Can you help?

[jgw13111]

Hi Forum,

I'm new here and need some help. About 20 years ago in Wash DC I had my picture taken at a little tourist trap photo stand with Bill Clinton. The fellow running the stand had a printer, a video camera and a monitor. Bill Clinton was just a digital image on a computer screen (one of about 20 templates) and when I stood in front of the video camera there was nothing there but a blank wall – but I could see Bill (frozen stiff in digital form) and me moving the computer monitor. When I was in just the right position, the entire image of Bill and I was frozen in time and printed out as a 5x7 – the technology was simple, quick and I was $10 lighter.
How did they do it? How could I do the same today without fancy cutting and pasting and blue screens in photoshop? Anyone know what this is called or where I can find the software???
Thanks!

 

[Chris Stegner]

The setup was possibly a MacroMind Director Runtime, or some sort of proprietary (spl?) package. There's a number of ways you could pull this off but most would require at the very least some ActionScripting in Flash, some interaction between the video source and an application that would have a script on it that masks out the background and composes the image on the "base file" then sends it to the printer.

This probably was quite a feat 20 years ago, and much simpler to do today, but it would take some looking into... I love these kind of projects, just for learning sake.

I'm rambling... sorry.

Please let us know if you come up with anything.