''Yoostar'' is a video-based gaming system developed by Yoostar Entertainment Group that allows users to insert themselves into movie or television scenes to perform with the films' original actors and post the resultant video on the Yoostar web site, as well as in third-party

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

environments like

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

or MySpace. The game is a video

karaoke Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music is ...

, judging individuals performances. YooStar Entertainment's first product – ''YooStar 1'', for PC and Mac – was initially released in an exclusive marketing partnership with the

Bloomingdale's Bloomingdale's Inc. is an American luxury department store chain; it was founded in New York City by Joseph B. Bloomingdale, Joseph B. and Lyman G. Bloomingdale in 1861. A third brother, Emanuel Watson Bloomingdale, was also involved in the bus ...

department store chain on August 26, 2009.

Gameplay

To populate the ''Yoostar'' clip library, in-house artists digitally erase actors or other key figures in a licensed film or television clip. The company has patented this technique. Users film themselves saying either the original lines from the clip using the software's teleprompter, or ad-libbing their own versions. A chalk outline is overlaid on the scene to help position the user in scale with the other actors. Users are allowed as many takes as needed to get a satisfactory result. The software then composites the user's filmed content with the original clip in the same fashion Hollywood actors are filmed against

green screen Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues ( chroma range). The technique has been used in many fields to r ...

s on set and inserted into digitally created backgrounds. The final product is then labeled and stored on the user's local machine, with the option to upload it to Yoostar's website. The site provides the ability to embed content in any

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid ...

-supporting

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

environment using raw code, or in

blogging A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

platforms and social networking sites such as Facebook. Yoostar site users can rate, comment, and share content with the public or a group of "

Friends ''Friends'' is an American television sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa ...

," depending on each clip's settings.

Yoostar 2

On Tuesday June 15, 2010, to coincide with the beginning of the 2010

Electronic Entertainment Expo E3 (short for Electronic Entertainment Expo or Electronic Entertainment Experience in 2021) is a trade event for the video game industry. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) organizes and presents E3, which many developers, publisher ...

, Yoostar announced a second version of the game and launched a new website called ''Yoostar 2''. ''Yoostar 2'' is playable via the

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...

(

Kinect Kinect is a line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of flig ...

required) and

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on Novemb ...

(

PlayStation Eye The PlayStation Eye (trademarked PLAYSTATION Eye) is a digital camera device, similar to a webcam, for the PlayStation 3. The technology uses computer vision and gesture recognition to process images taken by the camera. This allows players to i ...

required,

PlayStation Move is a motion game controller developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Initially released in 2010 for use with the PlayStation 3 home video game console, its compatibility was later expanded to its successor, the PlayStation 4 in 2013, its Pla ...

optional) video game consoles. ''Yoostar 2'' includes 80 film scenes from major Hollywood studios. ''Yoostar 2'' for the

and

released in North America on March 8, 2011. In the fall of 2011, Yoostar cooperated with MTV to allow users to star in scenes from MTV's TV shows and music videos. ''Yoostar on MTV'' for

released in North America on November 15, 2011.

References

External links

* {{official website, https://web.archive.org/web/20090819103151/http://www.yoostar.com:80/ Entertainment software Film and video technology 2011 video games PlayStation 3 games Video game franchises Xbox 360 games PlayStation Move-compatible games Kinect games MacOS games Video games developed in the United Kingdom Windows games