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Conceiving Ada

The Process By Michelle Goldberg In order to make Conceiving Ada, Lynn Hershman Leeson pioneered a technical process that gives her film the look and feel of an authentic period piece without the expense of location shooting. Leeson imported 385 photographs of Bay Area bed-and-breakfast places into Photoshop. She then digitally removed all evidence of contemporary life from the photos. The images were then put on digital videotape that could be manipulated in real time. As the actors performed against blue screens, monitors showed them set among the digital images, so that they could reference their computerized environment while their environment itself was simultaneously reacting to them. Fires in the fireplace, rain on the windows and doors for characters to walk through were all created on the computer. In post-production, Leeson simply removed the blue backgrounds and replaced them with her digitized sets. "If you have any understanding about technology," Leeson says, "you realize that if you don't invent it, somebody else will." [ San Francisco | MetroActive Central | Archives ]