More Rotoscoping

While considering what movie to place myself in, I've watched a number of YouTube videos of examples and tutorials of others doing so. Here I've found a short tutorial by Tara Arts Entertainment--though quite corky, it is informative and effective.

The man who makes the tutorials on this channel I find to be funny, knowledgeable and easy to follow. All things that make a difference when learning an extensive program like After Effects. The video above covers everything we talked about in class including the green screen, keylight (chroma key effect), in addition to other helpful how-tos like color matching.

Also, I found this quick little video to be something of interest. Here the artist takes a video of himself, then uses rotoscoping to create the outline for his desired animation.

Green Screens!!!!

Chroma keying is more commonly used then we actually think. When watching television I typically think "oh yeah they shot that on location" when in reality they did not, they just shot footage on a green screen and threw a background on it ( not as easy as it sounds). Aside from movies though,  another common place that uses a green screen is the weather studio.
The weather is never actually on the screen when the weather man/woman is pointing.
So how do they know where they're pointing? There are several screens placed on every side of the person giving the weather. This video does a good job explaining how it works in a news studio.
 



Benefits to green screens:

Saves a lot of time
- Finding the perfect location to get a scene done alone can take days.
- Setting up all the equipment also takes a lot of time.
- Lighting a scene perfectly can also take up a lot of time. Shooting outdoors can get tricky because of the ambient light from the sun.

Easy to work with
-You can easily throw on different backgrounds
-Branding for a company becomes easier
-You always re-use different interviews or clips

Here's another video that talks about the pros and cons of green screens in greater detail.

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.

Green Screen Movie FX Studio App

            Since we shot our green screen footage this week I thought I'd post about an app which may not be as advanced as our class material nonetheless can be something to play around with on the side. This app was introduced in 2012 but was recently updated, it has some sort of complexity as well as one hell of a studio editing program for an iPhone and or iTunes application compatible device. The application is suprisingly easy to use while also having a pretty impressive tool set when adding special effects in postproduction. More specifically this app allows you to use the chroma key special effect to replace video or pictures with additional media.  The app comes with a boat load of built in videos to begin your green screen experience. As well as the built in videos you can also import pictures and videos to splice yourself in (whether or not you can rip the files off the app to utilize in After Effects or another program is behind my research). Some of the application features consist of real time compositing, capture resolution, chroma match quality, camera focus mode and many more. Overall the Green Screen Movie FX Studio is a powerful special effects editor that allows you to create projects for only $1.99 at the iTunes application store, this is a must buy. Here is a quick start tutorial that gives you a sneak peak of the application... (the app was created by epocfield)

Here is some examples of clips made using the application...

Chromatte

     After our work in class on green screen I thought that I would do some research on a new technology in the keying world.  The base of the new technology is a new fabric that is made up of thousands of small glass balls, that are coated in aluminum, called Chromatte.  This creates a retro-reflective material that reflects light in the same plane that it receives light.  The second part of the technology is an LED ring that goes around the lens of a camera.  This green or blue light ring hits the fabric with colored light that is then reflected back into the lens, creating green screen effect.   The LED's do not cast colored light onto the subject however because they are not strong enough.  This technology allows for a really clean key with no spill or issues with reflected light and shadows, and the subject can be close to the wall.  Another benefit is that you can light the subject  in any way without needing to worry about getting the background light even and flat.  The fabric is expensive, but it creates a lot of opportunities for creativity that were previously impossible.
 

Holy Green Screens, Batman!

When George Lucas set out to make the Star Wars prequels in 1999, he used green screens to help bring his vision to life. He simply put his actors in an entirely green environment and had his VFX team create alien worlds such as Kamino and Mustafar.

We all know that green screens and chroma keying is a common practice to for all sci-fi and fantasy films. How else could’ve Lucas created a planet covered entirely in ocean, or make two Jedi go floating down a river of lava? (Well, he could have done it practically, but CGI makes sense here). But did you know that even the simplest scenes, like two guys sitting on some steps of a building in NYC, are green screened?

Check out the video below, it is fascinatingly eye-opening.

In class on Thursday we learned HOW to key things out, but I never knew the emphasis some productions put on keying. It's quite remarkable.

Green Screen Review

Hey everyone, considering our current project of chroma keying ourselves into a movie, here is a good review that I watched and refreshed some things I forgot.

Take note at a couple of parameters in After Effects that you may forget when chroma keying in Keylight...

Screen Pre Blur- use this after adjusting your screen matte, in the video he uses a setting of 2 and it helps to "feather" the edges through blurring.

Screen Shrink/Grow- use this to get remove the soft green edge around your subject, the video uses a setting of -3.5, (*negative* because you need to take the green out) but this is determined on a case-by-case basis.

And most importantly to get a good chroma keying result- use the eye dropper as close to your subject as possible!

Best of luck with your keying.