Bluescreen Attempt Part 1

cshelton

cshelton

Active member
It is daunting to attempt to do bluescreen work with DV, but I'm trying to make it work as best as possible. Here is Part 1:

Bluescreen Test

The lighting doesn't completely match, so that's a dead giveaway but the results are not too bad.

For this short clip, I used After Effects and the Primatte plugin, a crappy $85 collapsable bluescreen from Ebay, and a quick light setup. I'm about to do something more interesting with this setup but I'm finding it takes a lot of finesse to pull a clean key from DV.
 
That's look great; wow. Everytime I see someone submit blue/green screen work it makes me want to do it; okay. Im gonna do it.
 
Anyways, I think the highlight on his face should be on the other side since thats where the sun is setting... cause it does look like an unnatural light is on HIS right. maybe a bounce?
 
I'll explain more about how I had to finesse the footage soon, I'll make a little visual tutorial. If you want one of these bluescreen, the guy has more, check out his store on eBay.

bluescreen on eBay

I just saw that he has a rolled up bluescreen with stands for about $122. I should have done that as I had to build my own bluescreen frame to get this collapsable one to lay flat.

Chris
 
It looked pretty good. There's a line down the middle of the shot. Is that a radio tower in the background or is that a crease in the bluescreen? Also, I thought greenscreen worked better for video and bluescreen was used for film. What do you all think?

I'm about to begin ALOT of greenscreen work so it was great to see another persons attempt. Thanks and good job!
 
isara said:
It looked pretty good. There's a line down the middle of the shot. Is that a radio tower in the background or is that a crease in the bluescreen? Also, I thought greenscreen worked better for video and bluescreen was used for film. What do you all think?

I'm about to begin ALOT of greenscreen work so it was great to see another persons attempt. Thanks and good job!
Click to expand...

I've done some green and blue. Always had less problems with blue in terms of fringing and artifacts.
 
Mino - Oh man! A friend and I spent all day yesterday turning one of my walls into a huge greenscreen. Crap! Can I get a second opinion?
 
**** PK...Don't let me scare you, I've developed a technique for blue that works for me and my bullish tweaking. Green is probably better. I read somewhere that is way better for shooting people because the skin doesn't reflect so much green light so less issues when processing. Go nuts with the wall in green and ignore me. Post some results if you get it up and running...Love to see them. This....em, green creen thing is part of your next entry no? Let me know if you need me to ship you an LP
 
In my experience, blue or green is just a matter of choice. You need an actor in blue jeans, obviously use a greenscreen, vice-versa if your actor needs to wear green.

The color doesn't matter, I've keyed magenta before, all that matters is that green and blue are not naturally present in human skin tone or hair color.

I've done a lot of DV bluescreen/greenscreen testing lately and I can tell you this, there's no formula for either color that works perfectly. I had the exact same problems with both.

The chroma compression inherent in the DV format is the problem, which means you'll have problems dealing with transitioning edge where your actor meets the screen. You can blur the line, but too much blur and it's a mushy mess. Alternatively you can leave the line alone, but that looks bad too. It just takes some time and effort to make the line look natural, and that means a good balance blurred and non-blurred pixels.

Once you've dealt with the transitioning edge a few times, you'll know what's going to work and what's not. Using that knowledge, you'll find that proper lighting (which is not exactly shown in my sample footage) is the key to a good.. well.. key.
 
cshelton - Thanks for the chroma key advice. Hopefully you'll be a regular around here and can help more people out. Thanks again! I'm chroma keying as we type!
 
I just remebered something! My momma gave me blue eyes, ...so I have no other choice but to use greenscreen, when I'm in front of the camera. Curse you baby blues! Curse you to hell!!!

cshelton - you never answered my qyestion about the line down the middle of the shot. Is that from the key or is it in the background image?
 
The line down the middle is due to improper keying. I missed the bordering edges of the key somehow!
 
I've heard that using a white background and doing a luma key works really well since there is more luma information - has anyone tried this?
 
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