Replacing the Sky with After Effects

I found this short tutorial on replacing a less interesting sky with a more visually pleasing one using in house effects. This process turned out to be more simple than I originally thought it would be and you end up with a pretty good final product. It gets slightly more complicated when you have a moving shot which then requires some simple tracking which isn't too difficult to execute. I would definitely recommend checking out this tutorial if you are looking for an easy way to replace a flat sky in your shots.

Sky Replacement

As I casually celebrate Saint Patrick's day with some friends in Burlington Vermont I still wish that I was somewhere warm and sunny. But soon I will be back under the grey skies of Ithaca. There is a way to get yourself under a bright blue sky anytime you want through video, sky replacement. Generally the sky is just white or grey, this is easy to key out and replace with whatever sky you choose and because clouds usually don't move very fast a still image can be used and motion tracked. Andrew Kramer explains it all very well on this tutorial. I wonder just how often this technique is used professionally.