A portion of the fireworks during the summer Olympics opening ceremony that were broadcast around the world was actually done with CGI. The 55 second segment of 3D computer imagery took almost a year to create. It was carefully done to replicate Beijing's smoggy sky and imitated the shakiness of a cameraman on a helicopter.
When questioned, the Beijing Olympic committee defended its choice by stating that the fireworks were too difficult to see in the thick smog of the city. They were able to control all broadcasts in the world because China regulated that only one company (Beijing Olympic Broadcasting) gets to control all of the Olympic footage. Their feed then goes out to everyone in the world who is broadcasting the event.
As impressive as the computer graphics may be, it scares me that China is controlling all the media footage in the world that's going out to every country broadcasting the Olympics. We already saw in V for Vendetta how things can be spun when the government controls the media. Theoretically, they could sneak in subliminal hypnotic messages to turn the world to do their bidding! Okay I'm just kidding but seriously though, I am a fan of freedom of the press.
20080813
Fireworks in Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony Faked
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Last night Bob Costas and Chris Collinsworth did a review of the highlights (so far) and when I saw the fireworks, I thought of your blog. They look so *real*.
I saw the same exact segment last night. Thanks for thinking of me!
I think it's a terrific computer graphics achievement and I don't want to take anything away from that. My issue was just with the Chinese government managing to control the world's media for those moments of time and also not disclosing to networks that they were going to be using their own generated graphics instead of live feed.
Post a Comment