I think for Westerners these illusions (cgi fireworks, unbelievably cute Chinese girl who can sing like an angel) diminishes the grandeur of the opening ceremony. It's like they try to evoke this reaction of awe from the audience, and then they nonchalantly say, "Oh yeah, we faked that. Pretty cool, huh?" But obviously a lot of time and effort went in to staging all this stuff, and I can appreciate that. If you look at it like a movie, and these are special effects, that's just amazing craftsmanship.
Hardly. It's an overstatement that western media tends to make up stories. making tiny stories into big ones? a little bit. But that's not a uniqueness to western media. I think all media tends to dramatize. I am not questioning the existence of the incidence, but rather how it happened. I don't think the whole picture is as simple as that one day, a powerful CCP from politburo came to watch the rehearsal and then make an imediate decision about the lip-synch after watching the two girls performing. Guardian run a report about it and i think that's a pretty fair one. It mentioned that actually the crew directly responsible for the show were torn between which one to pick, the one with a more charming appearence or the one with better voice. And then there cames the letter from politburo that made the decision for them. They thought that's a good decision, because by doing so, they could have both-- appearance and voice. And they neve tried to hide the fact. If not, CCTV( the official CCP propaganda machine) wouldn't even interview the behind-the-scene girl and asked her directly how she felt that she didn't show in the opening ceremony. The girl replied that "no, my voice is there". It also mentioned the girl doesn't like showing off.
In terms of fireworks,isn't just the footprint one faked? There were many other spectacular real fireworks that night, albeit not as magical as the footprint one.One point i still haven't get is that is the footprint fireworks are completely a product of special effects, or still real one just prerecorded?
Yes, chinese people are renowned for their singing skills. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ef0M-u1D208&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ef0M-u1D208&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
The footprints happened in real time too. But the video during broadcasting was pre-recorded with CGI enhancement. Not sure exactly, my guess is it's real street scene but the footprint fireworks were added animation.
Well, if the footprints were filmed in real time, I imagine the report would have been: "Look at those Chinese, they are willing to risk pilot's life to get some stupid firework live footage."
That just makes them look like bozos to me. It's like they have an insecurity complex. The reality isn't good enough so they have to spice things up with fake crap. Having lived in Asia and witnessed the extreme importance placed on superficial beauty and "saving face" I'm not at all surprised.
um doesn't this apply to most cultures including western ones? Lip synching, plastic surgeries, etc etc are common practices in entertainment industries all over the world. I'm not surprised by this news either, but don't make it look like superficial beauty is treasured only in Asia.
I can't read Chinese, but if the Tribune story is based on what you posted, then why does it state that Yang was replaced at the last minute? That's not writing the same story differently, that's a basic factual dispute.
^To be clear, the Tribune story does say that Meioke sang in a rehearsal and was judged to have too poor a voice to sing in the ceremony. But on the larger question of whether the plan was ever to let Yang perform, the article says: "Chen Qigang, the ceremony's music director, had been asked last minute by the Politburo official to replace Peiyi with Miaoke, according to an interview with Beijing Radio." and: "Her father, Lin Hui, told China Daily he learned Miaoke would be "singing" only 15 minutes before the opening ceremony began." So, no matter how you want to qualify this, the point is that a girl was kicked off of the opening ceremony for not being cute enough.
Basically, a fake singer performed a faked song on a faking opening ceremony of 29th faking Olympics. the singer did not sing. the song was cut and slowed down to like a lullaby. The original song was written in 1950, the cut part including warning invaders and praising of Mao. the opening ceremony is opened with a faked song. The welcome of the "invaders" is obviously faked. The Olympics as a whole is a faked thing which has never been separated from politics since its beginning.
There are contradictory details in the Tribune article but why do you choose to believe one side even after we tried to explain with details we read from other Chinese sources. An American journalist could make a mistake in translation, not out of reach by any means. You believe or not, "replace Peiyi with Miaoke" could very well be "replace Miaoke's voice with Peiyi's" in stead. I often laugh at Sina's NBA stories as sometimes the translation is so poorly done. And I don't think it could very well happen the other way around. Last, how is that 15 minutes story related here. BTW, the official DVD is out in China now and on the back cover, both Lin and Yang were credited for that singing part.
NYT, after some revisions, seemed to get it right: "In his radio interview, Mr. Chen said a member of the Communist Party’s powerful Politburo, whom he did not identify, attended one of the last rehearsals, along with many other officials, and demanded that Miaoke’s voice “must change.” Make your own judgment who you want to believe, CT or NYT.
Yeah, of course, but from my personal experience, it is a lot more blatant over there. For instance, I know of quite a few females who did not receive secretary jobs because they were not beautiful enough, and were actually told this by the company when they were rejected as if it were an acceptable reason! I have also tutored high level businessmen who have told me flat out that they only hire hot girls to be office workers. I'm not saying that type of corruption doesn't exist in western society, but in my experience it is definitely more pronounced in Asia and more of an accepted aspect of life there.
Yeah China did this in it's National Interest because the entire World would get the wrong image of 7 year old Chinese kids as having crooked "baby" Teeth What a message this sends to Kids in China.
I'd like to clear up the "national interest" part a little bit. From the original interview given by the director, Lin was chosen not just by her appearance, but her inner feelings and the way she could express those feelings. Raising flag is a very serious thing, that's why they attached the singer's overall presentation to the so-called " national interest". I don't know whether yang's crooked teeth affected how people perceived she could express those solemn feelings, but definetely it's not just an appearance thing. I doubt the interviewee and chinese media ever used the word" ugly". It seems to me that the word was only used in western media, maybe it's for simplification since that they couldn't appreciate those criteria, or may be some other reason.
yea, now i got it. The footprint fireworks did happen in real time that night. Unfortunately, it's unfilmable, mostly due to technical issue (even helicopters cann't do that), partially to beijing's visibility. So they used that special effects in order to give an eye feat to audience who couldn't view them in real time( mostly tv audience). Here is a post from an BBC forum: I don;t remember this much fuss about the Barcelona opening ceremony in '92. Everyone applauded the moment the archer shot the flaming arrow to 'light' the cauldron; but this was a fake too. The arrow passed way above the cauldron and sailed out of the stadium; there is amateur footage of this on YouTube from people filming at the back of the stadium. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fca-MbAKOV0 ) It was considered too dangerous to do for real as during practice the arrows bounced out of the cauldron and on to the empty seats that would have been full of spectators in the ceremony, so they faked it with the official camera being placed low down so that the arrow's flight out of the stadium was masked by the cauldron itself. The flame was lit by technicians from a special pyrotechnic effects company right on cue. Why the fuss now and not then? If that's what really happened to the arrow lightening, i do wonder whether the media made a big fuss about that then and whether Spain was under heavy critisim from international community.
