In a post below, Standing Eagle chastises me for suggesting that the Elvisian piano player at the Olympics opening ceremony was “key-synching.”

Whichever one of us is right—and just for the record, it’s me—here is something from the opening ceremony that, it turns out, was definitely faked.

Remember watching those incredible fireworks “footprints” that marched across Beijing before winding up at the Bird’s Nest? The ones that I said looked like missile tests?

Fake!

…what [we] were watching was in fact computer graphics, meticulously created over a period of months and inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment…

…Gao Xiaolong, head of the visual effects team for the ceremony, said it had taken almost a year to create the 55-second sequence. Meticulous efforts were made to ensure the sequence was as unnoticeable as possible: 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.

Pretty sneaky! (As this blogger previously noted: the first digital Olympics.)

And here’s an interesting question: Did NBC know, and if so, shouldn’t it have said something? If the network didn’t know, that means the Chinese duped a television network with an elaborate stunt that involved providing them with a fake digital feed so technically impressive that the US couldn’t tell real from fake.

Hmmm…I wonder if all this stuff could be useful in the authoritarian control of hundreds of millions of people….?

Pretty...fake!

(Photo of Fake Fireworks from the Telegraph)