Chinese felt ripped off by the CCTV broadcast version of the Opening Ceremonies, particularly after seeing the NBC version which was “1000 times better.” While foreigners around the world rave about this years Olympics opening ceremony being one of the best ever, local Chinese were telling a different story. It has been the most popular topic in the largest forums/BBS (such as Mop, Tianya) since the Opening.
Frustrated Chinese complain that CCTV version failed to capture many of the exciting (and in some cases crucial) camera angles and Chinese announcers only managed to provide vacuous commentary. Meanwhile, the American commentators were able to go into great detail about the numerous traditional Chinese elements and symbols used throughout the intricately planned ceremony, displaying a much more complete knowledge of what was happening than in the Chinese version (granted, the delayed broadcasting of the ceremony by NBC gave the commentators time to do their homework). Some even go as far as to assert that Chinese will have to retract their accusations against foreign media for biased reporting since this time they presented China with such creativity and expertise that “even Americans are unable to find fault.”
Here are some of the more glaring faults (translated from original Chinese here)
- The CCTV version is a confused jumble of close and far shots, but the NBC version captured all the action from every possible angle providing the big picture in a much more complete and exciting way.
- During the reading of the Analects, NBC provides a shot of the top of the bird’s nest where there is both English and Chinese translation, which shows a consideration for visitors from other countries and welcomes them. The version shown in China does not provide any shots of this and you cannot even hear what is being read!
- Later there is a shot of children painting with watercolors and then the sequence is over, but in the NBC version there is a close up shot of the whole canvas, allowing the viewers to see that the black circle is actually the adorable smiling face of the sun, complete with two blushing red cheeks, so cute.
- During the modern China section, the Chinese version jumps straight to the astronauts very suddenly, only after watching the NBC version do we see the picture of the universe and night sky from where the astronauts drop down. And after the Olympic theme song is finished, the 2008 faces are not captured well in the Chinese version, but the NBC version takes it all in and finally in a moving sequence shows close ups of all the different smiling faces of the children from all over the world.
- Chinese people were really confused by the “footage of legs,” only afterwards did we discover that in front of the blank canvas were plates full of pigment so that each time a person walked across it created a rainbow effect. This was captured very well in the foreign version, but wasn’t captured in the CCTV version.
- In the Chinese version, when the athletes entered the stadium you could not see the signs held up for each at all, only after watching the later version did we discover that each sign had 3 languages written on them (French, English, and Chinese) and were written with our traditional Chinese brushwork.
Additional source states: “On August 9th, I spoke with a friend in the television industry and he said that the live broadcast of the opening ceremony was the responsibility of Beijing Olympic Broadcasting (BOB). The BOB live broadcast was global, and many television stations around the world (including TVB) all used the BOB broadcast which was excellent. But CCTV held broadcasting rights in China and brought their own cameras and director, so the final broadcast in China included clips from both CCTV coverage and BOB coverage cut and broadcast simultaneously, ruining the overall effect. The odd collection of closeups on famous people and actors and leaders and the shaky video footage was all thanks to CCTV.” (Original source here)
Who to blame? A source says:”
I am really angry! No wonder I have this weird (disconnected) feeling in watching the opening. The answer is that a Swedish broadcast director ruined our 2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony and Lao Mouzi’s (Yimou Zhang) talent.”
“NBC’s version is 1000 times better than CCTV’s, it shows the grand overview, super! But all our Chinese were watching a discounted gala.”
“So the broadcast director didn’t show us a real and extravagant opening. The director is a Swedish, not Chinese.”
真的很愤怒！！
怪不得看开幕式的时候感觉怪怪的！！！！
原来答案是这个 S B 瑞典导播毁了我们的2008奥运开幕式和老谋子的才华！！！！
美国NBC制作的奥运开幕式确实比垃圾瑞典导播的好千倍,展示的很全面很大气，超赞，而咱们自己中国人却看到的是打折的盛会，飚泪5555555~~~
所以这次导播的垃圾让我们完全没有真实的看到一个美轮美奂举世震惊的开幕式
导播是瑞典人，不是中国的
But so far, there is no official statement about the program director. Search “奥运会 导播” and you will see more stories.
To compare and contrast for yourself, download CCTV TVB version (3.26GB); BBC version (2.5GB); NBC version (4.92GB); CCTV version (Bittorrent)
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Great post! Thanks very much for this Thalia.
. . or maybe another way of looking at it would be to say ‘CCTV makes NBC look professional’ -)
Wow! This is so exciting! I can’t wait to see the NBC presentation. I was in China and watched the opening ceremony on CCTV. While I thought some parts were very impressive, I was really frustrated with the camera work, as you mention, it takes shots of random things that are so insignificant, or fails to really capture good moments. Often times it would shift from one shot to the next super quickly, and then take a long time on shots that didn’t really show anything.
However, I still felt they did a superb job, it was just bad footage. But now that I’m downloading the NBC version I will try to burn it into a few DVDs and get it to my friends to spread around. Hopefully the people will be able to appreciate all the hard work that Beijing put in for these opening ceremonies.
Thanks for the post! :-)
I’ve watched three versions (CCTV, BBC and NBC ) of the Opening Ceremony. CCTV and BBC versions are very similar. NBC version uses many close up shots. In my opinion, there is no very distinguishing difference that makes one version superior to the other two. It’s more about individual taste.
CCTV coverage of big events has always been rather shoddily done. I always delight in the badly-timed audience shots that show people looking bored or confused, especially when they start furiously waving their glow-sticks when they notice the camera is on them.
China is good at many things but providing fine detail for us (including their own people) is another story.
Didn’t anybody notice the little boy waving the upside-down flag? He held it for a long time and no one corrected it! Did CCTV show that? I didn’t see the CCTV version. It’s little detailed mistakes like that that I notice all the time in China. I remember even seeing a photo of a young nationistic man protesting outside a French superstore holding his flag upside down too:)
Yep, I saw the photo of the “upside-down” flag you mentioned. It was not the little boy’s fault. It is a low quality flag. The flag should be glued to the other end of the stick which will move the five stars to the upper side…
Your CCTV torrent is actually the TVB version, a Hong Kong based TV station
thank you for the reminding. I’ve changed it to “TVB version“ and added a CCTV BT seed. hope it works.
I only saw NBC version, I must say it is just so-so. NBC does have an expert in China who is able to speak and understand Chinese, and he is able to explain (in English) many things in the show.
I don’t think those explanations are really needed in CCTV or any Chinese language program as these should be well known. For example, this expert is able to point out the sentences from old Chinese classical and what are the meaning in English.
On the other hand, NBC also tries to make sure that each country is “properly” commented when it is shown on the screen. Most of countries are either having war/trouble, including hosting country. It shows NBC well in fact.
I’ve only seen the CCTV version, but these complaints show that it’s not just foreigners who can not be satisfied. Yes, there were a few problems with the CCTV broadcast, but 1) it was live. NBC had the luxury of time to edit, research and prepare; 2) all live broadcasts anywhere in the world by any TV station have problems; and 3) CCTV’s broadcast was fine.
You know nothing, poor boy. The Swedish director is only a scapegoat.
The DVD edition just came out on sales in Shanghai, Beijing and a few other cities. Let’s see if those came out better. Nevertheless, it was a fantastic Opening!
感谢TH
的确呀..我们国家转播的实在是很烂….
搞得我现在都来下美国的了…
不知道日本有没有转播…..
I watched both CCTV and NBC version. NBC version is actualy worse than the CCTV one. By saying that I mean NBC version is amost the same as the CCTV ones, but cut a lot of the performances which CCTV shows. The NBC narrator is also worse than the CCTV version, missing out a lot of information about each national teams.
Lucky or unlucky I fell asleep before all the athletes entered and guess missed all the pagentry. I have yet to see a replay – oh well. With NBC doing all the west coast feed taped delayed – midnightish – I’m not seeing too much. My question though – who is responsible for the actual camera set up? We know it’s not NBC – they think the nightlife OUTSIDE the venues is important.
Anybody got the answer?
The BBC live version is superb.
I disagree completely. I’ve watched both CCTV and NBC versions and while CCTV uses multiple camera angles and records the complete ceremony to make the viewer feel that he/she is actually THERE, NBC makes the ceremony its own, blowing it up into an American production. NBC also does not show every scene, editing out the Chinese Opera, for example. I guess it depends on if you want to feel like you are a member of the audience with a priveleged viewpoint due to the many camera angles, or if you want an Americanized production that presents the ceremony as its own.
mop.com??!?! you gotta be kidding me