Monday, August 11, 2008

Olympic Fireworks were CGI?!

This has to count as one of the weirdest stories so far out of the Olympics. The Chinese made a centerpiece of the opening ceremonies a series of "footprints" created in fireworks over the stadium. It was shown on NBC and widely praised as a major achievement. The problem? It never actually was filmed. The whole thing - at least as filmed - was computer-generated imagery.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/olympics/2534499/Beijing-Olympic-2008-opening-ceremony-giant-firework-footprints-faked.html

Is it just me, or does this smack of the old Soviet propaganda machine? Any achievement is possible if you can simply lie about it in the papers or on the radio or on television. Actually making it happen is secondary. The important part is telling the people it happened, and rubbing the nose of the West in it.

Hopefully, someone managed to get real footage of the event - I have gotten nice shots of fireworks with my little pocket digicam so it would be unimaginable that a studio like NBC couldn't get something. Otherwise, we have to wonder how much else we are getting out of Beijing is really CGI.

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14 comments:

  1. Sean12:01 PM

    I seem to remember hearing Matt Lauer mention, very quickly and in passing, that the footprints over the city was a cinematic representation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown7:40 PM

    I had read that the reason it was presented like that was because they didn't feel they could get a helicoper pilot to be able both footprints and also for the safety of the pilot. They really did have the fireworks but the part that we saw here was fake. I figure it as a rough idea as what they saw over there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Nick"7:40 AM

    slight correction... they couldn't capture the footprints from the air without possible problems, so they recreated them one at a time over the 5 weeks leading up to the ceremonies (the footprints were real fireworks, not CGI, but they were cleaned up and added into the broadcast using CGI to match them to the live feed). The only one they actually shot off that night was the last one, because that one would be visible from the stadium (whereas the others were not, and would be viewed on the giant screens inside the stadium).

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