Thursday 30 August 2012

Enough opening ceremonies...

One a month will do me. I passed on the Paralympics ceremony last night, after a brief sampling, not because I thought it wouldn’t be good, as the Olympics one was -- I enjoyed that greatly (as a whole, I should add, being honest) -- but live television is no way to see it.

I appreciate that tv offers some sense of the occasion as it’s lived, and conveys something of the atmosphere and crowd’s excitement. Those aren’t nothing but overall I wish I could have watched an edited film of the event. The tv camera often get an inferior view: too distant, too underlit, too confusing, stuff in getting in the view. Too often I simply couldn’t understand or follow what was going on. The same event made into a film -- like the film of, say, Woodstock -- would have make the performances and spectacles that much more immediate and omitted a lot of the tedious parading. An hour would have been fine for the Olympics ceremony; can’t say for the Paralympics.

None of this is to take away from the significance and the generally heartening character of the two sets of Games. It’s been terrific all round.

For all I know, of course, there may be films in preparation.

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