"You know," he said, "what I like about this hologram and you're a hologram now, Jessica.
What most thrilled Wolf, it seems, was that the television audience could now see Jessica without distracting stuff behind her on the screen stuff like the enthusiastic crowd in Chicago stuff like the story she was covering stuff like real life. I know you're a few - at least a thousand miles away, but it looks like you're right here." I want to talk to you as I would normally be talking to you if you were really face to face with me. We beamed you in here into the CNN Election Center. I know you're in Chicago, but we've done something, a hologram. Blitzer's "hologram" remained in proper position and perspective.Īnd Blitzer, beside himself with awe at the magic wrought by CNN's engineers, continued. Still, as the studio cameras moved-ever so slightly-on the stage (apparently CNN does not believe in stationary cameras), Ms. Yellin was outlined in the purple fringe that's typical of a bad chromakey effect. CNN's engineers are not as adept as Star Trek's Scotty, though, for Ms. The reporter appeared to be standing in a spotlight a dozen feet or so away from Blitzer, looking as though she'd just been teleported by the "matter-energy transport" that always beamed Captain Kirk back to the Starship Enterprise just in time to avoid some alien menace. It was the global premiere of what CNN dubbed, erroneously, its "hologram" technology. Yellin into Election Center as a snatch of pretentious martial music played in the background. "I want you to watch what we're about to do," he said, "because you've never seen anything like this on television." And then it went from gratuitous to excessive, from silly to preposterous.įollowing some scenes of the enormous crowd that was gathering strength at Grant Park, including an appearance by reporter Jessica Yellin on location, Blitzer spoke to the television audience.
Little wonder then that on election night Wolf roamed the stage at CNN's studio in the Time Warner Center in New York and used its outsized billboard video wall and slick graphics to dramatize what was, already, a pretty dramatic story. Talking heads and continuously looping B-Roll are framed in PhotoShop-ped virtual borders that are animated with dizzying movement - as though the images themselves are inadequate to engage a viewer's brain. Everything is goosed up, scored with dramatic music, wrapped in slick 3D graphics, set in busy screens filled with scrolling text bars and titles with moving decorations. For three hours every weeknight, Blitzer delivers the news with a bit too much energy and a lot too much volume as he stands before a huge video wall that's covered with graphics and bigger-than-life talking heads and live or taped "You Are There" scenes of the disasters and human interest stories that the network offers up for its viewers' titillation.ĬNN is not content to deliver news unadorned, to let the story speak with its own inherent drama and energy. These days, though, he hosts a pathetic show with the authoritative name "The Situation Room," which views like an "Entertainment Tonight" for pop-news/celebrity-scandal/breaking-tragedy junkies. He's been with CNN since 1990 and won an Emmy Award for his coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing. in international relations from Johns Hopkins, worked for Reuters and the Jerusalem Post, has written two books, and looks good on TV. Wolf Blitzer is a remarkably talented journalist. On a night that sizzled with genuine dramatic imagery, from scenes of hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Chicago's Grant Park to feeds of election-watch parties around the world, CNN premiered one of the silliest and most gratuitous uses of artificial computer generated graphics ever to spring from the minds of geek-dom.
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