Green-Screen Tips, Tricks and Techniques

Green Screen: A technique for mixing two images together, in which a color from one image is removed, revealing another image behind it.


1. Begin with the end: Before you even shot a frame, think ahead about what the background of your project will look like. If your project entails showing talent in an ultramodern apartment hosting an evening cocktail party, not only should you light for ambient interior, but you would also be able to choose the appropriate camera height and lens that would ensure your footage composites well. The more planning and vision you have at the start, the more cohesive your work will be when it’s all done.

2. Stay away from the background: Keep your talent at least 10 feet away from the background. This will lessen your spill and if you’re using a longer lens. It will also help separate the subject from the chroma key, which will give you cleaner lines all around.

3. Use a kicker: Even a slight backlight will really help separate your talent from the stage. Keep it hotter around the torso and head, and watch the spill from the backlight. That overflow of light onto the foreground can cause more headaches in post than the time it would have taken to adjust in production.

4. Un-sharpen that camera: Most HD cameras have an “un-sharpen/sharpen” mode. To sharpen your footage is asking for the camera to compress the input, which produces a slightly jagged, or bit mapped edge. Setting your camera to un-sharpen provides a cleaner shot and will improve the keying process.

5. Shoot a plate: Before any talent walks onto the set, roll camera for a few seconds. This footage can be used to render even sharper keys in post, since you wouldn’t be fighting against the talent’s shadows and blurs that may happen during the actual shot. The plate is a great reference for your keying application to properly separate the subjects.

6. Light it twice: Make sure your chroma key background is lit evenly. And, yes that includes the floor if you have a full shot. Plan ahead for this, as it can take several hours to get a stage lit properly. Equally important is lighting your talent according to the background or environment your project requires. If you don’t plan ahead for the look you want to end up with, this could throw uneven chroma levels onto your background, which will affect your keyed footage.

7. Use a Vectorscope: The bottom line is that light meters don’t work well enough for a green screen shoot. You need to see how the chroma and luma levels are looking, and where the hot spots are. The only way to see them is with a Vectorscope.


Source: http://brajeshwar.com/2008/green-screen-video/

Movie Making History of Blue and Green Screen Effects

I saw this video and i would like to share it with you, Movie Making History of Blue and Green Screen Effects.

History of Chroma Key

Source: http://www.5min.com/Video/Movie-Making-History-of-Blue-and-Green-Screen-Effects-78326562

Interpolated Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films.

“A Scanner Darkly” movie, way back to 2006. Have you seen this animated film? Very cool! Actually they made this movie in live action and with the help of rotoshop they made the movie like animated film. Rotoshop uses an animation technique called interpolated rotoscoping.

Rotoscoping Short Animation

I found this short animation and rotoscoped by berimbau10 (his account name in youtube). A roto vector animation using Illustrator and After Effects.

Just want to share it with you guys.

Simple green screen Tutorial. Chroma key in Sony Vegas

Hi guys, i just want to share this green screen tutorial i found in youtube. Enjoy!

The Book on Chroma Keying

Chroma Keying is an old visual effect trick for placing a subject into a completely new scene. Instead of spending large sums of money for highly wrought sets, producers can just opt for green or blue screens, thanks to chroma Keying. Chroma Keying transforms a video footage of a man pretentiously flying in tight harness to a superhero braving the sky to answer a damsel’s cry in distress.

Chroma Keying, otherwise know as blue screen or green keying and color keying, is accomplished by combining visuals from two different sources. The first source is the foreground subject, shot against a blue or green screen. The second source is the background scene and it can be any stock video footage you have of tall skyscrapers in New York or you can cull to recreate the battle of middle earth using CGI (Computer Generated Imagery).

The two frame sources for Chroma Keying are combined, digitally, to replace anything that is blue or green using the analog video during the digital video editing procedure... click here to read more

Top 5 Rotoscoping Software

There are only two things that can make any motion graphic artist flinch and that's rotoscoping and chroma keying. Why? Mainly because both processes are time consuming and arm numbing. However despite all these, rotoscoping and chroma keying still remains to be very important in the industry we move in. Which is why, lately, software companies are launching new products that aim to lessen the pain in rotoscoping.

Here we will talk about the Top 5 best rotoscoping softwares currently available that deliver accurate and fast mattes... click here to read more

The Rotoscoping Saga

Fleischer started it all.

Max Fleischer is unarguably one of the first few animators who have dazzled audiences of all ages starting 1914. Bringing “Betty the Boop” and “Popeye the Sailor” to the silver screen would guarantee him a chapter in the history books, however Max’s greatest achievements wasn’t set on what he put on the screen but on “how”.

The technique called rotoscoping is the brain child of Max Fleischer where he used it in his “Out of the Inkwell” series together with his brother Dave. Rotoscoping then was an impressive technique used in producing lifelike animations. As a matter-of-fact, in the “Out of the Inkwell” series, Dave Fleischer was the live reference of the character Koko the Clown.

The rotoscoping process, at this time, works like this: A live action scene with the actor is shot and will be animated using a transparent easel. The film is then played back frame-by-frame on the underside piece of a glass. On the top side of the glass is the artist who manually traces the live-action sequence per frame of the film. These drawings are then cleaned up and are combined together producing a realistic effect animation.

Rotoscoping was used in several films made by Fleischer which have made a mark in the animation industry. To mention a few are Betty the Boop, Superman, Popeye the Sailor, and Out of the Inkwell (Koko the Clown) ... click here to read more

There’s such thing as Outsource rotoscoping and chroma keying

The outsourcing industry is booming and it is expected to grow even further in the coming years. Driven by improved yet low-cost telecommunication capacity and the upswing of technology, the outsourcing industry is expected to generate a whopping $ 2.5 billion in the next ten years. Though outsourcing is common for customer services, telemarketing, and such, post production outsourcing is now at its infancy. The widespread popularity of the internet and the need for a higher degree of visual effects technical expertise are the sub-plots of a script that spells the need for outsourcing digital video post production workflow.

Outsourcing is a risk and the best heeded advice for outsourcing is to outsource labor intensive yet simple tasks. For the digital video post production workflow, rotoscoping and chroma keying are the “it tasks” to outsource... click here to read more

Here are a few steps on how to set up a good lighting

Step 1: Light your chroma key backdrop (Green or Blue Screen)

When lighting your chroma key green screen backdrop, make sure the lighting is even with no hot spots or shadows. Your backdrop lights should be located on either the side or on the back of the subject you are taking video or picture of.

Step 2 : Light your foreground subject

You should light the foreground subject using a separate light. Do not use the same light used on your chroma key backdrop for the subject. Though the blue or green must be lit evenly, this is not true for the subject. You can actually light the subject dramatically however the trick is not to screw up the chroma key background.

Step 3 : Neutralize any color cast

Use a soft back-light on each side of the subject to help neutralize the reflective spill from your chroma key backdrop... click here to read more