Yet again, CGI is taking over our lives

Footprint fireworks broadcast from the Olympics' opening ceremony turned out to be the months-long work of CGI masters, and now the team behind the real fireworks are coming clean about what went down in the China sky.

We love fireworks, but from now on, will we have to see them in person to believe them? This weekend, a Chinese newspaper broke the story that some of the fireworks footage from the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony was prepared digitally in advance of the broadcast. The Beijing Times reported that the recording of 29 firework footprints walking across the Beijing sky was computer-generated and prepared months—yes, months—ahead of time by deft CGI programmers. The fireworks in question were actually fired off that evening, and a few of them even made it into the broadcast. But because the Beijing Organizing Committee knew that filming fireworks progressing across the city sky would be a logistical and security nightmare, it didn't assign a helicopter to follow the footprints as they ignited. Most of the footprint fireworks that the television audience saw at home (and on screens inside the stadium) were prepared in advance on a computer.

There's some controversy now as to whether NBC, which broadcast the ceremony 12 hours after it happened, properly informed viewers that they were not, in fact, watching real fireworks in what was one of the most highly rated programs of the year. At the time, host Matt Lauer called the footprints "almost animation," leading many to believe that the fireworks were trying to imitate animation by "walking" across the sky—not that what they were watching was physically animated. It's unclear how much the network actually knew at the time of the broadcast. NBC officials and technical crew members did not respond to multiple requests for comment this week.