Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell visual effects. Academie Duello now has a huge green screen, 20′ wide, and about 12′ tall.
Here’s the unboxing and first set-up:
What Do You Do With It?
A green screen is a way of filming a performer so that you can replace the background in your editing software. It’s also called a chroma-key. Keying means making some part of video transparent, and chroma means “colour”. So, you’re making parts of the video transparent based on colour, in this case, green. Then, you put other film behind your footage, and the transparent parts show that in the background.
Lighting Nightmares
In order to key out the screen, we need a nice even green. That means:
- The subject needs to be lit as if they are in the background location
- The screen needs to be lit separately, so that there are no bright or dim areas
- The light interactions can’t create shadows on the screen
Watch this video which covers the whole process from scouting the lighting for the subject, lighting the screen and the post-production using Adobe After Effects:
Duello in Spaaaaace!
We decided on this huge greenscreen so that we could have two performers sword fight in front of the screen. We’ll need a few experiments to get the conditions right, but we’re always moving forward.