Post Election Afterthoughts: Augmented and Losing Realities

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Star Wars.... The Network Wars.....

It has been a week after the much-awaited 2010 Philippine General Elections, the hype and the excitement was really anticipated as the country geared for the first Automated Elections with the use of the PCOS or Precinct Count Optical Scan machines.

I myself had a taste of Election Fever since day 1 of the start of the campaign season, and now, as a registered voter, the 90-day campaign period for all of our national and local candidates made me decide who will I vote for. All those campaigning, political ad spending, mudslinging (ranging from fake Psychiatric tests to saying that a presidential candidate is not really a poor person) and blow by blow debates from the three networks all made Election fever more worthwhile.

And it all boiled down to the big day, the day where our index fingers will be tainted by a supposedly indelible ink and where we will try to shade ovals that looked like eggs (or as GMA’s Election Campaign says, Bilog na Hugis Itlog, which is NOT [I reiterate, NOT] a good choice for Election-day Coverage Bed Music).

Now, I give you some afterthoughts of the whirlwind Election week that was.

WHY I VOTED FOR GIBO TEODORO – Of course, I made public (via Facebook and Twitter) of my decision to vote Gibo Teodoro as my President,. Why?. Although my mom already hates smart people and preferred a candidate who has a moral background and will not cheat and corrupt because of his parents’ name (thence, she and my 2nd eldest sister voted for Noynoy), I begged to differ.

Yes, Gibo is the former Defense secretary of the Arroyo Administration, Yes he has not lost that utang na loob to President Gloria Arroyo, and Yes, Gibo is trailing on the surveys, but I still believe that with Gibo leading the country, He will not be a shadow and a puppet of the past administration.

I believed in that, and I will still believe in Gibo Teodoro even though he lost gallantly and cleanly.

PRECINCT JITTERS AND LONG LINES OF WAITING – Picture this, You got a clustered precinct that has 5-7 precincts and you went there in the morning of Election day and voila, you see long lines of people clustering up, feeling like they were being baked in a warm oven and sweats are really imminent you could smell those sweaty people.

That is what I saw in my clustered precinct when I went there in the morning, but I’m not the one who will go to a precinct like that, so we (we being me, my mom and my sister) went to our voting center at the afternoon. Although they still got to wait, the wait was seamless that we didn’t notice, after only about 15-20 minutes of waiting. We got to exercise our right to vote.

At first, I was jittery because I was afraid I could smear the only ballot paper I have, because only One ballot is allowed per person. So I made sure that my marks on my ballot will be as clean and as neat as possible, I went nervous when my marks in the first page for the national positions marked in the 2nd page for the local positions, so I felt more nervous the more so that I thought the Machine would spew out my ballot.

But when the PCOS told me that “Your vote has been Counted”, Cue a sigh of relief from me.

THE BATTLE OF THE GRAPHICS – Of course, no Election would be complete with a best Election coverage, And ABS-CBN, TV5 and GMA made out all the stops in making this Election 2010 their big coming out party as modern and world class news organizations. GMA and TV5 chose Vizrt as their live graphics provider while ABS-CBN used Orad in their graphics package.

Yeah, the first thing I did when I woke up at Election Morning was to check ABS-CBN’s Halalan 2010: Ako ang Simula coverage. And true enough, they outdid themselves again than the past election with the use of US-style graphics and their first foray in Augmented Reality, the one in which other Broadcasters in Europe, Japan and the US are doing right now in their news and special event coverage.

The only thing I could say to ABS-CBN’s was… WOW, I mean WOW, they could make camera positions while the graphics are in the Floor, LITERALLY!! They could Zoom in and zoom out, Pan left and Pan Right seamlessly without making it look like a Chroma effect! And the anchors walking towards the graphics to explain everything? That is way too wicked! That made my election morning energized way till the late hours.And the bumpers that used the ELJ was way more awesome and cool.

GMA’s and TV5′s, meanwhile, didn’t realize to themselves that they were using the same technology which is used by top broadcasters like CNN, GMA’s graphics is not, in actuality, Augmented Reality, It is just a superimpose effect which used their live graphics (that’s why there is a tendency that when the camera moves accidentally, the image moves and not the graphics).

Yeah, the graphics were all cutesy and stuff, but this is not the way I really want to look it, GMA’s graphics was way too basic and not too advanced for an election coverage.

I laud TV5 for an Amazing and very Surprising election coverage this year. Not like the other election coverages they did before which they were not capable of doing because of their limitations, TV5 stretched their boundaries and made a surprising Wall to Wall Coverage of their Election coverage. As I point out, theirs was silent but deadly.

Now, GMA and ABS-CBN went into full show off mode when they made their Anchors “appear” on the studios by way of two opposing technologies. On ABS-CBN, it’s called Virtual Presence, which, as Ted Failon points out, won’t make the anchor look like standing on a chroma-key green screen. Instead, they cropped the anchor’s body and placed it on the AR graphics and a little touch and voila, the anchor is now in the studio!

GMA’s, meanwhile, used the term “Hologram” ala-CNN, and what a despicable way to make their graphics look more enticing is to still use the word “Hologram” until they added the word “effect”, They had made a blunder in referring to a graphics that was used by CNN that was also criticized for misleading the public.

All in all, the Graphics of all the election coverages on all three networks were visually enticing and really helpful, but Content is still king in every Election special coverage, And by the looks of it, Content and Graphics-wise. ABS-CBN and TV5 Both succeeded in making me this elections different.

Whew… What a Whirlwind this Election season is, We now prepare for more anime events, and I’m going to expect Toycon as the last Anime-related event of the Arroyo Administration and now waiting for the First Anime Event of the Noynoy Administration.

Till then… This is what is written in my notebook..

-HeAdIn’-OuT!-