"I could never have achieved such stunning visual effects without the contribution of a Chinese company – Crystal Computer Graphics,” said Danny Boyle, director of the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.
Crystal CG is a cultural and creative firm in Beijing's Zhongguancun Science Park. On the night of July 27, London time, the creative digital images produced by Crystal lit up London's Olympic stadium and amazed spectators from all around the world.
Crystal brought the world's biggest display screen to the London Olympics Stadium. Thousands of light-emitting panels were placed between every two seats, forming an enormous display screen connected to a central computer. When the opening ceremony entered the sixth chapter, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Internet, went up to the stage and typed "THIS IS FOR EVERYONE" in the computer. The four words simultaneously appeared on the light panels and were scattered into detached letters, sweeping from the center of the stadium, through the stands, and to the roof like a cascade of fireworks.
This idea was brilliant, but a challenge to implement. The difficulty was that the thousands of panels could not be on the same plane. The distance between every two panels was twice as wide as the panel itself, and the stadium is shaped as an ellipse. All the panels had to be fitted to look like an integrated screen by TV audiences in order to achieve the spectacular visual effect.
"The only way to achieve the goal was to use advanced technologies", said Lu Zhenggang, chairman of Crystal. Though Crystal has mastered the technology of seamless splicing of digital images, the company had never applied the technology to the world's biggest screen. However, Crystal conquered the difficulties in four short months.
Aside from the enormous screen, other digital images in the opening, such as the Jesse Owens run and the subway passing through a tunnel were also produced by Crystal. As a service provider of digital imaging for this year's Olympics, Crystal produced the majority of digital images in both opening and closing ceremonies, games venues, as well as on the Iinternet, television, and mobile terminals.
A few year ago when the London Organizing Committee for Olympic Games (LOCOG) assigned the producing of digital images to Crystal, both LOCOG and Crystal received a storm of skepticism and criticism. A proportion of British people thought it shameful that London, a creative and global advertising industry center, handed the assignment over to a 10-year-old Chinese company.
Edited by Chen Zhilin and Michael Thai
