Interesting stuff.
Having supplied all the (ten) broadcast helicopters for Athens, and then performed the same role in Melbourne for the Commonwealth Games and Qatar for the Asian Games, I declined to tender for Beijing. The requirement involved exclusive use of Chinese military pilots and, at one point, excluded westerners from even being in the aircraft. The request to “teach them how to do an Olympics from the air” didn’t seem to acknowledge even a faint understanding of the scale of the task.
The comments above about the helicopters being excluded from the Equestrian airspace seem to be borne out by reports I’m hearing myself. It’s just this kind of thing that we usually spend two years planning and coordinating in order to avoid. It’s a great shame that after carefully gaining the confidence of the Equestrian governing bodies in Athens things seem to have gone backwards in Beijing.
As for the opening ceremony, I wanted to weep. High, wide and general views of stadia went out of the window long ago. When the Cineflex came along we then refined the technique to being able to pick out recognizable individuals in the stadium from 2,000’. Beijing has taken us backwards again. My team in Athens were simultaneously coordinating aerial shots between the stadium, the Acropolis and the Olympic flame on the streets. To have to sit through computer generated aerial images of Beijing (as finally admitted on the news yesterday) because it was “too hard” to do live was particularly painful. Too hard for whom???
The “legalised hooliganism” referred to earlier made it’s mark on the Cycling Road Race. Horrible wide shots coming from a Z9 that was hovering so low over the field of play that the riders must have been lucky not to get blown over. I doubt the cycling authorities will ever let a helicopter near a cycle race again.
It’s a sad week for sports broadcasting and has probably set our industry back by a decade. Let’s hope that London (and Whistler) look to Athens and Sydney as examples of what can be responsibly and professionally achieved by people who have the experience to know what they’re doing, because it sure ain’t happening in China.
If you want to invade Tibet use a military pilot, if you want to broadcast the Olympics use a film pilot……..and preferably not the noisiest airframe on the planet.