Discovery Channel's Greatest American

Full Mental Jacket, which specializes in realtime virtual sets and visual effects for broadcast and film, licensed and customized its "Ribbon" set and provided on-set production services for the five-part series for NBC Productions. 'Greatest Americans' will air on Discovery Channel in June 2005.

On show one, Matt Lauer will present short biographies of the top 100 candidates for Greatest American, as voted upon by the public in an online election held on the Discovery Channel's website. Everyone from Babe Ruth to Madonna is represented in the public poll.

The second show will pare the 100 candidates down to a top 25, providing more details on each contender. Viewers are then asked to vote for the favorite out of the remaining 25.

Executive Producer Jason Raff chose an FMJ virtual set as a means to establish a unique and engaging look to the show. FMJ modified the lighting and textures of the 'Ribbon Set' to reflect the look of the shows graphics package, using similar stars and stripes design elements. The set was specifically chosen because it enabled Matt Lauer to present the nominees in a clear, informative way that was still entertaining to the audience.

"In the first two shows we had a lot of information to cover in a very short amount of time and we needed to move quickly thru the list of nominees," said Raff, "Using the Ribbon Set gave us the ability to give viewers different perspectives on the information. We would block out wide shots when we wanted to give the audience an overview of the nominees and tighter shots when we wanted Matt to focus on a single nominee. The design of the Ribbon Set made that easy to do."

FMJ worked previously with Raff on the 2001 Dateline special 'Michael Jackson Unmasked', as well as on the 2004 Dateline special 'Sigfried and Roy: The Miracle'.

FMJ along with production partner State of 8, provided production services and engineering for 'Greatest Americans'. State of 8's complete portable virtual studio system was shipped to NBC studios New York, which was preloaded with the set. State of 8's real-time systems engineer Chris Mapes, installed and operated the system at NBC.

Images from 'Greatest Americans' can be found at http://fullmentaljacket.com

Full Mental Jacket is a Los Angeles based design and production company combining technologies from the broadcast, film and game industries to create realtime virtual sets, visual effects and broadcast graphics. FMJ is the only company in North America specifically servicing the broadcast and film community with real-time 3D virtual studio creative and production services.