Keying a background

jpsheets

jpsheets

Well-known member
Hi everyone,

I plan on doing some green screen work for Lossfest. It's my first time out doing it, and I need your advice. I'm envisioning a forest background for my actors and I'm looking at video backgrounds from istockphoto. I'm concerned about perspective. What guidelines, if any, should I be looking for in forest backgrounds from a website like istockphoto?

thanks in advance!

Jon
 
I posted a bunch of crap, haha, but actually, I'm not even sure what your asking.
What are you asking again?
You want a static shot?

Foreground + background? Static cam I assume but a dolly is possible. Pans are out unless you go with 3D enviroments.

Basic response would be anything that looks in perspective. For a dolly you could do a foreground pass over the talent layer over the background using several methods. Maybe a few layers on the background as well. Could look fake though.

How many angled shots? There're tons of hi res stock stuff out there. Texas? Can you change the location of your story for Texas? And go out and take some field shots yourself?
Just a thought.

//More.
If your going for moving stock footage let me know. A bigger discussion and you'll likely not pull it off if your asking in the first place. I'm no expert, just saying, I can give some tips but I'd avoid it if possible.
 
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Just grab your backgrounds and study their perspectives before shooting. If yu can, it helps wonders to hok up a linear keyer in the field when shooting. You don't have to record this composite but it's great for matching scale, perspective and lighting.
 
I'd think forest pics would be relatively free of perspective problems because trees are nicely irregular, compared to buildings for example.

But presumably you can test out the pics before buying them - the crappy lo-res preview pics will be the same perspective as the 'proper' ones you're considering paying for
 
Thanks fellas, so it sounds like I should stay away from moving video as a background and stick with still photos?

cheers,

Jon
 
Static as a first choice.

You could maybe use a straight dolly shot, without any panning.
You would have to motion track it and apply the tracking to your chroma keyed characters so they match up. You could try following the characters with a steady cam or on a dolly as well I suppose and see how it looks applied to the stock footage.
Maybe do some tests before hand to see if it'll work.

Otherwise, static is the safest bet imo.
No pans though. It wouldn't be worth the extra work even if you did succeed I would think.
 
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