INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

The description of the opening ceremony indicates the importance
of the set designer’s setting as something, which gives rise to strong
feelings, and it appeals to the wide audience. The history, rituals and
its spirit still have an essential influence on the participants as well as
the whole world. Certainly, during the latest years the political
tensions and the fear of terrorism have increased. Therefore the
Games appear as a kind of place of where one can breathe freely and
where the focus is on humane understanding across land frontiers
(Miller, 2001).
The athletes’ interaction with the visual media
As mentioned in the prefatory remarks, one can rightly see the
Olympic Games and the media in a symbiotic relationship. Great
amounts of money have made their entry into the Olympic Movement
long ago. For instance NBC paid for the television rights of one winter
and summer Olympic Games over a billion US Dollars to the IOC.
It is most likely that the Games in Athens 2004 will involve
several world records. Not only in the sense of the number of different
sports represented, participants, audiences, radio listeners, journalists,
TV viewers, but also in the sense of media covering both concerning
the amount of TV broadcasting time. The program in Athens involves
more than 30 different sports, 300 different disciplines of sports and
200 participating nations (Pedersen 2000, p. 103). Therefore, the
interest in the games is spread throughout the whole world, especially
because of the fact that some participants from almost every
participating country have a fair chance of getting a position in at least
one of the sport disciplines. More than 20000 media persons and
millions of people are going to be present in the cities where the
Games take place. Also half a billion people or in other words every
third person on earth will be watching or listening to parts of the
transmissions from Athens (http://www.kum.dk). What the set
designers behind the setting of the visual media are aiming at is to
answer the question of how to get the biggest amount of TV viewers
to watch the Games. In order to create a satisfactory setting, which
appeals to the audience, it takes a close coordination of the work
between those people who arrange the Games. The sport stadium in
itself is the most important frame for the event. In addition, the
architecture and the different dimensions of it, the choice of colours
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