Traditional editing for storytelling on film (and later video) created and perfected the style of inter-cutting shots of varying focal lengths and at varying angles to communicate the positional relation between characters in establishing shots and to provide increased intensity of performance by using close-ups. The ability to cut away from one perspective to another also allowed the use of different takes within the same production. These techniques have become so commonplace that they are inculcated and accepted by everyone with any media exposure whatsoever.
These techniques have also been used for many years in live productions with multiple cameras from the beginning of Television as Live Broadcast TV to today's news, awards, sports and talk shows.
Since the mid 1960's as the “Studio Tours” flourished in the Los Angeles area, “simulated” shows were created where participant could take the role of actors on sets with contemporary equipment and create short video scenes from famous shows. This type of “live” production has become a Theme Park staple over the years and many versions of custom media inserting guests into the previously produced segment have been created.
On a separate path, beginning more than 20 years ago, as MTV exploded onto the scene, the evolution of audio Karaoke to music video setups were taking the first steps of simplifying the production studio apparatus to bring some version of these expensive production techniques to a new market as a simplified production studio. These were all single camera set-ups and were not attempting to accomplish anything more than a superimposition of the guest over an interesting background while the music played. There was no intent of interacting with the background.
The next step in the evolution was to insert participants into a background entirely pre-produced specifically for the purpose of inserting a participant member of the public who could interact by answering questions or reading prompts to give them the appearance of appearing on a television show. In one example, this was showcased a decade ago at EPCOT center in Florida where guests could do a brief interview with Jay Leno. This setup was reprised at the Olympic Village in Atlanta in 1996 and has been resident at the NBC Experience in Rockefeller Plaza since 1999. There are other options in the later location and another example in “Studio 39” in San Francisco. However, in all of these installations, a single camera is used to place the participant into a back ground scene produced specifically and only for that purpose.