Weeks later, opening ceremony still has an effect
COMMENTARY
With a chance to focus solely on the event, this writer finds all the things he might have missed while he was there live.
I fired up the DVR and watched the 2008 Olympic opening ceremony for the first time Thursday morning.
Actually, I covered the ceremony live Aug. 8 at the Bird's Nest in Beijing but that wasn't the same as watching it.
I knew that as soon as I felt a tear below my eyes.
There was also moisture on my face when I was in the Bird's Nest.
It was the sweat that would go on to soak my shirt during what would become the most uncomfortable five hours I ever have spent.
The oppressive heat and humidity in the airless stadium were among the reasons why I only got a piece of the picture(s) NBC presented so wonderfully.
It was simply too sweltering to concentrate completely on what was happening in front of me.
And my attention also was distracted by having to feed the ever-hungry stomach of the Internet, a situation which, for better or for worse, has turned most of us into typists rather that observers with time to make sense of what we see. So, as a reader pointed out, I inaccurately described Li Ning's cauldron lighting jaunt as having mimed walking rather than running, when it was clear after seeing it again that Li was reenacting the global torch run relay as he circled the circumference of the stadium right below its roof.
But I realized about 20 minutes into watching the ceremony in the recorded version that even if I hadn't been hot and I hadn't been working, I still would have seen and understood much less than what every TV viewer could.
I have been to 14 Olympics (and 13 opening ceremonies). Never has one been so skillfully directed and choreographed as a TV production than the Beijing ceremony.
The live stadium audience of 91,000 was irrelevant, except to add background noise (claps, cheers, oohs and aahs) to the TV sound track. This was a ceremony brilliantly created for the TV screens of China's 1.3 billion people and the world's other 5.3 billion.
NBC did a terrific job of using all its resources -- overhead shots, wide shots, close-ups -- to make the show compelling, especially the cultural part. And its China analyst, Joshua Cooper Ramo, gave understated and clear explanations of what the segments of the program meant.
