CGI faked-fireworks feature in Olympics opening ceremony footage

By Davey Winder
Tuesday, 12 August 2008 04:16

Networking

Around 1 billion people around the globe are estimated to have tuned in to watch the spectacular opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. I wonder how many of them realised that some of those fantastic fireworks they were watching had been created by a computer visual effects team?

The eyes of the world, it seems, were on Beijing last Friday for the opening of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad. It was without doubt a truly stunning extravaganza.

It could be nothing else. What with more than 15,000 performers and nearly 11,000 athletes taking part on the night. Or the estimated $300 million cost for that matter.

But what most people remember about any Olympics opening ceremony is the fireworks display. In the case of Beijing, that meant some 30,000 fireworks. It's just a shame not all of them were real.

According to The Beijing Times, a key 55 second fireworks sequence was actually digitally created many months in advance of the Games. Even if you were actually there, right there in the Bird's Nest National Stadium, you still would have been watching fake fireworks.

The problem, we are told, as with the giant firework footsteps that walked their way from Tiananmen Square to the stadium itself. Each footprint turned into falling stars and then Olympic rings.

The sequence of 29 feet was, without any doubt, truly something to behold. For all but a lucky few it was also truly faked and the Internet has not let that small fact slip past quietly.

An advisor to the Beijing Olympic Committee told the Beijing Times that "we could not put the helicopter pilot at risk by asking him try to follow the firework route" so the decision was made well in advance of the games to use digitally created footage, excuse the pun, instead.

So while the giant feet were actually formed by real fireworks on the night, what the world saw was not.

To be fair, the quality of the CGI fireworks was such that it is hard to feel cheated in an way, shape or form. Everything, right down to their insertion in the broadcast stream at exactly the right moment, was executed to perfection.

So what went wrong, how did the fake fireworks story get out and does it really matter? Find out on page 2...

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