The average person won’t be able to see the nation’s Supreme Court justices contemplating arguments Thursday over whether Donald Trump’s efforts to undo his loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden can be prosecuted as a crime. But on MSNBC, they will get a better picture of the legal debate than they might have expected.
The NBCUniversal-backed cable-news outlet will use virtual-reality technology to create a courtroom display on screen, with a row of likenesses of the various justices and other participants. You won’t see a picture of Justice Amy Comey Barrett or Justice Sonia Sotamayor move its lips, but the graphics provide what may be the next best thing, suggests Marc Greenstein, senior vice president of creative production and operations for NBCUniversal News Group.
“By using this technology, we can create a much more dynamic experience and make it much simpler for the audience to follow who is talking,” he says.
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MSNBC will harness the VR gee-wizardry just as TV-news networks are confronted with news of high interest that is taking place in venues that won’t allow full coverage. Both CNN and MSNBC have this week been forced to put some of their best-known correspondents in front of a camera to basically walk viewers through the sights and sounds of Trump’s New York hush-money trial, currently taking place in a Manhattan courtroom where TV cameras are not welcome.
The network’s virtual display helps the audience envision what might be taking place without disrupting current procedures. On screen, viewers will see ersatz cameras move across a courtroom tableau, and wander from one representation of a Supreme justice to the next, depending on which is speaking over the course of the proceedings.
Other presentations may be possible, Greenstein says. MSNBC viewers, he says, are likely to hang on as much audio as possible, while the audience for live-streaming outlet NBC News Now would likely want to hear from anchors more frequently during the Supreme Court session.
NBCUniversal’s news division has used virtual- and augmented-reality technology to help present a recent space launch by NASA as well as the recent solar eclipse.
By the way, Greenstein says, motion-capture technology that could animate mouths that move along with actual words being spoken is available, but “that might be a bridge too far.”
