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

Re:Yeah, no kidding.

[KGIII]

Not to mention that this is the opening ceremony - it is supposed to be a grand spectacle and, in this day, that means stuff like CGI. It is ENTERTAINMENT - not news, not sports. The only sports are the events themselves and the only news is the reporting of the medals won and the likes. (Oh, and the people jailed and the stabbing incident - those too are also news but hopefully people get the point.)