My first, crude, greenscreen comp

[gra4mac]

Hi. I decided to give greenscreening a try. I started off with dying a sheet green, which sort of worked, but ended up buying a peice of cycloth. This was filmed in my livingroom with my 2 kids. The whole procces was challenging and at times frustrating, but in the end I learned a ton and had fun. The quality is poor because I have a miny DV camera, my editing software is crude at keying, my animation is "developing", I had to compress the crap out of it to get it to 11 mb, wah, wah, wah. This is just the beginning. I am getting Final Cut Pro which will help with the keying, and I'm starting to understand how action blending works, I think. When I get FCP I want to redo a lot of it, so any comments or suggestions would be helpful. Next time I want to do a shorter peice focussing on better intigrating the real and CG lighting and interaction.

 

Keep in mind it is rough, 11 mb file size, 2 1/2 minutes long. I would be interested to hear what some of you use for keying. I use both Macs and PCs so platform istn't an issue. I am listening

 

My Greenscreen attempt.

[MATrickz]

hahaha thats hilarious!

 

I thought the animation was really good, especially the dinosaur and I love how you made the 3D objects also go in front of the kids. Seemed like you guys had a good time making it, great job!

[Rodney]

This was filmed in my livingroom with my 2 kids.

That's what I'm talking about!

 

Graham,

That wasn't crude... that was fun!

 

Excellent work IMO. I think you've got a couple kids there that may want to do more acting!

 

It's never easy to get kids to perform the way you want them to. You did really well in this case. The backgrounds were really neat.

 

Minor critiques.

The greenscreening seemed to work really well until they step into Disneyland... I think you do this on purpose though. The haloing effect is so well known (to artists at least) that it seems to detract a bit... it's almost like they've gone from standing in front of a real world to entering one that isn't... a strange thing to my eye.

 

In the castle/knight scene the knight's movement is... how shall we say it... a bit crude. If sped up with the slipping gone it'd probably be a bit scarey!

 

Excellent work.

I hope to try something with greenscreening myself someday and works like yours really inspire me.

 

Thanks!

Rodney

[gra4mac]

You guys are very encouraging. It was fun , my kids had fun too and want to do more. We spent about 2 hours talking about the themes and filming. Most of what they did was improvised. We actually filmed it in 3 sessions, with about 5 takes each session, as I learned better technique.

 

As for the white halo in the Disney scene, that comes from the trtransperancytencil I used in A:M to get them to shrink while running. I tried to do it my editor, but it shrank the background too after keying. I'm really looking forward to getting FCP.

 

Getting Thom to walk around the kids was quite easy in this situation. When he is behind them, they are keyed on top of him, when he is in front, he is alphaed onto them. It would be much trickier if Thom was between the 2 kids.

[ddustin]

I use a product called Serious Magic for Green Screen stuff.

 

Works very well.

 

David

[ddustin]

Here's the link to a page on my site where I use the serious magic software.

 

I converted it to Flash so you'll need to be able to view that format.

 

Green Screen

 

David

[KenH]

That's terriffic. I think I detect a younger version of those kids in the Disney background

[gra4mac]

That's terriffic. I think I detect a younger version of those kids in the Disney background

Not only the kids but me as well.

[robcat2075]

I'd love to see this but all I get is a white screen. Does anyone know where I can get the VP3 codec for Quicktime 6.5?

 

The VP3 site only has it for v5 and the link they have for "theora.org" to get VP3 for v6 doesn't really have anything about VP# at all.

 

?

[gra4mac]

I have QT 6, I don't remember if the Vp3 On2 codec came with it, was copied from QT5 or I downloaded it. Sorry I can't be more help.

[hypnomike]

WOW!! That's great work Graham.

 

If that's crude I can't wait to see the finished version.

 

Well done.

[Guest mrsl13]

Graham, Man that was fine..I'm gonna have to give this green/blue screen stuff a try...Ive done a couple live action shorts with my two sons..I have an inexpensive Sony Digital8 camcorder..but want one with a better picture quality (higher CCD number ?) was wondering would any gree or blue sheet type material work? Keep up the great work.

 

Mike C.

[gra4mac]

I call it crude because the characters have a green, or white, halo, the lighting doesn't match with the actors and animations, the edge of the characters are very pixely, and the animation is rough. It is a good start and I am proud of it. When the actors look like thay are really in the scene, then it will be great.

 

To do green or blue screen work you need to have a fairly specific colour of screen. It can be either blue or green depending on what colours your actors are wearing. If your actors are wearing blue, then use a green screen. The idea is to have the screen colour unique so that nothing else gets keyed out. The other thing I found out is the screen needs to be a very saturated colour so when brightly lit, the colour doesn't bleach out. A well lit screen is very important, with the actors far enough away that they don't cast shadows on the screen. Also, digital cameras are better at picking up the green colour, film picks up blue better, and when editing on a computer, green is preffered. I'm guessing the green colour that works is very close to a pure RGB green and computers can pick it out well. There is lots of good info on the net about colour keying, aka green screening. I use a single CCD camera and the green does bleed into the actors more than it would with a 3 CCD cam. After I re-key it in FCP, I'll post the results. I think good keying software will do a much better job even with a cheap camera.