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IUB student Matthias Görner won the 38th Bremen competition “Jugend forscht” held in the Bremen SpacePark from March 10th to 13th. He developed a computer-based blue-box video system, which allows digital background substitution of video tracks by means of an effective camera tracking system.
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Mar
18, 2003]
More than 200 projects, developed by pupils and students under the age of 21 were presented to the jury of the 38th Bremen competition “Schüler experimentieren” (pupils’ experiments) and “Jugend forscht” (young researchers), which is the qualifying round of the nationwide competition. The blue box system of Matthias Görner, a 20-year-old first-year student of mathematics at IUB, was ranked first in the mathematics category of “Jugend forscht”.
The blue screen principle in filming is well known. Actors are filmed in front of a blue background, which is digitally removed and replaced by a virtual background or a computer-animated scenery. As the use of a blue screen system normally requires an elaborate, expensive tracking system for camera position and adjustment, it is usually not something available to casual filmmakers.
Matthias Görner’s blue-box system might change that. In his 2 x 2 x 2 meter blue box he fixed green marker dots onto the blue background and developed a computer program that recognizes the dots on film and calculates the camera parameters necessary to fit a three-dimensional virtual background to the changing perspectives of the actual camera movements. As the material costs of Görner’s blue-box system are low it makes this technique available to filming enthusiasts with small budgets. Additionally it facilitates blue screen filming with a handheld camera, which commonly is restricted to fixed-position camera use.
In developing his blue box-system Matthias Görner was not primarily attracted by theoretical problems of mathematics and programming. He is a hobby filmmaker himself and has already written a script for a film where he plans to fit in one of M. C. Escher’s mind-boggling multidimensional pictures as virtual background.
The reward for winning this round of “Jugend forscht” in Bremen will be Görner’s participation in the next nationwide round of the competition. It will be his second time around as he won last year’s Bremen competition as well together with his fellow student Felix Krahmer, with their project ranked third in the ensuing nationwide contest.
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Foundation Jugend forscht e.V. |
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• Non-profit society for the support of scientifically talented young people in Germany
• Founded by the German Stern magazine, Hamburg
• Competitions are financially supported by the German government and German businesses
• Patron: Dr. Johannes Rau, President of Germany
• Competition system with regional, federal and nationwide qualification levels
• Schoolteachers act as adviser for the projects of the young people
For more Information visit the “Jugend forscht”-Website
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