SmartSet Project: Virtual Studio– low cost high performance

During August and September 2015 the newspaper Hallingdølen broadcasted 10 election shows that would seek to cover the political standings and debates in 7 municipalities in Hallingdal, and in the county of Buskerud. Included in this programseries was a live show on the election night, 14th of september, where we presented fresh results and talked to candidates. We also arranged a common meeting place in the hotel that lies across the street from the newspaper. This way we had easy access to politicians that could attend in our show right after the results where in. The day after the election we broadcasted one final show where all the results would be presented, and we could present the new leaders of each municipality.

In the show we used a combination of a analog studio and a virtual set implemented in the framework of SmartSet project. Since SmartSet application is not ready to use yet, we presented graphics using Brainstorm’s applications AstonElection which is a program that is under development, and InfinitySet. So the stakes were high, when we decided to start productions with software that was not really ready to be used in real live scenarios. And it was a success!!. Additionally we designed and modeled a virtual scenario in the framework of SmartSet project that will be used in the development of future projects using this low cost virtual studio application.

We have been really lucky to have great support from the European Commission and from our collaborator Brainstorm, and we feel that we were able to create something both interesting and impressive for most people, and technically challenging for the SmartSet product. We realized during the process that we can achieve a lot with the resources we have locally, and with a really professional and intuitive software from Brainstorm we were able to create something unique that will be shared in the framework of the EC funded project SmartSet.