Donna McMahon, Director of Operations, speaks about running the Ceremony from the main control room, high in the MCG stands.

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TRANSCRIPT

-This is control room five. We have seven control rooms for the ceremonies, and this is our main control room. This control room looks after the hub of the ceremonies team. During the ceremony, we have too many people in this control box. We have our head of production, who overlooks all of us.

We also have our automation operation department. We have our technical director, our staging director, and myself as the director or operations. And from this point we look after everything that happens within the ceremonies. The show is called via our stage manager. She calls everything that happens on the floor of the hall. She calls the girls and from this point we actually make everything happen.

We have a communications box which is linked to over 80 different radio channels across the ceremonies department, so at any one time you can hear about 12 to 15 people talking in your ear.

My role is to ensure that the ceremonies in the venue are all operating at the same time, so that we can deal with any issues within the venue. Ceremonies is very addictive industry to work in.

It's one of those things that at the time you're really tired, you work really hard, you work really long hours, but afterwards you really enjoyed it. It's one of those retrospective enjoyment processes, and when you look back on it you have had a much better time than you thought you were having at the time.