Rio’s 2016 Olympic Ceremonies Work with Reduced Budget

Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – With a very limited budget, organizers of the Rio 2016 Olympics and Paralympics opening and closing ceremonies promise creativity to make up for the reduced funds. The budget for next year’s ceremonies in Rio de Janeiro are said to be at least ten times smaller than funds made available for the 2012 London Olympics.

For the London Games, organizers spent nearly £$27 million (equivalent to R$90 million at the time) for the opening ceremony. The forecast cost for Rio’s Olympic opening ceremony is now R$9 million, a small fraction of the R$132 million originally estimated.

“For us this is not a limit or drama, because it does not make sense to have Brazil splurge on a luxurious ceremony,” said award winning film director, Fernando Meirelles on Tuesday reported Agencia Brasil. According to Meirelles a country which does provide basic sanitation system to its population should not waste money on Olympic ceremonies.

“We can not spend the fortune spent in Beijing or London. We will have high concept not high tech,” added the director. Meirelles along with two other award winning directors, Andrucha Waddington and Daniela Thomas will be in charge of the opening ceremony, while samba school director, Rosa Magalhaes, will produce the closing ceremony.

According to the organizers the appreciation of the U.S. dollar will not affect the ceremonies since purchase agreements for the necessary materials were made before the surge of the U.S. currency.

The four ceremonies (opening and closing for both the Olympics and Paralympics) will count with the help of twelve thousand volunteers. According to the Olympic organizing committee more than 10,000 people have already signed up to participate.

The deadline to sign up on line is September 30th, and auditions will start in early November and extend until February. Although no specific aptitude is required, volunteers should have some skill, such as dancing, rollerblade skating or singing is desirable. The chosen volunteers will have to commit to practice three days per week starting in April of 2016.