Sunday, February 20, 2022

how much screen time is there?

i realize that junior ortiz' 1984 fleer card
features a photo taken in the dugout at montreal's olympic stadium, but the pure green background now makes me think about the "green screen" technology used in cgi and other special effects efforts in media.

many baseball photographs are taken during spring training in front of screens like this (or solid color screens, anyway) to make it easier for the photos to translate to jumbotrons or other franchise media using variable backgrounds and graphics. i don't know for sure, but i tend to believe that topps has used some of these photos and inserted a different background on to cards in recent years. the most recent cards that made me think this are the 2021 topps heritage cards of aj pollock
and julio urias
dodger heritage cards, like those for other teams, have been similar for many years. for the dodgers, there is a dusk background on many cards, but there does seem to be some time lapse and variation of where the player is standing relative to the background.  these two cards, however, show a sky and cloud background that seems to be identical in terms of cloud shapes. the background is in a slightly different position relative to the card design, but these photos would have had to have been taken fairly quickly for them to both look like this. 

i took a quick look at getty to see if these photos were in their inventory, but i couldn't find them. anyone have any thoughts about this? just think of the places 1984 junior ortiz could have gone with a green screen like that behind him!

6 comments:

  1. Imagine being able to be magically whisked away to . . . Delaware!

    "Hi. I'm in Delaware."

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    1. i was in delaware once. just passing through on i-95 from baltimore to boston. two things i know about delaware - it was the first state (first to ratify the constitution anyway), and it has one of the oddest delineated state shapes.

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  2. I have a couple '07 Topps Hideki Okajima cards that obviously show the same photo - the Chrome version shows a blank green screen, but the base Topps magically features him standing in a fresh green pasture. Dunno why one shows it, but not the other.

    https://www.comc.com/Cards,sl,i100,=2007+topps+okajima

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  3. Green Screens + Baseball Cards = Mind Blown

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  4. I really dislike those fake sky backgrounds. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to get some pictures of current players with real sky behind them, it's not like you need any kind of fancy technology to do so.

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