In a style befitting the carnival traditions of the host city, the Rio 2016 Closing Ceremony opened in a blaze of colour and a musical backdrop of samba sounds, as dancers twisted and turned to form the outlines of a series of iconic Rio monuments and landmarks, culminating in a multi-coloured depiction of the Olympic rings.
Popular Brazilian singer Mariene de Castro performed a ballad at the foot of the Olympic cauldron as tropical rains extinguished the flame. Then, in an echo of the Opening Ceremony, a Pau Brasil tree, the national tree which gave the country its name, rose majestically up from the centre of the stage. That was the signal for a burst of fireworks to illuminate the entire stadium. A samba band then upped the tempo, hammering out Rio’s very own anthem, “A Marvellous City”, as the Closing Ceremony was transformed into a Carnival-style celebration. It was a fitting tribute to what had been a carnival of sport and a marvellous Olympic Games.
Durham wrote this study as to how he and his team lit the Rio Olympic Closing Ceremony for Italian Production Company FilmMaster and explains why it was named ‘The Greatest Busk on Earth’!
“The event was slightly unusual in that during and after the Olympics the focus of attention is very much on the Opening Ceremony, whereas the Closing, as in the Ceremonies preparations, is very much in second place; so why did we name it The Greatest Busk on Earth?
The answer lies in a deal that was made between the Brazilian Organising Committee and the IOC when it was put forward that the Games in 2016 would be staged in the city of Rio. The IOC, I believe, made it a condition that the soccer finals should be held in the iconic Maracana stadium and, as this was where the Ceremonies where to be staged, this had a major and unique impact on our work.
For the first time in recent History, certainly since I lit my first games in Torino in 2006, the Closing Ceremony was to be performed without any form of rehearsals in the stadium itself. We were tasked with creating the lighting for an event to be viewed by an estimated 3 billion people, without any scenery, performers, props or stage and, on a highly technical show with mass choreography and large scale projection; no Dress Rehearsal whatsoever. What could possibly go right!
Once the Opening Ceremony had been well rehearsed and performed it was time to take a break whilst the stadium was prepared for the Olympic soccer finals. We had a new creative team headed by Queen of Carnival Rosa Magalhaes and, as for the Opening Ceremony, we were to combine light and projection and focus accurately onto the performers but with absolutely no rehearsal or focus sessions with any cast, how did we do this?
The real heroes were Master mass choreographers Bryn Walters and Claire Terri and their team who produced extremely accurate choreo charts exactly mirroring that with which they rehearsed with the performers in the adjacent marked out car park.
Once the evenings game had finished our technical team, captained by James Lee and having negotiated permission to actually walk on the grass, covered the pitch with four large sheets of parachute silk. We then projected the choreo charts onto this surface at exactly the right scale and then focused our lights onto the accurate positions marked on the projected chart for each scene.
The lighting and projection for both the Ceremonies were applauded for their seamless integration and it is little realised that this fusion begins well before the event in the dark hours of our nightly programming and line up sessions.
We negotiated with Patrice Bouqueniaux and his team from ETC that we would have control of the projection content from stadium lights out until around 2am and then we would hand over to his team and the technicians from Creative Technology so that they could line up their complex overlapping projection.
So we were as well prepared as circumstances could possibly allow and I witnessed the bizarre spectacle of a Dress Rehearsal being performed in daylight in a car park next to the stadium. There is something most surreal to see a thousand or so performers dancing in complete silence as they hear their music and placement instructions through in ear monitoring.
We had been very lucky with the weather up to now but on the day of the show we had a biblical storm which was strong enough to blow away some of the dimmer room walls on the roof and had our trusses and flown PA swaying quite alarmingly.
Our safety teams were monitoring this closely and we came very close to the stadium being evacuated. Once again cool heads in our Ops team held steady and we opened Pandora’s box as each sequence unfolded before us, our audience and our viewers.”
Photos courtesy of Cerimônias Cariocas
