By Thomas Claburn,  InformationWeek
Aug. 11, 2008
URL: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210002310

Some of the fireworks seen in television coverage of the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics games in Beijing were created digitally, according to a report in The Beijing Times.

Twenty-nine fiery footsteps traced in the air above Bird's Nest National Stadium were created using real fireworks. But The Telegraph in the U.K. reports that because event organizers feared they would be unable to capture the pyrotechnics live on camera, a digital effects team spent almost a year preparing a computerized version of the 55-second footstep sequence, which was inserted into the live video feed.

"Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks," Gao Xiaolong told The Beijing Times, according to Sky News. "But most of the audience thought it was filmed live -- so that was mission accomplished."

Because one organization is responsible for filming the Olympics -- Beijing Olympic Broadcasting -- foreign TV networks had no choice but to accept the altered video, Sky News said.

Jacques Rogge, president of International Olympic Committee (IOC), called the opening ceremony, "a magnificent tribute to the athletes and the Olympic spirit."

It's open to question as to whether Spanish cyclist Maria Isabel Moreno, banned from the games on Monday for failing a doping test, exemplifies the same Olympic spirit that led to fabricated video.

According to The Telegraph, an adviser to the Beijing Olympic Committee defended the decision to spike the opening ceremony video, saying, "It would have been prohibitive to have tried to film it live. We could not put the helicopter pilot at risk by making him try to follow the firework route."

The video incident recalls another recent attempt to augment reality: In July, Agence France-Presse published and then retracted a photograph of an Iranian missile test that was digitally altered to include more missiles than actually launched.