Oprah did an “in-person” interview with Obama about his memoir A Promised Land – with all guidelines and protocols take care of.
A recent interview between Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama opened up a new door of possibilities for telling stories through the visual medium using technology.
Media presenter Oprah Winfrey and the former president Barack Obama recently engaged in a physically distanced in-person interview about said president’s introspective and revealing memoir of his tenure as 44th president of the United States of America. Oprah was at home in Santa Barbara and Obama was in a studio in Washington, DC and yet the interview looks like the two are in front of each other.
Using green-screen technology, frequently used in films such as the Marvel Universe franchise, they were able to enable a face-to-face in the same room without having to wear a mask.
“We should have done this in outer space,” he says jokingly, in a behind-the-scenes clip. “We could have both been sitting on Neptune, in a bubble!”
In order to make the interview look natural, the DC and Santa Barbara teams positioned the monitors below the camera lens so that both people could clearly see the other’s gestures, and cameras at the eyeline made it appear the two were always looking at each other.
The rooms were replicated with identical furniture, and precise measurements of even the minutest detail, like an ornament, ensured that the replication could be fully realised. The teams had to use the same cameras, lenses, lighting and audio equipment to avoid technical anomalies, and Obama was told not to wear green or white so he didn’t disappear into the green screen.
The feeds were delivered via a high-speed fibre line, in real time, the conversation flowed, marking the triumph of VFX.