greenscreen options

[mino]

Hello All

I want introduce a laser projected character into a scene. I'm thinking the best way to do this would be green screen. Is there any other way in post to achieve this effect.As a laser character / hologram the background would need to bleed through the suject. I thought of exporting scene into photoshop as a filmstrip and manually cutting out the character then adding green to surrounding area. After I finnished slapping myself around for even considering this option I began to wonder if there is any software out there that could automatically handle the filmstrip photoshop method. Any ideas would be welcomed.

[jmproductions13]

normal process for a hologram is as follows, film against green screen, chromakey the subject, then export as still frame images or overlay that composition on top of another comp and adjust color/transparency/etc.

[Rich Lee]

the process you are talking about is called roto. masking shapes out of a piece of footage a frame at a time. the photoshop way is really really slow...a faster way is to use after effects, the roto tools there are much better.

shooting front of green can be much better and faster. but you have to make sure you light it enough so that it is even. otherwise it gets messy when you key it out later.

there are a few companies right now that are trying to get software to automate the roto process. but its still has a way to go. there are also some mechanical ways of doing this, using special cameras, but, its super expensive, and only works in a handfull of cases. there are other methods as well....but i think you will have to do what the rest of us do. roto or green screen.

[BLUESPIDER]

Id prefer the green screen method because Rotoing is a beaatch! Not enless your one patience ash mutha sucker.

[mino]

I'm not on top of the roto thing are there good links online?

[HansK]

Check out this cool article:

http://www.crewoftwo.com/making/effects/hologram/index.html

Actually, the whole site is really good. Goes into a lot of how they made their movie.

[BLUESPIDER]

http://www.creativecow.net/ is a good place to check out.

[sumosamuri]

Isn't discreet's combustion able to create tracking mattes for automatic rotoscoping?

[AndyJ]

I think so, sumosamuri...