Chroma Key

Green Screen Tips, Tricks and Materials

 - Chromakey Tutorial

 

To begin the lesson we watched this tutorial which helped us to understand about the lighting used for chroma key. I learnt that there shouldn't be any crinkles or shadows which will ruin the image when in the editing room. When I was editing I saw that because the green screen was in front of a window so the light was beaming through in two strips. This was not good for achieving a clean finish to the image.
 

Thea and I were being placed onto a sunny beach so as we were imagining we were there we were pretending it was hot and so fanning ourselves. This was a practice and so we weren't prepared for what the chroma key clips would be. For mise-en-scene it would have been ideal to be wearing a swimsuit or light clothing as the weather is hot.This is a long shot and the camera was on it's side to fit us in the shot. I was able to rotate this when editing. You can see the light shining from the windows behind us, in a real circumstance we would block the light from behind. The audience is not seeing this green screen, they will be seeing a white sand beach and so our facial expressions and body language have to match the calming setting.



This is Thea and I dancing. We tried to keep in line in the shot as we were being transported onto some decking stretching out to the ocean and if we moved out of shot we would have fallen off the deck and into the sea. As this was a practise we weren't completely strict on ourselves and we both edged out of shot accidentally a couple of times but this is still a learning process. If this was the real thing then again the lighting would have been high key, eliminating the shadows and we would probably be wearing either wetsuits and maybe for props possibly some jet skiis and water skiis.

This is a screen shot from our finished and edited chroma key clips. This is the third clip out of the short montage and we appear to be in an exotic location. Much like the film 'Hero' where there are similar locations we thought that we should fight as if we were in that. I decreased our size to make us smaller than the fountain and further back. Also, I go out of shot a couple of times so I positioned us to the side of the location so when I fall I go behind the wall so it looks realistic. To fit in with the different culture we would probably be wearing martial art outfits and have our hair tied up off our face.

 This is also a screen shot from our piece, before this Thea and I are seen very small as we're dancing on the bridge and then Lucy and Lyka appear at the front hugging because they're tourists and they're happy to see the view. If they faced the front we could have edited a flash in as if they were posing for a photograph.

 This is our finished piece. We chose to mute the videos as the focus of this workshop was not sound it was about the green screen.