Last week, as Olympic fever gripped Brazil, I travelled to Rio de Janeiro to watch the opening ceremony. I found it an unexpectedly powerful and moving experience, not just because of the exuberant Brazilian music, joyous dancing and visual beauty but also because the event carried earnest political messages about national resilience, climate change and the need to protect refugees.
There was another factor, however, that made the ceremony so memorable: it delivered spectacular digital visual effects, producing an immersive experience akin to sitting inside the Matrix or Insurgent movies. Over the course of several hours, a breathless kaleidoscope of computer images was beamed on to the walls and floor of the stadium, creating worlds of urban skyscrapers, seascapes and jungle scenes.
The net result was an experience as visually thrilling and emotionally powerful as anything I saw in the London 2012 opening ceremony (which I was lucky enough to attend) or Beijing’s, in 2008 (which I watched on television) — so much so that when the athletes finally stepped into the area, it was almost an anticlimax.