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