metre finish line in a few days time. It rained on our belongings and changes of clothes that we had to leave in empty seats in the stadium stands. And it rained on all the equipment and props we had to use each time. I have never been so obsessed with the weather, checking the weekend’s forecast – EVERY DAY. Other than the fine weather over the last week, it has rained at all but one of the rehearsals, and although it made the job a lot harder (you’ll realise why when you see it), it was like bottoming out. Although we all wish for dry weather on Friday, we have had the worst conditions and we know we can do this whatever happens. The weather was a constant grumble for everyone and there really was a kind of Dunkirk spirit. Possibly my favourite memory will be of our leader Vicki trying to get us into order on the stage late one Tuesday evening. As the lighting was being tested in the stadium, the heavens opened, and the sight of 200 blokes suddenly deserting their posts, tearing across the stage, beautifully lit in a purple light leaving Vicki standing there allowing everyone to go run for their ponchos about 10 seconds after everyone had. And then the sight of a waterfall of rain running off the terraces and roof, blocking the top of the staircase that led to shelter. It was one of those perversely testing but enjoyable moments.
And that is it. We practiced and reset, practiced and reset for months. And we got it down pat. In the last week or two things stepped up at each rehearsal – suddenly the other scenes in the show are rehearsing before and after us (the ceremony fits together like a jigsaw), can it be done two minutes quicker, then it’s costumes, next makeup, next the music loop that offers a fill for time is removed from the soundtrack. In our team (though it’s the same across all the performers in our scene) 14 blokes who have hugely different backgrounds, ages and interests, are all in a situation we’ve never experienced before, but in that moment we all know what each other is thinking and look out for each other. I think this has been the best thing I’ve ever done.
Today’s dress rehearsal brought out mixed emotions for me because the atmosphere on Friday will be different. Firstly, we said goodbye to our team leaders Vicki and Carla as time will be tight on the big night. They are really (like, REALLY) talented at dance, and yet they got landed with the job of moving 200 (mainly) middle-aged, (mainly) out of shape blokes about, but both still managed to have the most enthusiasm and positivity of any people I’ve ever met. And secondly, that was possibly the last time we will finish a run through of our scene and feel positive afterwards. As soon as we get to the top of the steps off the Field of Play on Friday, our work is done, and (because of the size of the crowds and security) we have been asked to leave the park and go. In the space of three and a half minutes we will have gone from performing in front of billions of people around the world (including 80,000 sat in front of you) to being on the way home while the world parties on. That will be a comedown like no other.
There’s more to tell about how our scene works and maybe what it is trying to say… but that will have to wait until after the Opening Ceremony…
