Project Description
‘The Greatest Show On Earth’
The Olympic Stadium
London
59 Productions were invited by artistic director Danny Boyle to join his creative team as video designers for the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony.
Led by project Creative Director Leo Warner, the 59 team provided design, animation and film production services, as well as programmers and technical design services for ‘the greatest show on Earth’. The team’s primary role was to design and create all the video content delivered the Olympic Stadium. This included the four massive LED screens mounted on the stadium roof, all projection in the show, and the “audience pixels” – a vast, stadium-wide video surface comprising a custom-built 9-pixel LED panel mounted between every one of the 70,000 seats*.
Much of the content produced for the ceremony by 59 was also delivered direct to broadcast, including the 60-second countdown to the start of the ceremony, a series of title cards, and a number of graphic and typographic elements and overlays.
A huge undertaking with an audience to match, 59 delivered one of the most technically sophisticated opening ceremonies the world has ever seen, a powerful journey through this history of the United Kingdom writ large on the canvas of the Olympic Stadium.
‘WE’RE EFFECTIVELY ART DIRECTING ANYTHING THAT APPEARS ON ANY VIDEO SURFACE, WITHIN THE STADIUM, DURING THE OPENING CEREMONY’
CREDITS
Creative Director
Designers
Associate Designer
Jonathon Lyle
Animation Directors
Zsolt Balogh
Christian Debney
Lawrence Watson
Animators
Quentin Dachy
Derrick Ligas
M.I.E. Ltd
Editor
Joseph Pierce
Assistant Designers
Akhila Krishnan
Jessika Strataki
Technical manager
Jonathon Lyle
Programmers
Nick Simmons
Ben Pearcy
Data wrangler
James Long
Project manager
Remi Harris
Assistant to Leo Warner
Megan Kearney
Live-Action Director
Aneil Karia
Directors of Photography
Chloe Thomson
Vanessa Whyte
Stuart Bentley
Live-Action Art Director
Molly Einchomb
Production Assistant
Katie Jackson