Fake Fireworks in Beijing

True story. A lot of the fireworks you saw last Friday during the opening ceremonies weren't really there. From NPR:

... during at least one sequence, viewers who thought they were seeing real fireworks burst across the nighttime sky Friday were 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.

The local Beijing Times, which first revealed it, said there was even slight camera shake introduced to make it seem as though the footage came from a real helicopter flying above.

Read the whole story here.