Blue screen vs Green screen

As we are all working on our rotoscoping projects using green screen, I wanted to give a little more information on what blue screen and green screen do and what they differ in.

The obvious reason for choosing one or the other is the object or person in front. So if you are filming Kermit, you probably don't want to use green screen and if you are filming a Smurf (they're real), you probably don't want a blue screen,

i found this video below to be super helpful in further understanding the difference and learning more about why we should use one or the other and when.

Did Michael Bay actually do something right?

The Transformers trilogy is absolutely awful. Like most of Michael Bay's 'films' they are one-dimensional action flicks trying to disguise themselves as something more meaningful. Sorry Bay, but you're not fooling anyone. There's not a single Bay film that I have found cinematically pleasing, nor have I ever found a reason to commend the director, except for one exception.

While I do not necessarily agree with Bay's style of filming or directing, there is at least one thing he's done right all these years (besides managing to perfectly resemble Michael Bolton): hiring an excellent team of visual effects specialists. More specifically, I'm talking about the Transformers movies. While I find them to be terribly painful to watch, there is certainly something to admire about the films. The visual effects behind the absurdly complicated alien robots is simply breathtaking.

To start off, Destroyer, an enormously impressive creation found in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, took 72 hours to render...per frame! Pretty crazy, huh? Let's be honest, though. Anyone can make something that takes weeks to render. That's not the impressive part. The impressive part is that the single Transformer was put together by 6-8 individually created, incredibly detailed vehicles. Imagine how long that would take you to create. Now, imagine how long that would take you to create a second time once your director told you it wasn't good enough. I can only assume you'd be pretty upset with that news. Essentially, the animators were instructed to go back and make the machines twice as detailed as it already was, and THEN to reconstruct the final robot with all 6-8 individual pieces.

Another kudos for Bay goes to his ability to bring in practical visual effects. On the set of Transformers 2, Bay was able to bring in a sizable number of military vehicles (tanks, bombers, F16s, you name it) to fly over set, drop flares, and just add some level of believability to his otherwise ludicrous film. Bay is also a fan of on-set explosions. They're dangerous, yes, but they make for one hell of an effect. It also saves quite a bit of postproduction time and effort. Speaking for anyone who's ever worked postproduction on a film, we all greatly appreciate it.

Bringing it back to postproduction visual effects, the aircraft carrier scene of Transformers 2 is also quite an impressive feat. I never really gave it much thought, but much more than most people would ever expect went into this scene. The team shot actual burning miniatures and debris with blue screens that were later composited into the completed animations. The people on the carriers were a mix of animations and people who were shot tumbling and falling. The aircraft were created by the animators as well. Basically, thousands of pieces were created for this scene simply to be destroyed over the course of a minute. It's like being a kid again after taking hours to build a LEGO model just to have your younger brother completely and utterly demolish it.

Animation is a crazy field to go into. It's often the defining point between a film's success and it's downfall. In Michael Bay's case, it's really the only thing he was able to do correctly.

Really cool, cheap, DIY green screen

We're starting green screening in class, so I figured there's no better time than now to show off how you can make your own green screen, for very cheap. For only around $15, you can make your own green screen! Just take a trip to your local Arts & Crafts store, and find your nearest Hardware store, and you should be ready to record! While there are many ways of making your own green screen, I find The Slanted Lens' guide is very easy and cheap.

That's so traditional and old school though. I want something new! Something EXCITING! Well, look no further! Cheesy advertising aside, this new LED based chroma keying is AMAZING! I've seen it work in person, and I have to say, it's crazy revolutionary. Basically what they do, is put a special reflective screen behind the talent, and shine a bright LED ring light at the screen. The LED light can be green or blue, and doesn't require any additional lighting. From personal experience, I know how horrible lighting a green screen is, and this completely takes away the need for additional lights.

Now these setups can get pricy, ranging up to $700. I do think, however, that it might be worth it in a big budget production. This system's just so convenient and good, I can honestly say I think this might be where the future of chroma keying is headed.

History of the Green Screen

Since this week we're all planning to shoot on a green screen I thought I would look up things about its history. I found this cool video that briefly goes through the developments in special effects technology. It's a pretty interesting history. For example, the very first compositing was done with double exposure techniques back in the 30s.

Another cool piece of information in the video was why the industry switched from using a blue screen to green. It accompanied the switch from film to video. The clip says that blue screens work better with film and green with video. One reason is because in video cameras, there's more information in the green channel than the blue.

For any Star Wars fans, there's a section starting at 3:06 on special effects in the movies. In particular, The Empire Strikes Back used new techniques that made the final film look much more realistic.

Adding yourself to famous scenes

As I was reading the blog this morning I was very interested in everyone’s posts about green/blue screens, and their use in famous scenes from movies. At first the movie “300” jumped into my head as the movie which used green screens the most. So I started looking for behind the scenes footage of what the set actually looked like before the green screen work was done. While looking for all of this I stumbled upon a really interesting video that reminded me of the work we were doing in class. The video is a student that used a blue screen to add himself into one of the famous scenes of 300. The video shows step by step using aftereffects and Photoshop just how the student added himself. It was similar to our class exercise with the red bull can but on steroids.

Bluescreen Assignment from Marius Denisse on Vimeo.