philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Inside the Virtual Stage That Gives The Gamblers an Interactive Edge

The interactive format — made possible by Fourth Wall’s Rides.tv platform, which augments the first seven-minute episode of The Gamblers with text messages, bonus scenes and actual phone calls from the chatty narrators — gives viewers a fun way to play along with a show using some pretty cool technology. ...

Much of the visual magic in the The Gamblers’ first episode, titled “The Ledge,” comes from the virtual stage used to film the lovers’ lofty crisis. Fourth Wall set up shop on the Universal Studios lot and usedLightcraft Technology’s Previzion system to create a green-screen environment where the actors could see the virtual backgrounds — basically, the city surrounding the fake rooftop — during live playback shots. (Check out some behind-the-scenes action from the making of “The Ledge” in the clip above.)

“The chief aspect of it is that it’s got camera-tracking technology, so that a computer knows where your camera is on the stage and it’s therefore able to put it into a three-dimensional model inside the computer,” said Heinrichs. ...

See the full story with video  here: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/08/virtual-stage-the-gamblers/