How the Opening Ceremony was born

Fiery pictures

Gun-powder expert Cai Guo-Qiang's works of art soon caught the attention of the creative team. Cai was best at "fireworks painting" -- drawing the outline of a picture with gun-powder and then igniting it, creating a three-fold painting effect ("original painting," "fireworks painting" and "ash painting").

The original idea of "fireworks painting" was finally blended into a draft of the project. The team selected Picasso's Guernica, an oil painting condemning war atrocities, to test out the idea. Performers stepped into a huge remake of the frame, poured gun-powder along the lines of the painting it enclosed, and thus turned it into a line drawing of Guernica. A corner of the painting began to light up, and the fire soon spread to the entire piece, burning an outline of the artwork into the land, and leaving behind beautiful ashes in the same shape.

However, the IOC had a different opinion. Picasso's Guernica might remind the spectators of sad memories of World War II. Meanwhile, the creative team did not have adequate confidence in its reliability and safety. Therefore, after continuing for half a year, the concept was finally put away.

Instead, the creative team worked out a design that combined a display of the Olympic rings with "footprints of fireworks." 29 colossal "footprints," representing the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, would make their way into the stadium with the last "footprint" exploding in the air over the Bird's Nest. Thousands of sparks resembling clusters of stars would then float down slowly onto the ground to gather and form five shining rings. At this point, flying "fairies" would descend to slowly lift up the five rings, allowing them to hover in mid-air amid soft music right before the eyes of spectators, filling the stadium with a dreamy, romantic air.

Unprecedented involvement

In Opening Ceremonies of past Olympic Games, there have not been any action or artistic work that involved all of the athletes. The final version of this year's project came into being in April 2008. On the exposed painting scroll which initially served as the background of the artistic performances, performers would draw an ink painting of a landscape, with the lower half of the "paper" left blank. The idea was that during the parade of athletes, the Olympic competitors would walk over the blank space of the painting, leaving behind their colorful footprints with the help of a sort of dye mat. Their footprints on the paper would then make the shape of natural land, dotted with colorful, blooming flowers, to complete the painting.

This is the first Olympic Games in which athletes would become an actual part of the Opening Ceremony performance. An IOC official praised it as the largest action art in Olympic Movement history.

In addition, BOCOG invited five music bands from five continents to play the music for the parade of athletes.

Release of pigeons

The protocol that must be observed at the Opening Ceremony of any Games is the symbolic release of pigeons. The creative team worked out a bold romantic concept that turned the idea into a more abstract design. As the Opening Ceremony performances drew to a close, a hundred girls in white would lead the spectators and athletes in waving their hands to resemble the movement of real pigeons. The bowl arc edge of the Bird's Nest would be turned into wide screens on which pictures of people of different backgrounds would be projected, waving "pigeons" in their hands. The design blends "communication," "beauty," and "solemn ritual" into one, thus becoming an important highlight of the ceremony.

From creation to production

After the final version of the project was worked out, the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games began to move from project creation to production.

Highly skilled performers had to work through aches and pains to fulfill the requirements of dancing on the abstract backgrounds; this is especially true for the 60 artists that were chosen to surround the model Earth. During training, they were required to run, jump and somersault with their bodies leaning in fantastically different angles.

In lighting, acoustic design and large-scale engineering projects, the Beijing Games Opening Ceremony adopted state-of-the-art technology and introduced scientific elements into producing stage properties.

The Opening Ceremony performances have introduced the most sophisticated digital multimedia projectors to help transform the entire Bird's Nest into the largest multimedia screen in the world.

Without a doubt, the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games will leave behind a solid memory for all Olympic fans.