Opening ceremony - World cup of Football France 98 [project]
[French version
Introduction

Preamble

The project that we present to you was carried out within the framework of the call to project launched by the French Committee of Organization of the World cup of Football 1998. The object of the contest was to propose a diurnal spectacle of 15 mn for the opening ceremony and a spectacle nocturne of 10 mn for the ceremony of fence. On eightee participants in the contest this project was finalist.

Presentation of the opening ceremony

. This ceremony is an entertainment for million witnesses throughout the world. The spectacle of opening that we imagined realizes over one duration of 16 mn, it privileges the movement, the music and the color. An intense ceremony which borrows from the spectacle of illusion its principles of revelation.

. Our project takes as a starting point the the elements characteristic of football while transposing them in registers of spectacle and festival.

. The intensities and the emotions created by football we let us translate them into rates/rhythms, the ground metamorphose we it in a garden, the codes colors of this universal sport interpret we them in flowers. This spectacle presents what we want to retain of this sport, a play in a garden.

. Three images summarize the successive metamorphoses of this ceremony. A garden with the Frenchwoman, thirty-two flowers and a giant flower in the heart of the stage of France. A universal spectacle, based on the language of the rate/rhythm, built on a musical composition interpreted on line per a hundred and twenty eight percussionnists.

. We conceived a whole of details which, assembled and organized, form a total image. These elements give a great richness to the televisual retransmission. The form of this ceremony is read in broad plans as in close-ups. The élements and the characters benefit from the excellent visibility which offers the stage, they are comprehensible some are the axes and the directions given by the glance of the camera.

. The 80 000 witnesses take part in the ceremony, because the spectacle is not solely on the ground but also in the steps, with the image of a match of football.

. This spectacle is before very visual and sound, it privileges the human one rather than the technique and it has a constant glance on football.

. We wanted a spectacle realistic. Who is included/understood by everyone. An obvious overall picture and a processing of the characters who is in direct relationship to the football, a form of shifted realism which falls under a register of official ceremony, but also of spectacle and festival.

©FINALEMENT 1997