Beijing faked Olympic fireworks display
As I sat at home the other night, watching the opening ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, I noted with some astonishment to my wife that the fireworks display which capped the festivities was ‘unreal‘. Not my exact wording, but certainly the same connotation. And now I know why! They were unreal, or at least partially unreal. Word has it that the drop-dead amazing pyrotechnics we saw on television were aided by computer graphics, tweaked a year in advance by Olympics organizers.
Now I know why Beijing was so touchy about the South Koreans getting a look at the practice run…
It took planners almost a year to create the 55-second sequence which appeared to be fireworks of more than two dozen footprints in the sky, said Gao Xiaolong, head of the visual effects team for the ceremony, in the Daily Telegraph story.
Even those at the city’s new Bird’s Nest National Stadium, where the Olympics are being held, viewed the fake footage from their seats as they watched the on the stadium’s giant television screens, said Britain’s Sky News, in a story, “Olympic Fireworks Faked for TV.”
“Stunned viewers thought they were watching the string of fireworks filmed from above by a helicopter,” said SkyNews.com. “ But in reality they were watching a 3-D graphics sequence that took almost a year to produce.”
There were some real fireworks going on outside the stadium. But the footprint display was “inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment,” the Daily Telegraph said.
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