Olympic Secret: Most Firework-footprints Faked in Broadcast
Translated by CDT from the Beijing Times, via qq.com:
In yesterday’s Opening Ceremony, a step-by-step series of fireworks-sequenced footprints that “walked” from Yongdingmen along the central axis to the Bird’s Nest pushed the whole night into its climax. Many viewers, via live TV broadcast, were amazed by the spectacular Beijing nightscape. A video team employee of the opening ceremony told the reporter that TV viewers and spectators inside the stadium saw mostly an animated three-dimensional video that was made over a year’s time. It was not, actually, live shots, except the last foot.
Due to the flight restrictions and the timing and angle of filming, the employee said, the director’s staff decided to replace a live broadcast with a 3-D video rendering. The TV audience saw a 55-second sequence of 29 footprints. Only the final footprint, which stepped into the Bird’s Nest, was from a real-time camera image.
The video was produced by a company called Crystal Stone, or shui jing shi （水晶石） in Chinese. The production went from June last year till July this year and it went through numerous edits, including issues such as two feet or one foot and the length of the video, etc.
In order to enhance the fidelity, the video also took into consideration of pixelation of the images and slight vibration of filming from a helicopter, etc. It also added some fogginess according to the weather forecast.
“But from seeing it today, the video was a little brighter than the real effect,” said Gao Xiaolong, the video employee. “But most viewers thought it was live shots, and our work achieved its effect.” He was worried that they would be massively criticized by viewers after the ceremony. Seeing that most comments online were positive, he was much relieved.
Origin: , Beijing Times
POSTED COMMENTS: 6 Responses
[...] Turns out my favorite shot was faked, enhanced, and pre-recorded. Is nothing sacred? Actually it brings up [...]
Don’t worry, cheating is allowed in China, there are no morals, everything is allowed!
Wait, those were supposed to be real? I thought they were fake to begin with. That it was just part of the computer generated light show. Not really a big deal. Hardly a secret.
Wow. I didn’t see the fireworks in TV, but saw it in newspaper. First thing came to my mind was “is this real?” Then, I am thinking, this is just part of what China always does to impress the rest of the world.
Best Wishes,
Racheal
Ah, who cares. There WERE all those fireworks that night, right?—they just couldn’t film them at the same time and spliced in lots of old footage.
Cai Guoqiang is still cool.
to the previous comments: Yes it actually happened. There was the foot print fireworks set off at that time, you can even see different angles on youtube of it actually happening.
The thing is they could not capture all of it happening so they did it digital.. Its kinda of funny really but it shows how much effort they must of put into this thing to spend such a long time digitally editing something that is real anyways.