It's how "plausable" it is depends on your budget. Let's talk about the components needed for the
effect.
Projector- Depending on the
screen size and the ambient light, you need to determine how many lumens you need to make the
screen seen. You may be able to snag a
projector from media services at your school, great, but where will you put it? Unless you have an out of the way front of
house position to put the
projector that no one will cross in front of, it is usually done in
theatre as a rear-projection. Which brings us to...
Screen- A rear projection
screen uses a special material to display the
image onto the other side of the material. This stuff is not cheap. A perk to using rear projection is that it looks brighter because you are looking directly into the lamp of the
projector and not looking at bounced light. A downside to read-projection screens is that any ambient light on the
screen can
wash out the
image rather easily. One other thing to take in to consideration is the depth you have backstage to put the
projector. This of course, depends on the amount of room you have backstage and whether there is enough room to make backstage crosses without having to
walk in front of the
projector. If you end up doing front projection, try to use an actual "projection
screen", they
bounce the light back better than a
flat white wall. If you do use a white wall of some sort, I believe
Rosco makes a "projection surface" paint that bounces more of the light back to the viewers eye. Next!
Video Switcher- If you want to
fade from one source to another ("Live feed fading to an
image") you will need a
switcher. Depending on how gracefull you want a
switch to be, it can be a cheap multi-media
switcher from Radio Shack to a couple thousand dollars for what the pros use. The "
Fade" from one
image to another is where it gets expensive. If you are using only composite signals (
RCA style connection, Yellow) then you could just use a
video switcher found common with most home entertainment systems that have a VCR Player, DVD Player and Cable Box.
Video Generator- If you want an
image of "Big Brother is Watching" you need to figure out where that
image is coming from. You might immediately say, "well a computer of course!", but unless you have a
composite video signal out of the computer (remember that little Yellow
RCA connector?) to get into the
Video switcher, how will you
switch from one video source to another? Possible solution- The
projector has several inputs. You
plug your computer into the
Projector which has the "Big Brother is Watching"
image playing on it. Then in another one of the inputs, you
plug your live video feed. Using the
PROJECTOR, you would
switch between your video sources. You would not be able to
fade from one feed to another and a menu might pop up on the
screen when you are changing sources.
Live Video Feed- This depends on what kind of camera you have and how far away you are from the video input to the
projector/
switcher. You need a camera that would give you a constant output (most consumer video cameras will turn off if you haven't started recording any video after a while to save battery). The other thing is how you will get the video to the
projector/
switcher.
The whole live video aspect of this project is what makes it messy on a low budget. If you need me to clarify or have any other questions to ask, always feel free to contact me. I too came from a dirt poor drama program and learned to make do with what I could get my hands on (several trips to media services). Right now I'm working on a musical production of "Chicago" using two rear-projection screens, lots of video/
image playback, 3 live video "lipstick" cameras and a 3 camera set-up of live video input. Luckily, they have the budget to make this happen. Best of luck!