Tuesday, August 19, 2008
 Late reporting, but still... From MSNBC: "Part of the elaborate Olympics fireworks show broadcast to the world in the opening ceremony was altered, done digitally in 3-D computer graphics, according to several news reports.
While the dramatic display actually happened as portrayed on television, members of the Beijing Olympic Committee said it was necessary to replace live video with computer-generated imagery because the city’s hazy, smoggy skies made it too difficult to see, according to The Beijing Times, which first reported the story.
Committee members also said they were concerned that the helicopter pilot who would have flown overhead to film the fireworks would have been “at risk by making him try to follow the firework route,” according to a quote from a committee member reported in a Daily Telegraph story.
[...]
Even those at the city’s new Bird’s Nest National Stadium, where the Olympics are being held, viewed the computer-generated footage from their seats as they watched on the stadium’s giant television screens, said Britain’s Sky News in a story.
“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.
“Meticulous efforts were made to ensure the sequence was as unnoticeable as possible,” the newspaper reported Xiaolong as saying. “They sought advice from the Beijing meteorological office as to how to recreate the hazy effects of Beijing’s smog at night, and inserted a slight camera shake effect to simulate the idea that it was filmed from a helicopter.”
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And of course, the singing was lip-synched.
Labels: ChiComs, tvfakery
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.....| Posted at 23:51 | PERMA-LINK |
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