Chinese faked fireworks during Olympic opening ceremony.

 

 

 

Fearing it would be too difficult to capture each special effect fireworks “footprint” live during Friday’s Olympic opening ceremony, Chinese organizers faked the effect for millions of TV viewers and those watching on the big screens located inside the Bird’s Nest stadium, according to an online news report from Telegraph.co.UK.

Early in the spectacular ceremony viewers watching around the world and on giant screens inside the Bird’s Nest National Stadium were dazzled by a series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks exploding above the city from Tiananmen Square.

What they were watching, however, was in fact computer-generated graphics, meticulously created over a period of months leading up to the ceremony and quietly inserted into the opening ceremony coverage electronically at exactly the right moment. Call it a harmless hoax.

The fireworks were there for real, outside the stadium, but ceremony organizers responsible for filming the elaborate extravaganza decided in advance that it would be virtually impossible to capture all 29 footprints from the air. No harm, no foul, no fireworks fiasco, no problem.

In reality, only the last footprint visible from the camera stands inside the Bird’s Nest was in fact captured on film. The made-for-TV tricky was revealed in a local Chinese newspaper, the Beijing Times, over the weekend.

The entire opening ceremony involved more than 16,000 performers, mostly from People’s Liberation Army song and dance troops. Talk about a lot of footprints…