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The opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games took place on the evening of Friday 27 July in the Olympic Stadium, London. As mandated by the Olympic Charter, the proceedings combined the formal ceremonial opening of this international sporting event (including welcoming speeches, hoisting of the flags and the parade of athletes) with an artistic spectacle to showcase the host nation's culture. The 2012 Games were formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II. The spectacle was entitled ''Isles of Wonder''〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://olympicopeningceremony.tumblr.com/tagged/stage1 )〕 and directed by Academy Award-winning British film director Danny Boyle. Prior to London 2012 there had been considerable apprehension about Britain's ability to stage an opening ceremony that could reach the standard set at the Beijing Summer Games of 2008. The 2008 ceremony had been noted for its scale, extravagance and expense, and hailed as the "greatest ever". It had cost £65m, whereas London spent an estimated £27m (out of £80m budgeted for its four ceremonies), which was nevertheless about twice the original budget. However, the ceremony was immediately seen as a tremendous success, widely praised as a "masterpiece" and "a love letter to Britain".〔 The ceremony began at 21:00 BST and lasted almost four hours. It was watched by an estimated worldwide television audience of 900 million, becoming the most-viewed Olympic opening ceremony in both the UK and US. The content had largely been kept secret before the performance, despite involving thousands of volunteers and two public rehearsals. The principal sections of the artistic display represented Britain's Industrial Revolution, National Health Service, literary heritage, popular music and culture, and were noted for their vibrant storytelling and use of music. Two shorter sections drew particular comment, involving a filmed cameo appearance of the Queen, and a live performance by the London Symphony Orchestra joined by comedian Rowan Atkinson. These were widely ascribed to Britain's sense of humour. The ceremony featured children and young people in most of its segments, reflecting the 'inspire a generation' aspiration of London's original bid for the Games. The BBC released footage of the entire opening ceremony on 29 October 2012, edited by Danny Boyle and with background extras, along with more than seven hours of sporting highlights and the complete closing ceremony.〔( ''London 2012 Olympic Games'', BBC Shop, London, October 2012 ). Retrieved 28 October 2012.〕 ==Preparations== The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) approached Danny Boyle to be the director of the ceremony in June 2010, and he immediately accepted. Boyle explained that there had been four things that made him take the job: he was a big Olympics fan, he lived a mile from the Stadium and so felt invested in the area, his late father's birthday was on the ceremony's date, and he felt his 'Oscar clout' would enable him to push through what he wanted to do. He said it "felt weirdly more like a ... civic or national responsibility" to take the job. Boyle acknowledged that the extravagance of the 2008 opening ceremony was an impossible act to follow — "you can't get bigger than Beijing" — and that this realisation had in fact liberated his team creatively. He said "..obviously I'm not going to try and build on Beijing, because how could you? We can't, and you wouldn't want to, so we're going back to the beginning. We're going to try and give the impression that we're rethinking and restarting, because they've (''opening ceremonies'') escalated since Los Angeles in 1984. They've tried to top themselves each time and you can't do that after Beijing." Beijing's budget had been £65m, whereas London's final budget was £27m, which was twice the original provision.〔 The London stadium had the same number of seats as Beijing's, but was half the size; this intimacy of scale meant that Boyle felt he could achieve something personal and connecting.〔 The different sections of the ceremony were designed to reflect aspects of British history and culture, with the title ''Isles of Wonder'' partly inspired by Shakespeare's play ''The Tempest'' (particularly Caliban's 'Be not afeard' speech), and partly by the G. K. Chesterton aphorism: "The world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder."〔 In July 2010 Boyle started brainstorming ideas with designer Mark Tildesley, writer Frank Cottrell Boyce and costume designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb. They considered "what was essentially British", with the non-British Larlarb able to offer a view of what the world thought Britain meant. Cottrell Boyce had given Boyle a copy of ''Pandaemonium'', (the capital of Hell in ''Paradise Lost'') by Humphrey Jennings, which collated contemporary reports from the industrial revolution.〔〔 It had become traditional during the opening ceremony to 'produce' the Olympic rings in a spectacular manner. Cottrell Boyce commented "Danny had a very clear idea that in the first 15 minutes you had to have a great, startling image that could go around the world; it had to climax with something that made people go 'Oh my God!'". Boyle decided that "the journey from the pastoral to the industrial, ending with the forging of the Olympic rings" would be that image.〔 The ten distinct chapters on which the team started work were gradually compressed into three principal movements: the violent transition from 'Green and Pleasant Land' to the 'Pandemonium' of industrial revolution, a salute to the NHS and children's literature, and a celebration of pop culture, technology and the digital revolution.〔 When Boyle returned to work on the ceremony in the spring of 2011 he asked Rick Smith of Underworld, with whom he had worked on several film projects as well as his theatrical production of Mary Shelley's ''Frankenstein'', to be the musical director.〔 At the same time the team moved to the Three Mills studio complex in east London, where a 4x4 metre scale model of the stadium was built. For security reasons, a single CGI-assisted version of the ceremony was kept on editor Sascha Dhillon's laptop; anyone needing it had to come to the studio.〔 The cast included professional performers and 7,500 volunteers. Boyle considered the volunteers to be "the most valuable commodity of all". In November 2011 they auditioned at Three Mills, and rehearsals began in earnest in spring 2012 at an open-air site at Dagenham (the abandoned Ford plant), often in foul weather. Although key contributors had to sign non-disclosure agreements and some elements were codenamed, Boyle placed immense trust in the volunteers by asking them simply to "save the surprise" and not leak any information.〔〔 Further volunteers were recruited to help with security and marshalling, and to support the technical crew.〔 Three weeks before the ceremony, Mark Rylance, who was to have taken a leading part, pulled out after a family bereavement and was replaced by Kenneth Branagh. The Olympic Bell, the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world, weighing 23 tonnes, had been cast in brass under the direction of Mears & Stainbank by Royal Eijsbouts of the Netherlands, and hung in the Stadium. It was inscribed with a line from Caliban's speech in ''The Tempest'': "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises". Boyle gave significant emphasis to the London 2012 theme 'inspire a generation' and devised a programme relying heavily on children and young people, and built around themes that would relate to the young. 25 schools in the six original East London host boroughs were used to recruit child volunteers for the performance, and 170 sixth formers (16–18-year-olds), between them speaking more than 50 languages, were recruited from their colleges. On 12 June 2012 at a press conference, Boyle had promised a huge set of rural Britain, which was to include a village cricket team, farm animals, a model of Glastonbury Tor, as well as a maypole and a rain-producing cloud. His intention was to represent the rural and urban landscape of Britain. The design was to include a mosh pit at each end of the set, one with people celebrating a rock festival and the other the Last Night of the Proms. Boyle promised a ceremony with which everyone would feel involved; he said, "I hope it will reveal how peculiar and contrary we are – and how there's also, I hope, a warmth about us". Some of the set was designed with real grass turf and soil. The use of animals (40 sheep, 12 horses, 3 cows, 2 goats, 10 chickens, 10 ducks, 9 geese and 3 sheep dogs, looked after by 34 animal handlers) drew some criticism from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Boyle, who was being advised by the RSPCA, assured PETA that the animals would be well cared for. After the press conference, much commentary in the UK Press was negative and attracted "hundreds of comments online completely supporting...the view that the opening ceremony would be a disaster."〔 The overwhelming majority of the music used was British. The team worked next door to the office of the musical director for the closing ceremony, David Arnold, and so hearing each other's music there was a scramble to claim a particular song first. A.R. Rahman, who worked with Boyle on ''Slumdog Millionaire'' and ''127 Hours'', composed a Punjabi song 'Nimma Nimma' to showcase Indian influence in the UK, according to Boyle's wishes. More Indian music was also scheduled for inclusion in the medley. Paul McCartney was to be the ceremony's closing act. Sebastian Coe was instrumental in asking the Queen to take part in the film sequence. Danny Boyle first pitched the idea to Coe, who loved it. Coe asked Princess Anne, a British member of the IOC and of LOCOG, what she thought, and she told Coe to ask the Queen. So he took it to his friend the Queen's Deputy Private Secretary.〔''Our Queen'', documentary film, first broadcast on ITV on 17 March 2013.〕 Boyle had two suggestions to play the Queen: either a lookalike, or a world-class actress such as Helen Mirren, filmed in a house that could double as Buckingham Palace. He was therefore surprised to hear that the Queen would be happy to play herself.〔 Filming took place in late March 2012, and ''Happy and Glorious'', as well as the opening film sequence ''Journey along the Thames'', was produced by the BBC. Changes were still being made to the programme in the final days before the ceremony: a BMX bike section was dropped due to time constraints, and the 'Pandemonium' and 'Thanks..Tim' sections were edited down.〔 Two full dress and technical rehearsals took place in the Olympic stadium, on 23 and 25 July, in front of an audience of 60,000 comprising volunteers, cast members' families, competition winners, and others connected to the Games. Boyle asked them not to 'spoil the surprise' (#savethesurprise) for the billions who would watch on the Friday night.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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