Olympic Opening Ceremony Fireworks Were (Partly) Faked

A complete newb writes "London's Telegraph newspaper reports that some of the fireworks which appeared over Beijing during the television broadcast of the Olympic Opening Ceremony were actually computer generated. But — hold on — it's not necessarily as bad as you think. The faked fireworks were actually set-off at the stadium, but because of potential dangers in filming the display live from a helicopter, viewers at home were shown a pre-recorded, computer-generated shot." To me, the reasoning behind the faked display is no consolation or excuse — it seems hard to swallow that NBC was unaware of this televised deception. I'm glad that it was good-naturedly "revealed" this weekend (according to that Telegraph article), but it's disheartening that such a large crowd can watch (in person, and around the world) such a display and have no reason to realize they've been duped. What about when weightier events are at issue? There's also a slightly more detailed story at sky.com.

Comments

That Explians a lot!

[Newer Guy]

That helps explain the last 8 years to me! George W. Bush does not exist-his appearances have been computer generated fakes. Dick Cheney and the Halliburton CGI company have actually been running the country!

Seriously though does any of this surprise you? NOTHING on Television should be believed! Have you ever heard the phrses: "smoke and mirrors"? TV invented it! And OF COURSE NBC knew!

Wasn't there a movie out a while back about this? It involved a faked moon walk-and one astronaut showing up at his funeral-they killed the other two.

Re:Only a small part looked simulated

[Anonymous Coward]

That line deserves a +1 informative by itself, unless the mods today don't believe that the US has become worse since George W. was "voted" into office. If you're too sensitive to read mean words then you should come back after you get a spine.

Thanks.

With the budgets they get that's no excuse.

[plasmacutter]

The actual firewoks WERE going off at the same time, and in much the same way... but there was simply no way to be sure they could show it well on TV - since it was impossible to predict the weather or other cirumstances. So, they showed a CGI illustration for the people watching TV. The weren't hiding anything, they came right out and SAID what they were doing.

This is no excuse. They get obscene budgets and monopoly rights. This is like getting a cheap happy meal toy car instead of a real one when you go to the dealership.

They could have choppers waiting on the pad until the last minute, and/or develop new camera and/or firework launching rigs.

Yet another example of how copyrights dont really provide any incentive for high quality production.

Re:So what?

[arth1]

Precedent? I believe the US started the whole fake opening ceremony thing in 1984 by insisting on playback for the music. Too many thing could go wrong, including a risk of the artists giving a statement that the powers that be might disagree with.