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

Old addage?

[zappepcs]

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, did it make any noise?

If you weren't there in person, did it really happen? Apparently not. Seems like we should apply this to a lot of the news being reported by MSM these days. I don't care for sports and don't think the US Athletes, never mind the president, should be there in China. I *WOULD* have liked some coverage of the Russian fighting. I could only find that on the Internet. MSM? meh They seem like nothing but tosspots and whitehouse mouthpieces.

Science fiction turning into reality now. 1984 started late. I wonder what Capital W was actually doing in China? When not smacking volley ball players on the ass.

Re:Only a small part looked simulated

[ShieldW0lf]

Isn't Capitalism Grand!

Re:Only a small part looked simulated

[DarkOx]

That is like saying attaching a bunch of fine print to the bottom of an advertisement which directly contradicts what all the other material of the add implies is not an attempt at deception. Sure we know when its important to watch for it because we have been taught to do so. Still it often works and it certainly is an attempt to deceive if a not whole effective and thinly veiled one.

If I put together a broadcast which appears to be news coverage of an event repeated play a sequence of video after only once quickly stating its a artists conception or whatever, and then continue to talk for an hour about how impressive the event was and so fourth, I am certainly trying give you a particular impression of events and its certainly my artistic version rather then the reality.