Most of the 1 billion people who watched the Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing — 15 percent of the world’s population — were awed by the grandeur of what was described by the NBC announcers as the most spectacular opening ceremony ever.

But it turns out some parts of the opening ceremony were actually faked — including the stunning “footprint” fireworks display:

As the ceremony got under way with a dramatic, drummed countdown, viewers watching at home and on giant screens inside the Bird’s Nest National Stadium watched as a series of giant footprints outlined in fireworks processed gloriously above the city from Tiananmen Square.

What they did not realise was that what they were watching was in fact computer graphics, meticulously created over a period of months and inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment.

The fireworks were there for real, outside the stadium. But those responsible for filming the extravaganza decided in advance it would be impossible to capture all 29 footprints from the air.

As a result, only the last, visible from the camera stands inside the Bird’s Nest was captured on film.

Gao Xiaolong, head of the visual effects team for the ceremony, said it had taken almost a year to create the 55-second sequence. Meticulous efforts were made to ensure the sequence was as unnoticeable as possible: they sought advice from the Beijing meteorological office as to how to recreate the hazy effects of Beijing’s smog at night, and inserted a slight camera shake effect to simulate the idea that it was filmed from a helicopter.

“Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks,” he said. “But most of the audience thought it was filmed live - so that was mission accomplished.”

I watched the ceremony live, and none of the NBC commentators or anchors mentioned that what viewers were seeing was actually computer-generated animation, not live video.

It has also emerged that the adorable 9-year-old girl, Lin Miaoke, who “sang” the Chinese national anthem during the ceremony actually lip-synched to the voice of another girl. The actual singer, Yang Peiyi, was deemed “unsuitable” because she had crooked teeth. The decision was apparently made during rehearsals by a member of the Politburo.

“The main consideration was the national interest,” he said. “The child on the screen should be flawless in image, in her internal feelings, and in her expression. In the matter of her voice, Yang Peiyi was flawless, in the unanimous opinion of all the members of the team.”

That was until attention turned to Yang Peiyi’s teeth. Nevertheless, Mr Chen thought the end result a perfect compromise.

“We have a responsibility to face the audience of the whole country, and to be open with this explanation,” he said. “We should all understand it like this: it is a question of the national interest. It is a question of the image of our national music, our national culture.

“Especially at the entrance of our national flag, this is an extremely important, an extremely serious matter.

One question remains: why was Lin Miaoke allowed to give interviews in which she lapped up the praise for her singing.

Lest anyone forget that the PRC is, well, still the PRC.

**UPDATE: I was unaware of this, but the Chinese government hired Albert Speer, Jr. as its master designer for the Beijing Games. For those that are not familiar with the name, his father Albert Speer, Sr., was Hitler’s chief architect and helped design the 1936 Berlin games. Obviously, Speer, Jr., is not his father, but as Nina Krushcheva writes in the Guardian, the similarities are nevertheless striking:

Indeed, by choosing Albert Speer Jr, the son of Hitler’s favourite architect and the designer of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, to design the master plan for the Beijing games, China’s government has itself alluded to the radical politicisation of aesthetics that was a hallmark of 20th century totalitarianism. Like those regimes, whether fascist or communist, China’s leaders have sought to transform public space and sporting events into visible proof of their fitness and mandate to rule.

…Totalitarian regimes – the Nazis, the Soviets in 1980, and now the Chinese – desire to host the Olympics as a way to signal to the world their superiority. China believes that it has found its own model to develop and modernise, and its rulers regard the games in the same way as the Nazis and Leonid Brezhnev did, as a means of “selling” their model to a global audience.

Obviously, the Chinese were naive to choose an architect whose name carried such dark historical connotations. The name of Speer itself probably did not matter to the officials who chose him. They sought to stage an Olympics that made manifest their image of themselves, and Speer Jr, looking back to his father’s mastery of the architecture of power, delivered the goods.