It is titled "Isles of Wonder" and was four years in the making from the moment director Danny Boyle sat down in a room with four collaborators to the moment 15,000 performers stepped into the Olympic Stadium in front of the eyes of the world here Friday night.
Boyle
spoke about his experience Friday, making it clear why he is such a
gifted communicator in a press conference that lasted for almost an hour
and in which he tried to explain what the viewers had seen, reports
Xinhua.
First of all, however, he said that he was delighted to be able to follow the incredible opening ceremony to the 2008 Games.
"Beijing
was great to follow, you can't get bigger than that, but that liberated
us, so we thought we will use our resources in a different way," he
explained.
Boyle's opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games is
a celebration of Great Britain and of some of the things that have made
this island race special.
"Some of the audience will be baffled,
they are bound to be," said Boyle. "But you do the show for yourselves,
you have to. I try to represent the whole country."
The man
who won an Oscar for his film "Slumdog Millionaire" and has directed
other successful films such as "28 Days Later", "Trainspotting" and "127
Hours", explained "Isles of Wonder" was divided into three segments
named "The Green and Pleasant Land", "Second Star on the Right and
Straight on Till morning" and "Frankie and June Say 'Hello Tim'".
Each
looks at a different aspect of British life, culture and history, Boyle
explained that the "Green and Pleasant Land" represents a rural ideal,
"which is still deeply embedded in our consciousness".
The rural
ideal gives way to the Industrial Revolution. "It seems to me that the
Industrial Revolution changed the world for good and bad. It unleashed
tremendous potential and the growth of cities was extraordinary. It led
to education, the ability to read and write.. we all began here and look
where we ended up," said Boyle.
The director explained that the
second segment "Second Star on the Left and Straight on Till morning,"
which is taken from the famous children's novel 'Peter Pan,' celebrates
Britain's National Health Service as well as children's books.
"There
is something about it that is so embedded in us that we want to keep
it. We tried to find volunteers from the NHS and we have hundreds of
them. They turn up after shiftwork and have been amazing," said Boyle,
who said there was no political agenda to the segment and insisted no
political pressure had been put on him over the question.
"We have no agenda other than values that we believe are honest and true," he promised.
The
third segment highlights that London 2012 is: "the first Games where
social networking is a major role and we have the chance for instant
human communication." Entitled "Frankie and June say 'Hello Tim'," it
looks at family life, Saturday night habits and celebrates the huge
amount of pop music that has come out of the UK.
"We have produced a lot of popular music from a small country," said Boyle.
Frankie
and June's relationship is helped along by the World Wide Web, which
was invented by Tim Burns Leigh, who assured the WWW would never be
owned by a company, "so we can now all have instant communication and it
is a very powerful tool what connects and can liberate people."
Boyle
may have been four years working on the ceremony, but he reserved all
of his praise for the 15,000 volunteers taking part in the stadium.
"This
is the volunteers' show: if you want to judge us as people from an
island, they are the best of us. They have turned up in appalling
conditions and danced their hearts out. We hope the show is a
celebration of generosity.
"This belongs to everyone: not
everyone will like it and not everyone will join in. People will
criticize it or praise it, but none of that matters because all of the
volunteers have felt something special in their lives about the values
and the spirit they clearly have," he concluded.
