Gold Medal Photoshopping

Photoshop contest website Worth1000 has a competition to create the most dangerous Olympic sports.

h/t:TrendHunter

Popularity: 7% [?]

Opening On Steroids: Fake Fireworks, Mimed Singing

This list of Zhang Yimou’s “Performance Enhancing” techniques to achieve that dazzling Olympics opening ceremony keeps growing. China lawyer Liu Xiao Yuan considers suing (Someone care translate it?)

Here’s a few of the complaints echoing around.

1- Mimed Singing
2- Fake Fireworks
3- Better production for US viewers
4- NEW ALLEGATION: The song “You and Me” closely resembles another composer’s work.
5- NEW ALLEGATION: Those Ethnic Minority children were actually Han Majority

1- Mimed Singing
The star singer in pigtails and a red dress, Lin Miaoke, did not actually sing “Ode to the Motherland”. While Lin mimed the song, another girl, Yang Peiyi, actually did the singing.

Yang was not allowed to sing because she did not look as “flawless” as nine-year-old Lin, musical director Chen Qigang told Beijing People’s Broadcasting Station explains in an interview translated by China Digital Times.

Why fake singing?
They faced a dilemma, because although Lin was prettier, seven-year-old Yang had the better voice, musical director Chen Qigang said.

This is in the national interest. It is the image of our national music, national culture. Especially the entrance of our national flag, this is an extremely important, extremely serious matter. Then we made such a choice. I think it is fair to both Lin Miaoke and Yang Peiyi.

2- Fake fireworks
Those dramatic explosions across Beijing were pre-recorded and digitally enhanced.

NBC, defended itself, saying their announcers had made it clear to viewers that the fireworks were fake. You judge:

“You’re looking at a cinematic device employed by Zhang Yimou here,” Lauer said. “This is actually almost animation. A footstep a second, 29 in all, to signify the 29 Olympiads.”

Costas responded, “We said earlier that aspects of this Opening Ceremony are almost like cinema in real time. Well this is quite literally cinematic.”

Why fake fireworks?

The Beijing Olympic Committee said it was necessary to replace live video with computer-generated imagery because the city’s hazy, smoggy skies made it too difficult to see.

They were concerned that the helicopter pilot who would have flown overhead to film the fireworks would have been “at risk by making him try to follow the firework route,” according to a quote from a committee member reported in a Daily Telegraph story.

3- Better production for US viewers
There is also grumbling in the Chinese Internet, CN Reviews reports, that US viewers got a better version of the opening ceremony.

4- The song “You and Me” closely resembles another composer’s work.
This composer alleges that this song resembles “You and I” from the opening ceremony, according to Isaac Mao (My Chinese reading skills not good enough.)

5- Ethnic minority children were actually Han Majority, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The children actually were members of the Han majority, an arts official said in an interview. Yuan Zhifeng, deputy director of Galaxy Children’s Art Troupe, said the children were drawn from the all-Han Chinese troupe. “I assume they think the kids were very natural looking and nice,” Ms. Yuan said.

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Technorati Tags: Opening Ceremony

Fake Mickey Mouse Joins the Olympics

Forget those athletes, Japanese media has been going heavy on the appearance of fake Mickey Mouse at the Olympics.

Classic denial translated by Pink Tentacle from the Yomiuri:

When asked about the resemblance to Mickey, a spokesperson replied, “They have square holes in their ears. They are not copies.”

The spokesperson suggested the statues are unique because they incorporate the themes of old Chinese coins (the square holes), the year of the rat, the Olympics and the financial district into the design.

However, children passing by the statues were seen pointing and saying, “Look! It’s Mickey!

Video coverage of the developing story here.

Last year Japanese media reports on China’s fake Disneyland prompted Beijing’s Shijingshan Amusement Park to come clean, for a little while anyways.

H/T to Pandapassport

Popularity: 5% [?]

Technorati Tags: mickey mouse, pandapassport

Amusing Coverage of Opening Ceremony

The Globe and Mail ran the above amusing cartoon while, elsewhere in Canada, the Edmonton Sun’s Terry Jones could not praise the opening ceremony highly enough. Wonder if even the China Daily had a lead this strong.

Olympic opening ceremonies the best ever

By Terry Jones, Edmonton Sun

BEIJING – If any future Olympic Games is ever credited with a more awesome, brilliant, inspired, powerful or original opening ceremonies it might have to be because everybody on the planet developed amnesia.

The spectacular show which China produced to welcome the world to the XXIX Olympic Games and welcome themselves to the world was almost certainly the greatest show in the history of the greatest show in sport.

With Canada earning one of the loudest welcoming responses in the parade of athletes, it was a night of many story lines.

Lest you think him too uncritical, Jones did find fault with the ceremony:

If there was a criticism at all, at least beyond the fact it took more than four hours, it might be that the opening ceremonies were so overwhelmingly awesome that the one thing they lacked was a light, delightful, bubbly touch. In that way, the ceremonies might end up being a microcosm of the next 16 days – awesome but not that much fun.

Pat Forde at ESPN.com had a suggestion for Brits:

The only people who didn’t enjoy the awe-inspiring Opening Ceremony of the XXIX Olympic Summer Games had to be the folks with the London Olympic organizing committee. They host the 2012 Summer Games, meaning they have to follow the greatest show on Earth — and, for my yuan, the greatest show in Opening Ceremony history.

If I were the Brits, I’d punt and go with Monty Python reruns. Unless they can top a gold medalist elevating and running on air around the entire circumference of National Stadium to light the torch.

Hat tip to Boris for the cartoon.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Athlete-Bloggers at Beijing Olympics – Updated List

To follow the Olympics via the participants, I have been searching for Olympic bloggers and have found a few sources, largely thanks to help from the ever-lively crowd on Twitter at #080808.

US Rowing – Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal’s China Blog has 2 Olympian Bloggers so far, both from the US Rowing Team: Jason Read and Chris Liwski. I could not readily find a blog outside of the journal for either one.

US Track and Field Vlogger
ArethaThrows is a YouTube channel of a US track and field team posting occasional videos, including this tour of the US track and field training facility in Dalian.

Team Canada blogger-athletes
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is hosting slews of athlete blogs. You can learn what Olympic Rower Adam Kreek ate for his 2 breakfasts on June 23:

First breakfast: Pint of Smoothie (blueberries, pear, banana, pineapple, yoghurt, flax seed oil, carrot juice, rice milk, powdered greens, whey protein, creatine, glutamine, Green/yerba mate tea

Second breakfast: 3 eggs with cheese and veggies (onions, broccoli, mushrooms, peppers, snow peas), 3 pieces of 12-grain bread, 2 pints of orange juice

• Adam Kreek — Rowing
• Alexandra Orlando — Rhythmic Gymnastics
• Anna Rice — Badminton
• Christine Sinclair — Soccer
• Colin Jenkins — Triathlon
• Hugh Macdonald — Archery
• Kevin Sullivan — Athletics
• Kyle Shewfelt — Gymnastics
• Mark Heese — Beach Volleyball
• Sherraine Schalm — Fencing

Lenovo aggregates Athlete-Bloggers
One of the main Olympic sponsors, Lenovo, has made a foray into social media by aggregating 100 athlete-bloggers. The site is painfully corporate, but if you struggle back to the original blogs, many are great, such as Australian sailor Ian Murray‘s improbably upbeat description of trying to sail through Qingdao’s outbreak of algae in June.

You could almost be forgiven for thinking I’d changed from a water-based sport and moved into track and field – the surface of the course in Qingdao is covered with some sort of green spongy algae!

You can see in this picture below, the surface almost looks like a bowling green…it certainly makes for interesting sailing!

Lenovo gave the bloggers equipment, but not money, David Churbuck, VP of web marketing for Lenovo, told me via a Twitter exchange.

I laud the Lenovo concept, but have a number of critiques on execution:

- The aggregation site looks way too corporate. So corporate, in fact, that I fled the site until Churbuck told me that the company does not censor the athletes.

- The site prevents direct access to the bloggers themselves. It first sends you to a pop-up page with a text summary of the blogger’s latest posting. This slows the process of getting to the source material. One the most important aspect of blogs is the self-presentation of the bloggers. I want to see how they present themselves.

- The @lenovo2008 Twitter feed accompanying the blog seems to be written by a robot that only has access to a TV and schedule of when events take place. They should highlight the best quotes, complaints, victories written by the athletes themselves, not tell me who is playing next or “Its half time, watching the Beijing Dream Girls”.

Anyone find other athlete-bloggers? What about athlete-Twitterers?

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Technorati Tags: Chris Liwski, David Churbuck, Jason Read, Lenovo

2 Parent Policy for Chinese Olympic Athlete

Funny story by Geoffrey Fowler in the Wall Street Journal revealing an official Olympic sponsor with advertisements that are not entirely truthful (Cue: sounds of pained shock and horror).

Turns out that the “parents” pictured here with hurdler and gold-medal hopeful Liu Xiang’s are fake.

The ad, for the milk drink Satine, reads: “A delicacy among dairy products, Satine is my choice.”

While his parents have said in past interviews that their son grew up drinking milk, the people in the picture are actors.

The official explanation given to Fowler:

“The parents were shy,” says Tom Doctoroff, the north Asia chief executive of WPP Group’s JWT, which made the Satine ad for the brand’s parent company, Yili. “But they approved the concept.”

While companies are keen to capitalize on China’s reverence of family, Fowler points out that the use of actors as parental stand-ins carries the risk of backlash.

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Technorati Tags: Advertising, Geoffrey Fowler, Liu Xiang, Media, Olympics, Satine, Tom Doctoroff

Best way to follow the Olympics

In case you are not already doing so, Twitter has been a great way to follow (and participate in) Olympics coverage.

For the opening ceremony a large group of us wrote 140 character postings with the agreed tag #080808.

Lonnie Hodge – who also Twitted – blogged about the outcome:

And yesterday’s hash mash (a way to view aggregated info on a single topic) during the Olympic Opening Ceremonies was just straight-up fun! David Feng, the hardest working tweeter in the business, did a better job at translations, and commentary than did any of the newscasters on CCTV or Pearl (HK).

Kaiser Kuo, Paul Denlinger, Thomas Cramption, China Buzz (from the news center), Rebecca MacKinnon, Papa John, Siok Siok Tan, Marc (from inside the stadium), Frank, and a host of others joined the creators, like Flypig, of a phenomenon that was and is by turns funny, wonderfully irreverent, informative and better at fashion critiques and obscure celebrity sightings than (insert the dubious catch of Canadian language geek DaShan walking with the Canuck team) is Perez Hilton’s army of snitches. And they do this while character-cuffed to 140 (133 if you count the hash tag) keyboard ticks a tweet.

I think having to compress thoughts quickly and concisely forces you to write free of your normal subjective shorthand and makes for unusual candor and sometimes great comedy: Cyber-Haiku.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Technorati Tags: China, Chinabuzz, David Feng, Flypig, Kaiser Kuo, Lonnie Hodge, Papa John, rebecca mackinnon, twitter

BBC Busted for Outdated China Oppression Image

The anti-CNN community busted the BBC for using a photo on July 29 showing Chinese police looking at a monitor that has been used by the BBC on multiple stories reaching back to at least August 26, 2000.

An example of stock photo usage gone wrong. (Or perhaps they couldn’t get any more policemen to pose in front of computer screens.)

Sadly, Internet censorship remain very much up to date in China, even if suspended for a few foreign journalists during the Olympics.

One comment:

We use LCD screens now, how could a photo with such an old monitor be called news? Do they think we haven’t been developing here these past eight years? They can’t even make fake news properly!

Hat Tip to John Kennedy and ZonaEuropa

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Japanese Don’t Care About the Olympics

A survey released by Mindshare shows Asia – Japan especially – is not so excited about the Olympics as China.

- For Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan and Hong Kong, the FIFA World Cup is more exciting than the Olympics.

- Japan is the least enthusiastic about the Olympics, with 33% saying they would not watch any events live.

- 38% of Japanese say they are likely to watch less of Olympics this year than in 2004.

- Vietnam and Malaysia follow China in enthusiasm for the opening ceremonies, according to the below graph.

The survey was carried out by mConsult – MindShare’s consulting division this year’s first quarter. They conduct a study every quarter. This survey is conducted online amongst 3000 respondents who are 15-35 years of age and captures their opinions on many things including brands, foreign brands, fads in technology, sports, sports events etc. It aims to capture amongst other things, the movement in consumer preferences by tracking favourite celebrities, gadgets, sportspeople, up and coming events and many other social issues.

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Sophie Richardson: Olympics Coverage Guide for Journalists

Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, interviewed by Hugo Restall, Editor of The Far Eastern Economic Review about the Chinese government’s attitude towards media.

Richardson recently published a new report, “China’s Forbidden Zones: Shutting the Media Out of Tibet and Other ‘Sensitive’ Stories.”

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Beijing vs TV Networks: Olympic Media Showdown

Let the games begin!

With the August 8 opening of the Olympic games only weeks away, confidential meeting minutes reveal ongoing battles between TV networks and Beijing Olympic organizers.

In the meeting, which took place a week or so ago, points of contention included new limits on live coverage and allegations that shipments of TV equipment have been held up in Chinese ports

“I think what I have heard here are just a number of conditions or requirements that are just not workable,” said IOC official Gilbert Felli, according to minutes of the May 29 meeting obtained by reporter Stephen Wade of the Associated Press. “There are a number of things that are just not feasible.”

Some TV executives were upset that the government looks like it will not permit live coverage from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. This is a change from two months ago when IOC officials in Beijing said China had agreed to allow such live coverage.

“The Chinese are very concerned about something going wrong — and so they are in Olympic gridlock,” said John Barton, director of sport for the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, which represents broadcasters in 57 countries. “They are suffocating the television coverage in the crazy pursuit of security. They can’t secure the event. Nothing can be totally secure, yet they are trying to do that.”

The tone of the meeting’s minutes is a stark contrast to public statements from the IOC.

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CNN seeks freelance reporters on Digital China

Kevin Drew, supervising editor Asia Pacific for CNN International’s website, is looking for good freelancers out of China to report for the CNN Olympics microsite.

He is particularly keen for stories about how new technologies are being used to cover the Olympics, but is also interested in great stories on other Olympic-related topics.

Contact Kevin directly:

Kevin Drew
CNN
Supervising Editor, Asia Pacific
Tel: (852) 3128-3214
e-mail: kevin dot drew at cnn dot com

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Technorati Tags: asia pacific, China, cnn, Kevin Drew, Olympics