CNN Has Mastered Holographic Technology (Sort Of)

 

 

Last night, every news station in the US was trying to one-up each other with their coverage of the Presidential election.  And in the tradition of floating pie charts, fancy 3D graphics, touchscreen maps and other random do-hickeys that the media networks bust out this time of year, CNN has topped them all with its over-the-top gadgety nonsense.  For their coverage last night, they debuted their fancy new Hologram setup. 

 

That's right, CNN has holograms.  Or, at least they claim to.  In the above interview, Wolf Blitzer (who's in New York) interviews CNN reporter Jessica Yellin in Chicago.  You'll notice that she has a faint blue aura around her, and she's standing on a big red dot on the floor.  At about the 60 second mark of the video they explain how the hologram effect is done.

 

It's not really a hologram though, at least, not in the cool Star Wars fashion of the Emperor towering over Darth Vader as a giant floating head.  Instead, what CNN is doing is using a bunch of cameras to create a real-time 3D image of their reporter that they then superimpose into the shots with Wolf Blitzer as he broadcasts from his studio.  I'll admit the camera tech is pretty damn cool, but the idea of there being a life size 3D hologram is completely blown away when you realize that Wolf doesn't actually see her in the studio. 

 

She's really nothing more than a very elaborate and very expensive green-screen effect, much like your local weatherman uses every night to tell you (innacurately) that it's not going to rain tomorrow.  I can't help but wonder why CNN would go to such a time consuming and expensive length just to have a fake hologram in the studio.  What, are splitscreen interviews so 20th century?  Really, what was accomplished here that couldn't have been done with splitscreen?

 

What's really sad is the fact that it probably would have been cheaper for CNN to fly their reporter back and forth all night between Chicago and New York to make regular reports throughout the evening than it was for them to build and implement the hologram setup.