This Stargate Studios 2009 Virtual Backlot Reel shows just how common green or blue-screening is for network television shows. I don’t watch much (any) network television, but it makes sense that this technique is used so often — it lowers the budget and lets the staff focus on good acting. Live shoots in crowded locations are expensive, disruptive, and no doubt difficult to accomplish. The chroma key editing that is used for blue- screening looks very advanced in the studio reel, and it has likely made its way from expensive movie studio editing rooms to television shows in the past few years. With many shows being watched in High Definition on large televisions, it must be very effective in order to convince the home audience.
What really struck me about this video is how modern technology is able to skew reality. Recently I posted about the advances being made in bringing Augmented Reality to mobile devices.
Chromakey is everywhere via Boing Boing
With chroma keying tech, it has become difficult for the human eye to discern reality from fiction when viewing a video screen. What are the implications of blue screens and video editing? I am reminded of the movie Wag The Dog from 1997:
How will this chroma key technology be used in the next decade? I would like to know what you are thinking, reader.
Blaise Aguera y Arcas, an architect at Microsoft Live Labs, presented the latest augmented reality capabilities of Microsoft’s mapping application at the 2010 TED Talks. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design and is a phenomenal collection of presentations that anyone will find beneficial.
Augmented Reality is now entering widespread adoption with the emergence of powerful smartphones capable of taking geotagged photographs and video, and especially by streaming videos over a 4G cellular network. As online mapping applications become feature-rich and widely used, people will provide their own content in the forms of annotations, photographs and videos. As a result, true telepresence will be possible, allowing a sort of virtual tourism via a computer screen. A user could experience the bustle of a city square at night or the rising sun in a silent desert. Art, hidden shops, and curious city features can be documented and tagged for the benefit of others. A cyclist can mount a smartphone to his helmet and take an audience for a tour of his city in realtime. In the next few years, the possibilities of combining the real and virtual worlds will begin to emerge and be discovered, and it will help to connect and enrich us all.
badorbit 