Inside the Star Wars Fever Dream of CNN’s 2008 Election Night

CNN's presidential election coverage in 2008 continues to be etched in the collective memories of millions of Americans. It was the cable network that U.S. viewers tuned into the most that year to witness Barack Obama's historic election night victory, which, at the time, was their most-watched prime-time event ever.

While the moment Obama took the stage at Chicago's Grant Park to deliver his acceptance speech might be the photo that the history books use to commemorate the event, viewers at home may still have the searing visuals of correspondent Jessica Yellin and Black Eyed Peas front man will.i.am being beamed into the network's New York studio in "hologram" form imprinted in their recollections of the night.

At the time, it seemed to signify a high-tech vision for the way we received news ("Can there be any doubt that last night's unquestionable highlight was will.i.am's momentous appearance in CNN's Election Center IN HOLOGRAM FORM?" asked New York mag ). Many insiders were astonished at how the broadcast went off without a hitch, and the network's innovations that night went on to inspire its cable news competition, who built their own high-tech sets in the following election years ( Fox News' Election Deck with Shepard Smith, for instance). But its unorthodox vision would also draw flak from late-night hosts like Jon Stewart, who later quipped , "We cannot believe that on election night—a historic election—CNN would choose to create a hologram reporter. Why would that be the night to introduce Star Wars technology?"

I caught up with several CNN insiders, on-screen and off, who helped make the night a television memory that millions of Americans will never forget. All of them credit the late David Bohrman , a cable news tech pioneer (who, among his many accomplishments, helped come up with the first TV show with a CGI host animated in real time ), as being the man behind the curtain who helped pull off the historic broadcast. What happened that night became the stuff of legend, and its legacy is still felt in the way news broadcasters tell the story of elections today—for better or worse.

Bohrman drew inspiration from Star Wars to create the infamous holograms.

Jason Odell, inventor of the hologram effect for CNN's 2008 election night: David [Bohrman] and I worked together at TechTV ... and we always stayed in touch and would have breakfast at NAB [the National Association of Broadcasters trade show] and talk. In about 2004, he told me about this idea that he had—you basically want a remote guest to look like they're in the studio—so I would look for clues as to how to solve that problem.

Ran Yakir, Vizrt's former head of research and development at Vizrt Israel, who helped bring the hologram effect to life: I was working back then in a company called Vizrt, which specialized in broadcast graphics. David Bohrman was back then the VP of CNN for special productions. Every election, he would come to Vizrt with another crazy idea. My boss was one of his very good friends. They had a history together doing these kinds of things.

Towards the 2008 elections, he came up with this idea, saying, "Could I do the 'Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi' effect like in Star Wars?" And he was referencing that scene of Princess Leia. At first, my boss thought, Let's hear him and say this is impossible and then go on to do more traditional graphics. But then something clicked, because there was another Israeli company that did graphics for sports [SportVu], and one of the things they demonstrated was there is an effect that people like to do in sports like holding a still frame and showing it from several directions.

SportVu's Viz Engine plug-in, combined with Vizrt's Viz Virtual Studio software, took images from a ring of 35 cameras in the "transporter room" to create a 3D model, making the illusion of a holographic Jessica Yellin and will.i.am.

Odell: It was basically the bullet-time effect from The Matrix.

We took a look at this thing—and that was in August. But it was a pretty tight turnaround. David called it his "Model UN project" because there were a lot of folks from Israel, the main engine guys were from Austria, we used a Japanese company to do camera tracking. We had two different camera tracking companies.

Yakir: What David Bohrman wanted to do was to have a camera showing Wolf Blitzer from several directions and, while doing that, showing the hologram of someone who was in another place in that same direction. If you shoot Wolf Blitzer from the front, you have to show the hologram from the back. [CNN's National Political Correspondent Jessica Yellin] is in front of Wolf Blitzer. And of course, to enhance the effect, he wanted to have the cameras zoom in. At first, some ideas were like, "OK, we can have another camera in Chicago and really have some connection between the cameras." But that was quite complicated, in terms of the delay in communications. Remember, it was in 2008. Even the communication network was not as fast as it is today.

So then we came up with the idea of, OK, let's do what SportVu is doing with sports [positional data that showed ​​the locations of players on a field]. They have several cameras, and they allow you to look as if you're taking a picture of the [subject] from several directions by moving from one camera to another.

So we approached SportVu. They built this construction in Chicago (in Obama's headquarters) and John McCain's headquarters. And that was like a green room with [35] cameras all around—very cheap cameras. The effect had to look like a hologram. It didn't have to look very high-quality. It had to remind you of Princess Leia in Star Wars when she's transferred through a hologram.

Odell: We found all the pieces. It was a whole collection of products that you use in broadcasts jammed together in an interesting way. It was more of a contraption than an invention. ...

It was everything out of the bag of tricks just crammed together. It did get the highest ratings, and that's all people cared about the next day.

Will.i.am, front man of the Black Eyed Peas and hologram interviewee: My memories [of election night 2008] were surreal: being in Chicago, feeling the love of this movement that had started. America felt united; it felt like Republicans and Democrats were there together, like neighbors, or strangers who were now neighbors. It just felt like love everywhere. CNN was planning such a unique way to do the interview.

I had no clue as we were walking into Grant Park, and as soon as we got through the metal detectors, someone grabbed me and said they wanted to take me to the CNN booth to be interviewed via hologram. When I heard "hologram," I was like, "Yo, I love tech, so say no more—I'm there."

Odell: It was basically a ring of cameras, some strategically placed. We also knew that we really needed to sell it, and David, that's the kind of thing that he knew really well. To sell it, we needed to move around. He wanted more than 180 degrees of coverage, and I think he threw up 270 degrees of coverage. And we built this thing out in the field. We would send the camera telemetry to it, derive the image, send it back and chroma-key it into the show.

Will.i.am: They had this array of cameras, angled in all different directions, capturing everything around me, and it was connected to a big computer room on the other side where, I guess, the servers were beaming the feed to Anderson Cooper. It was fantastic. I saw Anderson Cooper—so, yes, I could see Anderson Cooper on the monitor. I was seeing myself on a different screen and then Anderson was looking at me. It was fantastic.

Alexa Bennewitz, former assistant to David Bohrman: [David] certainly pushed the team. We were working in a small conference room in the New York bureau. And like three or four weeks before the election, I think we were planning for just one of them in Chicago, but then he said, "No, we need two of them." So the Phoenix one got spun up quickly. As you can imagine, these were huge undertakings. CNN's resources were all over the country. He had to repurpose a lot of different people to different locations, and they were working simultaneously to troubleshoot each other.

Odell: I actually didn't really like [the Princess Leia glow effect] very much. There was a USA Today reporter and PR person checking out all of our election gags because there were a few other things debuting that night.

It was basically an outline added to the key signal, to color it a little bit blue, with some adjustments done to the color. And it did look like Princess Leia. And it was done as a result of that reporter saying, "Aren't you trying to trick people?" [And it was like,]"No dummies, we're not trying to trick you."

Odell: Editorially, hologram for news has a lot of problems because it's just inherently fake. You're trying to make it look like someone is standing in a place where they're not standing. On election night— David would kill me if he heard me say this—the most important place to be is Grant Park in Chicago or wherever McCain was, right? It's cool to bring someone into the studio, but I don't know. But hey, elections are when there's money to do stuff like that.

Jeffrey Toobin, former chief legal analyst for CNN, 2002–2022: The fact that we're still talking about the hologram 16 years later shows that it was kind of a good stunt, but it was a stunt. I remember people chuckling at it, it was weird. ... I remember there were incidents where people were upset about something and David would quote Tom Brokaw, and he'd say, you know, "It's just television," and "It's heading off to Neptune now." That's the way it goes.

I appreciated the idea that he was serious about his job but he didn't take every second totally seriously, and I think that's where the hologram [came in]. It was goofy and it was fun, and it wasn't terribly important, but we're talking about it 16 years later.

The other big innovation introduced in 2008 was CNN's Multi-Touch Collaboration Wall technology—later dubbed "the Magic Wall." The touch-screen display allows anchors to interact in real time with voting data, electoral maps, polling results, and more. Initially intended to debut on presidential election night along with the holograms, Bohrman said the technology was " too good to wait ," and it made its first appearance during January's Iowa caucuses.

Bennewitz:

And obviously the Magic Wall is so ubiquitous in coverage now, we see it everywhere. David was just walking around the floor of a defense [trade] show and he saw this technology, and he's the one who had the vision to say, "Gosh, you know it would be really great to tell the story of the data on election night." Obviously, John King has taken that to the extreme level, beyond what David imagined, but he knew that technology would change the way we told the story.

John King, chief national correspondent for CNN: By general election night, we were aware that we had a revolutionary tool on our hands, and the credit for that goes to David Bohrman. David was a visionary, but the most important part of his vision was that he was not afraid to take risks. In that campaign, David introduced the Magic Wall, and he introduced the hologram. The hologram didn't survive.

One of the things you learn about new technology is that sometimes people are ready for it and sometimes they're not. ...The hologram was brilliant in a way. Wolf Blitzer was talking to [Jessica] as if they were three feet away. People weren't ready for it.

Toobin: I remember talking to David about this. He understood the difference between technology for technology's sake, or just showing off, versus technology that was actually editorially useful. I think it's a perfect distinction between the hologram, which was basically a stunt and a joke of no real importance, and the Magic Wall, which turned into an extremely valuable communication device, especially in the hands of John King, who had the background and the knowledge to make it extremely valuable for viewers.

King:

David saw their technology that was to be used in the White House Situation Room, and special-ops guys with cameras on their helmets are going into bin Laden's compound. And you can watch as it plays out and you can use it to think through possibilities and scenarios for the military. That's what they designed it for. And David saw it and immediately said, "I can do a lot of really interesting journalism with this, especially in the context of elections."

And for him to make that connection is just a testament to the creativity of his brain, because when I first started touching the thing, I was worried it was a toy, to be perfectly honest with you. It was just a toy to show colors on television and move [things] around. But I learned on New Hampshire primary night in 2008 that no, it was the most powerful information tool at your fingertips, and unlocked television. Welcome to the roller coaster.

Toobin: The technology of it kept evolving. The time I remember using it was to explain how the rules of the Iowa caucus worked, and the Democratic caucuses had very complicated rules and the wall was a useful tool to explain how the rules worked.

King: Jeffrey [Toobin] is an incredibly brilliant human being. I think the decision was made that he did not have the right campaign experience and we should try it again with somebody who had campaign experience.

So I got a call the morning of the New Hampshire primary in 2008, when I was in New Hampshire, to come to New York. It took me a while to get them to tell me why, and then they told me I was going to do "the wall" that night. I don't think we called it the Magic Wall quite yet because it was only on TV once before in a meaningful way.

I learned how incredibly useful it was because other networks had called New Hampshire for Obama and our guys were asking, "Do we think that is that right?" The wall helps you with your reporting. Is there any way for Clinton to win? Is this over? And the Clinton team were making an argument about Manchester County, and a number of votes were still out. I'm doing the math in my head, and in those days, on Blackberry. You're scribbling stuff down and typing stuff in. And then I was like, "Can I do this on the wall?" David saw it first as it was something discussing military scenarios, and then the first night I used it was to go through a math scenario.

The technology introduced in the 2008 election from CNN pushed the boundaries for how we tell the story of presidential elections.

David Chalian, CNN's political director: I wasn't here at CNN in 2008, I was at ABC at the time; we were using similar technology ... but CNN just blew us out of the water with how they used it. And I remember looking up at TV screens and was very envious that they were taking the technology to new heights. It was really exciting.

The Magic Wall has been an unbelievably useful tool for informing our audiences about the question on election night everyone comes to CNN with, which is: What do we know about the current score of the game between these two candidates? Who's winning and what more information do we know before we know who the winner will be?

It was this unbelievably powerful tool in the hands of a very skilled and wise political reporter, John King, who knows the country at that county-by-county level so well and who's been covering presidential elections. He's been able to use the geography of the map to tell us the story of what America was saying with its votes.