He knows me, he hates Reed but then everybody hates Reed so I dispense with the pleasantries as this entire floor seems to have done so already.
“What are we looking at then?” I say.
“This is a mock up…” He begins,
“Obviously…” I say. I like to do at least one interruption during a vocal report. Potenkin shoots me a look and continues.
“…the feed is being synthesized as live and we’ve got two operators using basic compositing software trying to drop in around the edges here and here…” He indicates the bottom and top left of the display. “You ready out there Danny!” He suddenly shouts over his shoulder out the open door. There is a muffled yelp in the affirmative in return.
“So this is Basra?” I enquire although I already know as I recommended this footage for this process but Potenkin doesn’t need to know that.
“Yes he replies, this was mostly a maimer but a few fatalities I recall.”
“Twelve.” I reply.
“Anyway, the footage is handheld, standard broadcast, EX I think, shot HD, transmitted compressed. The trick is overlaying the composite with the correct artefacting, it has to update at around 20 to 22 frames and that was the real struggle. Also moving it live without it blocking has been complex but…”
“Does it work?” I interrupt.
“Watch…”
The footage is edited although they’ve left some of the blast on for dramatic effect, they like that sort of thing down here. The frame rate on the camera isn’t up to catching the bomber’s body coming apart but once the dust has settled there is the usual rubble and a mangled young woman in the right foreground, her foot and left calf have been eviscerated but the wounds look fairly cauterized and her femur is poking though the top of her right leg, the wound is cavernous but the problem is most of the blood stays inside the body. As for the other victims strewn about whilst the majority of their wounds are cosmetic they smoke and plaster dust dulls the color. It is not vivid enough.
Potenkin visibly tenses which doesn’t fill me with confidence, “OK, run it with overlay Danny’ He says even though Danny can’t hear him.
The footage is repeated and as the bodies fly the blood has been regraded and a crimson wash covers the bottom right foreground.
“Too much, scale it back!” Potenkin shouts and the colours on the corpse cool slightly.
The footage lasts approximately 8 seconds and freezes on the final frame. I approach the plasma to inspect for artefacts.
“This is good I say.”
“The refresh is good, but as you can see the operators are still teething. The problem is being able to decipher the footage and get an accurate codec and FPS reading before we interject with the overlay. It leaves the operator a matter of seconds to interpret position and hue.”
“How long?” I reply
“Three days.” He replies
