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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.
I watched the opening ceremony on NBC here in the U.S. There was a part of the ceremony called something like 'A walk through Beijing'. It showed a fly-through video of Beijing with "footsteps" made of fireworks popping up along the street/path. Those footstep fireworks looked pretty obviously computer-simulated. All other fireworks shown did not have that simulated appearance.
It sounds to me like these footsteps part were all that was simulated.
Does anyone know if the footage we saw on NBC (of the whole ceremony) was from an International common video feed or did NBC have their own cameras there? I ask because at large International events like this, there is often a common video feed and the commentators simple talk about what they see on their screen (which is the same thing we see, minus the fancy NBC info graphics and overlays.)
(I wrote this looking at the subscriber early-post version. A link to a sky.com article was later added to the summary which answers my question.)
I personally hate watching fireworks on TV. They always dub some annoying song over top of the show so I can't hear the explosion and cheering. Especially over the fourth of july. I hate watching fireworks with "America the Beautiful" over top of the explosion. I want to hear the bang!
... just switch to a live video feed from South Ossetia?
Have gnu, will travel.
...my wife fakes her fireworks all the time and it doesn't bother me.
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Hey captain obvious, I vividly remember the NBC announcer stating they were computer generated as it was happening.
Off your high horse please.
Unaware? obviously weren't listening during th broadcast. The NBC announcers were talking about how some of the effects were computer enhanced. They specifically said there were "digital pyrotechnics" used during the camera shot that zoomed across the city showing fireworks exploding all around.
What's the problem? You want a series of impressive images on your screen. What's the issue with having them in CGI instead of real-life fireworks? The end result is the same. I could get your argument if we were talking about some olympic discipline being duped, with doping, corruption or otherwise, but fireworks are just eye candy. How it gets to your retina is quite irrelevant.
And by the way, doing it in CGI is also more environmentally friendly: compounds used in fireworks are not always of the most benign sort.
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This isn't a first for the networks. They have fudged the painting on a building in NYC (as seen by home views) during the New Year's Eve celebration.
Worry about them fudging the actual events. For that matter, worry about them broadcasting someone stepping out of a hotel room an 2AM.
In other news, last year's Super Bowl was actually two guys playing Madden '08.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
Ok? The idea is for the entire world to be entertained at which should be a truce among the nations of the world bringing its best athletes to the tables. Putting on a good show for the olympics is part of the drill.
I'm always looking for a good shot at China but I think this time around we should cut these people a break. They've done a good job with the Olympics so far.
This is my sig.
Slow day on Slashdot? I don't know where the conspiracy nuts get their information - were they actually watching the programme? The NBC commentator stated quite clearly that the 29 displays across Beijing that signified the 29 olympiads were simulated. They didn't got into detail about it but they certainly didn't hide it.
This seriously is getting out of hand. All of this Anti-Chinese hate is making our nations look awefully stupid. But keeping it on topic; This has been going on for years. Watching it on the television is a digial image anyway. If you want the real thing, you should go there. Television networks have been using image enhancing computer techniques for years now. This is not a new thing. It was in good nature and in the name of safety that this was done. As well, fellow posters have already mentioned that the reporter mentioned the CG enhancements to the show. It will remain the best opening ceremony in history, like it or not.
I watched the opening ceremonies twice and the commentators did state something to the effect of "They want this ceremony to be cinema in real time, but what you're watching right now is actually cinematic, it's all animation of these footsteps leading to the National Stadium." They did not outright say "hey this is prerendered CG" but they DID state that this was "true cinematics" and that it was animation.
They were well aware of it and did a poor job of communicating it to viewers. I can tell how most people would have missed it.
Back in 1992, the Olympic torch in Barcelona was supposed to be lit by an archer shooting a flaming arrow. Yeah... no. He shot it towards the cauldron, but it was set to be lit on its own via pyros. The flaming arrow passed way over the cauldron, safe from setting any of the audience on fire or perforating them, and the torch lit anyway.
OR MAYBE IT WAS AN OLYMPIC MIRACLE AND HE HIT IT
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Kurt Vonnegut: "If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind."
...and eventually, this kind of deficit spending will bankrupt the media.
I do wonder why they keep pushing the edge of the envelope like this, though. The urge to alter reality doesn't really resonate with me. Just show it how it really happened. People are tuning in to experience a real event, not some imagined account of what the fireworks might have looked like.
If things continue to trend this way, the media will eventually find it far easier to simply fabricate all the news. They'd never have to leave the studio, and could script out events over and over until they got just the right shot. I mean seriously, if they're not going to have 100% journalistic integrity, why have any at all?
To me, the reasoning behind the faked display is no consolation or excuse
Then next time, Timothy, we'll let you fly the helicopter while fireworks are being shot at it.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Wait. Are we seriously going to complain about this? If this doesn't count as much ado about nothing, I don't know what does. This isn't manipulation of the media - this is simply enhancing the televised broadcast of a ceremony for the opening of the Olympic games. Good gawd, get some perspective.
DoD producing propaganda for foreign (wink) audiences. Good evidence just came out that the White House forged a war-justification document. Stovepiped intelligence. Hush money to truth-tellers. Known-false public WMD claims. "This isn't about intelligence, it's about regime change." "Fuck Saddam, we're taking him out." Facts fixed around the policy. Leaks to "billboard" media to punish truth-tellers' families. Embedded reporters, sent home for publishing actual war photographs. Talking points piped from the White House to the top news corporations, often repeated as directives to the "journalists" who frame each day's news. Seven years of lapdog media pundits laughing along with the right-wingers who call for their assassination while they seriously discuss whether the 60% of Americans who still somehow hold political beliefs at odds with the ruling administration are traitors.
But the fireworks show China is deceptive.
If this is the standard of reporting NBC employs to bring purportedly "real-world" events to its viewers, I'm starting to understand how the US wound up in Iraq, why so many people believe evolution is "just a theory" and why huge corporations unblushingly stand in the welfare line while homeless veterans beg on street corners.
What's the harm in a little "enhanced reality" if it helps to keep people glued to the television, comfortable and distracted and plumply satisfied with their lot?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I watched on live YLE 1 in Finland, and the commentators explained as the fireworks were let off that part of the footage of of the giant footsteps before they reached the stadium were generated, but the fireworks at the stadium were live.
Seems to me someone is trying to sensationalize a non issue.
The announcers for NBC said there were digital fireworks during the broadcast a couple times.
Just as long as the ATHLETES are NOT on steroids, and the COMPETITION ITSELF is real... that's all I care about.
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how, exactly... is this news for nerds?
Is this just a vain viral attempt to drum up interest in the World's singularly most overrated sporting event?
Or simply yet another attempt to discredit the Chinese to distract US and UK readers from caring about the human rights and privacy abuses committed their own countries. Just remember, anything bad that happens in China in 2008 is going to be blown out of the water by the the London Olympics -- it'll make the 1936 Olympics look like Woodstock.
...the coziness between China and Iran. China shares advanced missile technology with Iran who reciprocates with advanced computer-generated rocket-launch capability.
Wah, wah, OMG OMG the fireworks are fake. Cry me a river.
ironic Pronunciation: \-rä-nik also i-rä-\ Function: adjective Date: 1576 1: relating to, containing, or constituting irony 2: given to irony 3: China, the inventor of fireworks, faking fireworks at the opening ceremony of the Olympics
Real sports are the ones you do yourself.
The link to the telegraph article is incorrect. Here's the real link
Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
"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."
So the safety of the spectators is "no excuse"? You'd prefer they endanger the spectators for no reason other than to satisfy your sense of propriety?
What WOULD be a good excuse guy?
As to your "I can't believe NBC was unaware..." line, you're right, they DID know. And they TOLD US repeatedly during the broadcast.
Is it possible to mod an article submission "offtopic"?
caused the Blue Screen of Death?
http://gizmodo.com/5035456/blue-screen-of-death-strikes-birds-nest-during-opening-ceremonies-torch-lighting
The first Olympic fake-out was back at Olympics 776 BC. In 720 BC it was discovered that olympian Ephorus Pausanias was actually wearing "artistically enhanced" tights.
--- What?
Talk about no credibility. Several times I've read on the Web "so-and-so wins gold!" only to see it 30 minutes later on NBC with the "live" logo on the screen. WTF? If it already happened, it ain't live. Another way NBC is misleading people.
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There was a small segment that looked like some fireworks had been composited over the Beijing landscape. It doesn't matter. It was only used because it would have been dangerous to film from a helicopter, and the display that actually took place was identical to the CGI one.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
A Chinese website reported over the weekend that the opening swoop over Beijing was a computer simulation:
http://cd.qq.com/a/20080809/000059.htm
It says the computer simulation took over a year to make, and that only the final set of footprints was real. The simulation was created by a Beijing firm, Crystal Digital.
http://www.crystalcg.com/
The media prints the fake material uncritically. Happened time and time again in the leadup to Iraq invasion, is happening again with the Ivins anthrax story, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
you had me at #!
China hasn't done well with nutjobs: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/09/olympics.murder/index.html
They've got some catching up to do before they beat the US: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/09/olympics.murder/index.html
I suggest increasing the number of victims using CGI.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I definitely saw legs, but I also saw some sort of supports. I imagine that the blocks had some kind of contraption to make it easier for the people to lift them up and down with such fluidity. Not to mention that they would all have to be constrained to move up and down; I didn't see them wobble at all.
When she was filming the 1936 Olympics (Olympia) she took aerial photographs by attaching cameras to balloons. The lesson for filmmakers today? If you can't risk flying people, use a drone. (Caveat: a number of the balloons crashed. But I like to think nowadays we could achieve better results.)
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I hope all you "left-wing liberal freedom fighters" who are infuriated and want "something done" about this dastardly deception and corruption of our human rights recognize the similarities you share with those "right-wing religious zealots" who have the _exact_ same reaction to harmless nudity, language, or sexual situations on television.
And, as it usually the case, the "facts" are completely wrong here as well: the CG simulation WAS disclosed and nobody was "duped". This is just more of the up-in-arms reactionary BS coming from people desperately in need of something to get worked up about.
Maybe if the two sides would see how similar they really are, this kind of idiocy will stop.
But thanks, Slashdot - this is like the third story today that was either deliberately misleading or completely fabricated. Seems like the only people getting "duped" are those who believe Slashdot story summaries.
But... it was disclosed, quite obviously, by the NBC reporters and therein lies the rub. Much ado about nothing, in my opinion. This is the short and long of it.
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The Games have been rigged for years, and we're pissing about the firecrackers?
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
Because it's entertainment that you know is produced for effect. Yet somehow, you've convinced yourself that the opening ceremonies aren't ceremonial displays done for entertainment purposes, and then complained about it.
Again, where exactly is the line drawn? If the opening ceremonies can be fake, why not the competitions as well?
Who's metric is better for judging the issue, yours or mine? Or that guy over there, perhaps? His brother maybe?
By your only guideline revealed thus far 'entertainment produced for effect' is fair game. Are not the games themselves entertainment as well? If not, why have audiences at all? Why award the medals on podiums, why not just by mail?
The entire 'games' event is an entertainment spectacle, and has been since the very first time they were held. What makes the ceremonial part of it more or less worthy of realism than any other part of it?
I knew there are enough China haters on Slashdot. Still, I login, searched the video out from massive Olympic videos, then, there you go: footprint fireworks video taken by a volunteer right outside Bird nest
I went back and looked at what NBC showed on television in the United States of America.
The following is exactly what the commentators, Today Show host Matt Lauer and NBC Sports broadcaster Bob Costas, said:
At the time, I fully understood that I was watching a movie. It's not "news" to me.
Ok, the fireworks in the 'footprint' sequence themeselves looked suspiciously rendered, but what really made me question it as I watched it was that as they flew towards the stadium, the roads were busy - plenty of cars.
After 7 years waiting, I guess most Beijingers would have been at home watching on TV.
Other shots outside the stadium later showed the roads virtually deserted (and totally deserted in the immediate vicinity of the stadium, of course).
Jolyon
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I shall summon the difference between revisions for the 1992 Summer Olympics article, which shows the text as it looked when I referenced it compared to the text as it was edited roughly an hour later.
The citation for the Wikipedia article is (was) from the BBC: "Ceremonial hall of shame."
Barcelona restored dignity four years later with an archer dramatically lighting the Olympic flame with a burning arrow flying through the night sky.
Billions of people around the globe gasped in admiration as the archer bravely found his target with unerring accuracy.
Or so it seemed.
In reality, he had not actually landed the arrow in the middle of the cauldron - he had fired it way outside the stadium as instructed.
Organisers dared not risk his aim failling short and landing into the grandstand and instead told him to fire it directly over the target area... some pyrotechnics-helpful camera angles would take care of the visual effect.
There you have it.
Kurt Vonnegut: "If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind."