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The Fifth Element(1997)
Director:Luc Besson
Cinematographer:Thierry Arbogast
2nd unit DOP:Nick Tebbet
Production Designer:Dan Weil
Key grip:Joe Celeste
Camera grip:Jean Pierre Mas
Stunt coordinator:Marc Boyle
Costume Designer:Jean-Paul Gaultier
Visual Effects supervisor:Mark Stetson
Creature Effects supervisor:Nick Dudman
Miniature Effects supervisor:Niels Nielsen
Visual Effects DOP:Bill Neil
Special Effects supervisor:Neil Corbould
Pyrotechnics supervisor:Thaine Morris
Luc Besson said he started writing the screenplay when he was 16, creating the vivid fantasy universes to combat the boredom he experienced living in rural France. But it didn't reach the screen until he was 38 years old; by that time, he felt he was old enough to actually have something to say about life.
According to costume designer Jean Paul Gaultier, the enfant terrible of the fashion world who once gave Madonna conical breasts, designed the futuristic costumes for The Fifth Element—more than 1000 of them. He didn't just design them, either For crowd scenes, where there might be hundreds of extras wearing his costume designs, he'd go around making adjustments to ensure everyone looked right before the cameras rolled.
According to Gaultier, Besson had lined up Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, and Prince to play the leads in 1992, before financial problems delayed the project. (It's not clear whether any of them had officially signed on or were merely considering it.) Besson arranged for Gaultier to meet with Prince when the singer was in Paris so he could show him sketches of his designs. The meeting proved awkward (as one assumes many meetings with Prince are), and The Purple One later told Besson that he found the costumes "a bit too effeminate." It's entirely possible that the production delays would have prevented Prince from committing anyway, but it's fun to think about what Ruby Rhod would have been like in different hands. Gaultier had also unwittingly offended Prince with his description of one proposed outfit, a mesh suit with a padded, fringe-bedecked rear. Gaultier kept referring to this part of the suit as a "faux cul" ("fake ass"), but because of his thick accent, he said Prince misheard him as saying, "F-\-\- you!" Tucker has said he took inspiration from both Prince and Michael Jackson in crafting his performance as Ruby Rhod.
When filming began, the production decided to dye Milla Jovovich's hair from its natural brown color to her character's signature orange color. However, due to the fact that her hair had to be re-dyed regularly to maintain the bright color, Milla's hair quickly became too damaged and broken to withstand the dye. Eventually a wig was created to match the color and style of Leeloo's hair, and was used for the remainder of the production.
Luc Besson, an admitted comic book fan, had two famous French comic book artists in mind for this movie's visual style when he started writing the movie in high school, Jean Giraud (Moebius) and Jean-Claude Mézières. Both artists have long-standing comic book series in France. Moebius is best known for "Blueberry" and the (French) Magazine and (U.S.) movie Heavy Metal (1981). Mézières is best known for the "Valerian" series. Both series are still in production today. Moebius and Mezieres, who attended art school together but had never collaborated on a project until this movie, started renderings for this movie in the early 1990s and are responsible for the majority of the overall look of the movie, including the vehicles, spacecrafts, buildings, human characters, and aliens. However, only Giraud is credited, and even then, he wasn't even granted a premium when the movie was eventually produced.
Some of the most memorable moments from the film are views of a future New York, complete with flying cars and a mass of new and old skyscrapers. The film was one of Digital Domain’s huge miniature shows released that year – the others being Dante’s Peak and Titanic – while also heralding the fast-moving world of CGI in the movies. The New York scenes were created using a combination of CGI (for the flying cars), live action (the people), and scale models (the buildings). A crew of 80 on the production design team spent five months building dozens of city blocks at 1/24th scale.The visual effects for The Fifth Element were realized with a masterful combination of motion control miniatures, CG, digital compositing and effects simulations by Digital Domain. The flying traffic created by the visual Effects team allowed artists to create personalized license plates. Though never visible in the movie, the state slogan printed on all license plates reads "New York, The F***-You State."The people populating the roofs, decks, and windows during the visual effects sequences in New York City are the artists and employees at Digital Domain.
The text scrolling across a Times Square theater marquee as Korben dives down through traffic is actually an excerpt from an e-mail dispute between several artists at Digital Domain. Other signs on digital and practical, miniature buildings contain similar in-jokes and references and the large cylindrical tanker truck that Korben's cab almost hits at the end of his descent is decorated with the logo of a Venice, California, pizza parlor that was a favorite of Digital Domain artists.
‘You know, Mark, I don’t want to do these ‘fancy panning around and seeing the whole world shots’. I’d much rather set a camera looking down a street, having a cab rush towards me, and cut as it passes by, and then cut to a reverse of it passing by, and construct my film that way.’ – The Fifth Element visual effects supervisor Mark Stetson relates what director Luc Besson said to him about staging the film’s New York City shots.
This was Mark Stetson’s first visual effects supervisor role, this is what he had to say about it in a VFX blog article
Mark Stetson: I wasn’t afraid of the size of it. I didn’t think it was huge at the time. I mean, it was sort of standard tent pole-ish at the time and I was confident that I could do that, but it was my first one and there was a ton I had to learn, especially about digital visual effects. And I was very supported by Digital Domain. It was Digital Domain 1.0 back then, and they really gave me a great team. It was a great experience all around.
During the prep period, cinematographer Thierry Arbogast worked extensively with production designer Dan Weil to integrate various lighting units — primarily fluorescent and occasionally ultraviolet fixtures — within the sets themselves. More often than not, the futuristic spaces dictated the types of fixtures that could be used.
Arbogast had some challenges on the film he said this about the opera scene.
“Most of the lights you see in the opera house were already there. The difficulty was in lighting the people in the audience without illuminating the white facades of the balcony. Therefore, we used a lot of flags to focus our lighting precisely on the people.”
Gary Oldman played Zorg as a cross between then-Presidential candidate Ross Perot and Bugs Bunny.
In most shots of Gary Oldman, there is a circle around his head. In fact, a circle in the middle of the frame is a nearly constant motif in this movie. Bruce Willis, on the other hand, is more often framed by a rectangle or doorway behind him.
In keeping with the hands-on approach Besson established on Le Dernier Combat and has practiced on all of his successive films — Subway (1985), The Big Blue (1988), Atlantis (1990), La Femme Nikita (1991) and The Professional (1994) — the filmmaker operated the camera himself throughout the entire shoot. While such a working situation is rare for directors working within the Hollywood system, Besson prefers it because he can maintain better control of the onscreen action. "I create the frame and the movement within it," he explains. "Why lose time explaining everything to someone else? He's going to be slightly off, and then I'm going to freak out and say, 'No, this is not what we discussed. I want the camera here!' So it's better for everyone involved if I just do it myself.
"I write each action scene as if it is a ballet; the movements fit with the music. Generally, I'll shoot a fight sequence for 10 days using just one or two cameras and a very small crew. I've already written out the fight scene in my head, shot by shot. I do this for each and every sequence so that we can just shoot it, and then put the scene together in the editing room. At the same time, when you're on the set, you can have an idea at the last moment; you realize that from a different angle the light might be better, so you change the perspective [of the shot]. But I'll always write down and block out this [new] progression."
The explosion in the Fhloston main hall was the largest indoor explosion ever filmed. The resulting fire almost went beyond control. It took twenty-five minutes to put out.
At the time, it was the most expensive movie ever produced outside of Hollywood, most expensive French production history, and at $80 million USD, the visual effects budget of the movie was the highest of its time.
The wonder on Bruce Willis' face when the Diva sings is real. That was the first time he'd heard it and seen the actress in full make-up.
Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Chris Tucker and Gary Oldman are all left-handed.
The director had been married to Maïwenn Le Besco, who plays the Diva Plavalaguna, since 1992 (when she was 16 and he was 33, but that's another story). She didn't want to be in the film, adhering to the old adage that married people shouldn't work together and co-workers shouldn't marry each other. But when the actress Besson had cast as the Diva dropped out, Le Besco took the part got painted blue and gave a memorable performance. Alas, Besson didn't share his wife's policy of not mixing work with relationships. He left her during the production for Milla Jovovich, whom he married at the end of 1997 and divorced two years later... then that happened
From Mental floss,vfx blog,ASCmag article,IMDb,YouTube visual element doc.
「match between system and the real world」的推薦目錄:
match between system and the real world 在 元毓 Facebook 的精選貼文
根據計算,100萬人遊行隊伍要從維多利亞公園排到廣東;200萬人遊行則要排到泰國。
順道一提香港15~30歲人口約莫100出頭萬人。以照片人群幾乎都是此年齡帶來看,兩個數字都是明顯誇大太多了。
另一個可以參考的是1969年的Woodstock Music & Art Fair,幾天內湧進40萬人次,照片看起來也是滿山滿谷的人。(http://sites.psu.edu/…/upl…/sites/851/2013/01/Woodstock3.jpg)
當年40萬人次引發驚人的大塞車,幾乎花十幾個小時才逐漸清場。
而香港遊行清場速度明顯快得多。
順道一提,因此運動而認定「你的父母不愛你」的白痴論述也如同文化大革命時的「爹親娘親不如毛主席親」般開始出現:
https://www.facebook.com/SaluteToHKPolice/videos/350606498983830/UzpfSTUyNzM2NjA3MzoxMDE1NjMyMTM4NjY3MTA3NA/
EVERY MAJOR NEWS outlet in the world is reporting that two million people, well over a quarter of our population, joined a single protest.
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It’s an astonishing thought that filled an enthusiastic old marcher like me with pride. Unfortunately, it’s almost certainly not true.
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A march of two million people would fill a street that was 58 kilometers long, starting at Victoria Park in Hong Kong and ending in Tanglangshan Country Park in Guangdong, according to one standard crowd estimation technique.
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If the two million of us stood in a queue, we’d stretch 914 kilometers (568 miles), from Victoria Park to Thailand. Even if all of us marched in a regiment 25 people abreast, our troop would stretch towards the Chinese border.
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Yes, there was a very large number of us there. But getting key facts wrong helps nobody. Indeed, it could hurt the protesters more than anyone.
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For math geeks only, here’s a discussion of the actual numbers that I hope will interest you whatever your political views.
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DO NUMBERS MATTER?
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People have repeatedly asked me to find out “the real number” of people at the recent mass rallies in Hong Kong.
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I declined for an obvious reason: There was a huge number of us. What does it matter whether it was hundreds of thousands or a million? That’s not important.
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But my critics pointed out that the word “million” is right at the top of almost every report about the marches. Clearly it IS important.
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FIRST, THE SCIENCE
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In the west, drone photography is analyzed to estimate crowd sizes.
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This reporter apologizes for not having found a comprehensive database of drone images of the Hong Kong protests.
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But we can still use related methods, such as density checks, crowd-flow data and impact assessments. Universities which have gathered Hong Kong protest march data using scientific methods include Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Baptist University.
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DENSITY CHECKS
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Figures gathered in the past by Hong Kong Polytechnic specialists using satellite photo analysis found a density level of one square meter per marcher. Modern analysis suggests this remains roughly accurate.
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I know from experience that Hong Kong marches feature long periods of normal spacing (one square meter or one and half per person, walking) and shorter periods of tight spacing (half a square meter or less per person, mostly standing).
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JOINERS AND SPEED
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We need to include people who join halfway. In the past, a Hong Kong University analysis using visual counting methods cross-referenced with one-on-one interviews indicated that estimates should be boosted by 12% to accurately reflect late joiners. These days, we’re much more generous in estimating joiners.
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As for speed, a Hong Kong Baptist University survey once found a passing rate of 4,000 marchers every ten minutes.
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Videos of the recent rallies indicates that joiner numbers and stop-start progress were highly erratic and difficult to calculate with any degree of certainty.
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DISTANCE MULTIPLIED BY DENSITY
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But scientists have other tools. We know the walking distance between Victoria Park and Tamar Park is 2.9 kilometers. Although there was overspill, the bulk of the marchers went along Hennessy Road in Wan Chai, which is about 25 meters (or 82 feet) wide, and similar connected roads, some wider, some narrower.
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Steve Doig, a specialist in crowd analysis approached by the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), analyzed an image of Hong Kong marchers to find a density level of 7,000 people in a 210-meter space. Although he emphasizes that crowd estimates are never an exact science, that figure means one million Hong Kong marchers would need a street 18.6 miles long – which is 29 kilometers.
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Extrapolating these figures for the June 16 claim of two million marchers, you’d need a street 58 kilometers long.
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Could this problem be explained away by the turnover rate of Hong Kong marchers, which likely allowed the main (three kilometer) route to be filled more than once?
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The answer is yes, to some extent. But the crowd would have to be moving very fast to refill the space a great many times over in a single afternoon and evening. It wasn’t. While I can walk the distance from Victoria Park to Tamar in 41 minutes on a quiet holiday afternoon, doing the same thing during a march takes many hours.
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More believable: There was a huge number of us, but not a million, and certainly not two million.
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IMPACT MEASUREMENTS
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A second, parallel way of analyzing the size of the crowd is to seek evidence of the effects of the marchers’ absence from their normal roles in society.
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If we extract two million people out of a population of 7.4 million, many basic services would be severely affected while many others would grind to a complete halt.
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Manpower-intensive sectors of society, such as transport, would be badly affected by mass absenteeism. Industries which do their main business on the weekends, such as retail, restaurants, hotels, tourism, coffee shops and so on would be hard hit. Round-the-clock operations such as hospitals and emergency services would be severely troubled, as would under-the-radar jobs such as infrastructure and utility maintenance.
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There seems to be no evidence that any of that happened in Hong Kong.
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HOW DID WE GET INTO THIS MESS?
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To understand that, a bit of historical context is necessary.
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In 2003, a very large number of us walked from Victoria Park to Central. The next day, newspapers gave several estimates of crowd size.
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The differences were small. Academics said it was 350,000 plus. The police counted 466,000. The organizers, a group called the Civil Rights Front, rounded it up to 500,000.
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No controversy there. But there was trouble ahead.
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THINGS FALL APART
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At a repeat march the following year, it was obvious to all of us that our numbers were far lower that the previous year. The people counting agreed: the academics said 194,000 and the police said 200,000.
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But the Civil Rights Front insisted that there were MORE than the previous year’s march: 530,000 people.
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The organizers lost credibility even with us, their own supporters. To this day, we all quote the 2003 figure as the high point of that period, ignoring their 2004 invention.
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THE TRUTH COUNTS
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The organizers had embarrassed the marchers. The following year several organizations decided to serve us better, with detailed, scientific counts.
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After the 2005 march, the academics said the headcount was between 60,000 and 80,000 and the police said 63,000. Separate accounts by other independent groups agreed that it was below 100,000.
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But the organizers? The Civil Rights Front came out with the awkward claim that it was a quarter of a million. Ouch. (This data is easily confirmed from multiple sources in newspaper archives.)
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AN UNEXPECTED TWIST
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But then came a twist. Some in the Western media chose to present ONLY the organizer’s “outlier” claim.
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“Dressed in black and chanting ‘one man, one vote’, a quarter of a million people marched through Hong Kong yesterday,” said the Times of London in 2005.
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“A quarter of a million protesters marched through Hong Kong yesterday to demand full democracy from their rulers in Beijing,” reported the UK Independent.
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It became obvious that international media outlets were committed to emphasizing whichever claim made the Hong Kong government (and by extension, China) look as bad as possible. Accuracy was nowhere in the equation.
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STRATEGICALLY CHOSEN
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At universities in Hong Kong, there were passionate discussions about the apparent decision to pump up the numbers as a strategy, with the international media in mind. Activists saw two likely positive outcomes.
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First, anyone who actually wanted the truth would choose a middle point as the “real” number: thus it was worth making the organizers’ number as high as possible. (The police could be presented as corrupt puppets of Beijing.)
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Second, international reporters always favored the largest number, since it implicitly criticized China. Once the inflated figure was established in the Western media, it would become the generally accepted figure in all publications.
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Both of the activists’ predictions turned out to be bang on target. In the following years, headcounts by social scientists and police were close or even impressively confirmed the other—but were ignored by the agenda-driven international media, who usually printed only the organizers’ claims.
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SKIP THIS SECTION
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Skip this section unless you want additional examples to reinforce the point.
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In 2011, researchers and police said that between 63,000 and 95,000 of us marched. Our delightfully imaginative organizers multiplied by four to claim there were 400,000 of us.
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In 2012, researchers and police produced headcounts similar to the previous year: between 66,000 and 97,000. But the organizers claimed that it was 430,000. (These data can also be easily confirmed in any newspaper archive.)
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SKIP THIS SECTION TOO
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Unless you’re interested in the police angle. Why are police figures seen as lower than others? On reviewing data, two points emerge.
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First, police estimates rise and fall with those of independent researchers, suggesting that they function correctly: they are not invented. Many are slightly lower, but some match closely and others are slightly higher. This suggests that the police simply have a different counting method.
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Second, police sources explain that live estimates of attendance are used for “effective deployment” of staff. The number of police assigned to work on the scene is a direct reflection of the number of marchers counted. Thus officers have strong motivation to avoid deliberately under-estimating numbers.
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RECENT MASS RALLIES
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Now back to the present: this hot, uncomfortable summer.
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Academics put the 2019 June 9 rally at 199,500, and police at 240,000. Some people said the numbers should be raised or even doubled to reflect late joiners or people walking on parallel roads. Taking the most generous view, this gave us total estimates of 400,000 to 480,000.
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But the organizers, God bless them, claimed that 1.03 million marched: this was four times the researchers’ conservative view and more than double the generous view.
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The addition of the “.03m” caused a bit of mirth among social scientists. Even an academic writing in the rabidly pro-activist Hong Kong Free Press struggled to accept it. “Undoubtedly, the anti-amendment group added the extra .03 onto the exact one million figure in order to give their estimate a veneer of accuracy,” wrote Paul Stapleton.
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MIND-BOGGLING ESTIMATE
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But the vast majority of international media and social media printed ONLY the organizers’ eyebrow-raising claim of a million plus—and their version soon fed back into the system and because the “accepted” number. (Some mentioned other estimates in early reports and then dropped them.)
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The same process was repeated for the following Sunday, June 16, when the organizers’ frankly unbelievable claim of “about two million” was taken as gospel in the majority of international media.
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“Two million people in Hong Kong protest China's growing influence,” reported Fox News.
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“A record two million people – over a quarter of the city’s population” joined the protest, said the Guardian this morning.
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“Hong Kong leader apologizes as TWO MILLION take to the streets,” said the Sun newspaper in the UK.
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Friends, colleagues, fellow journalists—what happened to fact-checking? What happened to healthy skepticism? What happened to attempts at balance?
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CONCLUSIONS?
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I offer none. I prefer that you do your own research and draw your own conclusions. This is just a rough overview of the scientific and historical data by a single old-school citizen-journalist working in a university coffee shop.
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I may well have made errors on individual data points, although the overall message, I hope, is clear.
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Hong Kong people like to march.
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We deserve better data.
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We need better journalism. Easily debunked claims like “more than a quarter of the population hit the streets” help nobody.
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International media, your hostile agendas are showing. Raise your game.
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Organizers, stop working against the scientists and start working with them.
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Hong Kong people value truth.
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We’re not stupid. (And we’re not scared of math!)