Because Ada Byron King, Countess of Lovelace, created the first computer language, it seemed fitting that digital processes be used to tell her story. For CONCEIVING ADA, I designed a new technical process that allowed still photographic images taken from Victorian Bed and Breakfast Inns in the Bay Area to be dynamically placed into live video. Prior to shooting, the still images were digitized, altered in Photoshop to take out any reference to contemporary life, and colorized. On the set, these images were manipulated in several computers where matts were added and images were put into perspective or enlarged. The images were then laid onto digital videotape, live, in real time, while the actors were performing. Actors could reference their location, dynamically, through a monitor that showed them their "virtual" environment.

	This technique had never before been used as a significant component in a feature film. In the past, creating such effects was a laborious process reserved for post production. Our process allowed actors the luxury of responding to their surroundings real or virtual as the film was shot. The immediacy of shooting live action while simultaneously manipulating digitized backgrounds in real time was, remarkably, exhilarating. The actors' reactions became more spontaneous, and their relationship to the otherwise totally blue environment much more interactive.
	The process involves creating two channels: a composite master tape with the backgrounds in place, and an "alpha channel." This process allows the later separation of background and foreground, if desired. Various programs such as Adobe Photoshop were used to alter, colorize, composite and/or enlarge the background images. Three hundred and eighty five separate photographs, scanned into the computer, were called up scene by scene, corresponding to a preset number. The mattes were also used to create digital fire in the fireplace, rain on the windows and nonexistent doors for people to walk through. And, digital lighting and perspective shifts were accomplished in real time.
	The actors were videotaped against a blue background, and the blue was keyed out and replaced with the digitized background images from the computer. The camera had to be locked down for the shoot. To compensate for this locked camera position, in post production we worked digitally with the background images of the virtual "set," panning and zooming and creating the movement the scene dictated.