This is the reconstructed CGI News at 9 o'clock
09/03/12 20:48 Filed in: General
Recording devices are very strictly regulated within the Houses of Parliament. I remembered this too late, when I produced a pocket tape recorder during an interview with a peer in the House of Lords' library. "They'll throw you out if you're caught using that," my interviewee warned, giving me an old-fashioned look.
It's unlikely, then, that there are any CCTV images of the ruckus in the Commons bar when MP Eric Joyce butted a couple of colleagues. BBC news coverage made up for this by screening a CGI reconstruction, which looked as if it had been drawn with ten-year-old videogame software. A disjointed humanoid with a mop of blond hair lumbered across the bar, grabbed another disjointed humanoid, nutted him and then set upon everyone within reach. I kept expecting a teenager with a shotgun to start blasting gory lumps out of the MP zombies, but that was too much to hope for.
Computer generated images in news coverage won't always be so tacky. Within a few years, they'll be up to Pixar standards, and CGI reconstructions will look as real as anything you'd see on Crimewatch… at which point it will be even harder to distinguish between accurate reporting and made-up stories.
It's unlikely, then, that there are any CCTV images of the ruckus in the Commons bar when MP Eric Joyce butted a couple of colleagues. BBC news coverage made up for this by screening a CGI reconstruction, which looked as if it had been drawn with ten-year-old videogame software. A disjointed humanoid with a mop of blond hair lumbered across the bar, grabbed another disjointed humanoid, nutted him and then set upon everyone within reach. I kept expecting a teenager with a shotgun to start blasting gory lumps out of the MP zombies, but that was too much to hope for.
Computer generated images in news coverage won't always be so tacky. Within a few years, they'll be up to Pixar standards, and CGI reconstructions will look as real as anything you'd see on Crimewatch… at which point it will be even harder to distinguish between accurate reporting and made-up stories.
