The news waves and NPR were full of talk yesterday about NBC’s coverage of the opening ceremonies for this summer’s Beijing Olympics. The joke, it turns out was on us as nearly 70 million viewers in the US who thought we were seeing real fireworks burst across the nighttime sky Friday – were actually watching computer generated graphics.
NBC didn’t create them — the footage was provided and controlled by Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, a Chinese company. A Chinese Olympics official told The Daily Telegraph of London that it would have been too expensive and too dangerous to tape the actual fireworks — though there were actual fireworks set off that night.
So, the vivid fireworks on the broadcast were really computer graphics created by a team of hundreds of Chinese visual effects specialists who worked for nearly a year to pull it off.
Critics carped that viewers were deceived, but NBC Sports spokesman Adam Freifeld shrugged it off. “It’s not our production,” Freifeld said. “Our guys are very clear that this was animation.”
Hey, it’s marketing – it’s all smoke and mirrors. Who doesn’t realize magazine ads are airbrushed to reduce wrinkles, add abs or reduce waists? TV is entertainment – it doesn’t have as much reality as we sometimes believe.
This was not a case of putting lipstick on a pig – it led us to wonder at the enormity of the production in a “gee whiz” way like all the 2000+ drummers and the moveable type actors from the same night. I wasn’t cheated; I was uplifted, and thrilled. They gave me what I wanted to believe was real.
Wouldn’t it be great if all marketing were like that?
