I'm sure quite a few of you have seen this before, but...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BKdyMbdIug
This is how it's done...
- Thread starter Alcove Audio
- Start date
Love the shot of the grip running with the greenscreen!
Motherf...!!!
Okay, so let's say one of us wants to do this. For the sake of this question, forget post-production -- let's just pretend we live in a magical world in which we have infinite time at our disposal, and we are capable of mastering any piece of software (or hiring someone who has).
In pre-production, and in production, what sort of things need to be considered to excecute this effectively?
As far as I can tell, nothing looks out of the ordinary, as far as green-screening is concerned. From a purely production perspective, I think most of us could pull this off. Looks like the real trick is in post.
Agree/disagree?
I ask because I had a scene planned that was to take place on a busy city street, and I nixed it for budgetary reasons. Sure would be nice to find a way to sneak it in there.
In pre-production, and in production, what sort of things need to be considered to excecute this effectively?
As far as I can tell, nothing looks out of the ordinary, as far as green-screening is concerned. From a purely production perspective, I think most of us could pull this off. Looks like the real trick is in post.
Agree/disagree?
I ask because I had a scene planned that was to take place on a busy city street, and I nixed it for budgetary reasons. Sure would be nice to find a way to sneak it in there.
Camera angles are probably the most overlooked part of chromakeying. In production it's a good idea in your shot logs to note the camera height, focal length of the lens used, aperture and if it's a really detailed shot, even angle. Then when either building a digital BG or shooting plates you can use the same settings and it'll match a lot better. Not 100% necessary for every shot, but it helps on complex ones.
A clean key is made with an even lit greenscreen. It's. It fun trying to fix and key one that isn't.
Also, matching lighting is important. If the talent is heavily back lit but the the plates aren't, it'll stick out. Most of those shots added shadows in too.
Other than that? Your magic post talent comes in handy haha.
A clean key is made with an even lit greenscreen. It's. It fun trying to fix and key one that isn't.
Also, matching lighting is important. If the talent is heavily back lit but the the plates aren't, it'll stick out. Most of those shots added shadows in too.
Other than that? Your magic post talent comes in handy haha.
From personal experience... Perspective, Lighting and lens distortion at the edges/corners of the frame are the tricky bits.
I did this kind of work on my short "Scavengers" with the model of the airship over the barn (don't fault the animation, I have little to no experience with that part). Given enough time, it's tedious, but not difficult to combine chroma and luma keying with rotoscoping to do just about anything. I use Shake because I prefer the node based workflow for this kind of thing, but AE can do it too... you just have to get creative about how you're keying your stuff.
I didn't use green screens for anything but the model. I removed a busy highway in the background to make it look more desolate. I added layers of colored fog with a film grain added to it to emulate the sandstorm. Timing those correctly adds to the physical reality of the shot. The plates farther from camera have to move faster than the ones closer. I Rotoscoped the barn and used it as a layer, then rotoscoped the actors and had them on a layer and animated cutouts through layers of the fog to have them get closer and have less of that shading them from camera.
The balloon was meant to be moving, but my green screening was subpar, so I couldn't get it to screen in motion. That is actually a huge water balloon upside down in a Mesh laundry bag which is then deformed in Shake to make it look a bit like a ramshackle net holding in a single dirigible balloon.
Will Vincent did the effect for our entry into the competition, I went back in and redid it with about a week of time to figure it all out... he did it fairly well in an hour or two in AE.
I did this kind of work on my short "Scavengers" with the model of the airship over the barn (don't fault the animation, I have little to no experience with that part). Given enough time, it's tedious, but not difficult to combine chroma and luma keying with rotoscoping to do just about anything. I use Shake because I prefer the node based workflow for this kind of thing, but AE can do it too... you just have to get creative about how you're keying your stuff.
I didn't use green screens for anything but the model. I removed a busy highway in the background to make it look more desolate. I added layers of colored fog with a film grain added to it to emulate the sandstorm. Timing those correctly adds to the physical reality of the shot. The plates farther from camera have to move faster than the ones closer. I Rotoscoped the barn and used it as a layer, then rotoscoped the actors and had them on a layer and animated cutouts through layers of the fog to have them get closer and have less of that shading them from camera.
The balloon was meant to be moving, but my green screening was subpar, so I couldn't get it to screen in motion. That is actually a huge water balloon upside down in a Mesh laundry bag which is then deformed in Shake to make it look a bit like a ramshackle net holding in a single dirigible balloon.
Will Vincent did the effect for our entry into the competition, I went back in and redid it with about a week of time to figure it all out... he did it fairly well in an hour or two in AE.
That was a really cool video. I had to post that to my Facebook. Thanks for Finding that video Alcove.
I think getting the light to match is harder than people admit. A lot of the samples above didn't even match and it looks fake if you ask me, and it breaks the 4th wall. If seen a lot of stuff where the shadows face different directions, the subconscious picks this stuff up and it influences your perception and how you experience the event.
Good stuff, Alcove, thanks for posting that! Seems like almost anything is possible with the right tools and talent.
So, sorry for the question from someone who hasn't done any greenscreen: Why is the screen only in part of the background? Because it has to be perfect for the important action the audience is looking at, such as the actors? Or is it the view only from the camera doing the "documenting" of the process?... Seems like the *entire* background should be screened off it it's to look good, especially on a big screen.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
So, sorry for the question from someone who hasn't done any greenscreen: Why is the screen only in part of the background? Because it has to be perfect for the important action the audience is looking at, such as the actors? Or is it the view only from the camera doing the "documenting" of the process?... Seems like the *entire* background should be screened off it it's to look good, especially on a big screen.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
Excellent examples!
Chroma-keying is the way to go for speed and convenience in compositing later.
Although with camera-matching software, clean plates can be generated from footage with no greenscreen involved and objects can be extracted through a difference matte or other techniques. Perhaps more work than keying and garbage matting, but much better than rotoscoping by hand
The things we can do with software and imagination... Pretty crazy.
Chroma-keying is the way to go for speed and convenience in compositing later.
Although with camera-matching software, clean plates can be generated from footage with no greenscreen involved and objects can be extracted through a difference matte or other techniques. Perhaps more work than keying and garbage matting, but much better than rotoscoping by hand
The things we can do with software and imagination... Pretty crazy.
This is all very fantastic Paul, but I got a real bone to pick with you my man. This is a REAL bone. When, my friend, are you going to give us a breakdown of that little video you posted recently. I think that would be a big 1st step towards getting some of us to start thinking about this stuff.
C'mon now... let it all out... It'll make you feel real good inside. Trust me...
Haha I want to do a breakdown video here soon. There's a few more videos we need to finish post on first, then maybe in the slower days around Christmas I can break it down.
So can anybody provide some info on some good tutorials on compositing and set extensions. I don't mean tutorials on "here, put her on a green screen and then put her on a static plate of the himalayas," I mean like "here's how you plan a moving shot with the camera on a steadicam"
anyone know of such tutorials???
anyone know of such tutorials???
If you have a little money to spend, this series has been getting rave reviews. Mine just showed up today (along with the camera work series since the bundle was 40% off).
Thanks for that link. Very much looking forward to your review on the package.
I'm eight minutes into the first camerawork DVD and it's already clear this was a great idea. While I've been doing some of this stuff intuitively, I've had no formal training and no real idea what I was doing or why some things I did actually worked.
This series is going to improve my cinematography by about a zillionfold.