Greenscreen Film Making

Most of you have heard what a greenscreen is.  Still many have not!  Whether it's greenscreen, bluescreen, or chromakey, they all have the same thing in common.  They all use a solid color that gets "cut out" to reveal a background image or video/film backdrop.  Almost all movies that have special effects use this method to give you fantastic illusions.  If you are still not understanding how it works, let me give you another way of looking at it.

Imagine you have two pictures.  One is of a friend against a solid green or blue wall.  Sounds kind of boring, doesn't it?  The other picture is of the ocean crashing on the shore of a nice sandy beach.  Wouldn't it be nice to cut the solid color from around your friend out and place him/her overtop the image of the beach?  That's all you are doing with greenscreen.  Solid blue background is used for when you have earth tones on your friend and want a clean cut, because earth tones blend too much with the greenscreen.  Chromakey is a general term for using any solid color you want to do this.

Okay, so it's cool to do that thing with the friend in Photoshop or some picture program, or even using actual pictures, but how does this affect our movies and the independent scene?  While Hollywood is using the very best technology and greenscreen setups to make awesome backgrounds and to pull of stunts we only imagine, even indie film in Cleveland, Ohio is benefitting from this form of filmmaking.  I made an entire feature film using greenscreen, filming my cast separately, then putting them together into a "virtual set".  A virtual set is a series of images or video backgrounds where you insert your cast and make them look like they are in that environment for any given scene you need.  Since my movie was set in outer space and I didn't have the budget to make physical backgrounds, I created virtual sets in the computer and placed my cast into them. Here is an episode extracted from the film to show you...

Hollywood movies like "The Matrix", "Journey To The Center Of The Earth", "Starwars episodes I, II, III", and tons more use this technique to give you whatever the director wants you to see!  What's even more interesting is that this technique is one of the oldest film tricks out there.  It just was different in black & white movies, using black on film to cut through to another image.  Black is actually transparent on traditional film, allowing light to pass through, and this feature can be selected in most editing software once on the computer.  Its called an "alpha channel".  The term channel, however, is used for color too, kinda allowing you to make the connection that black is used like a color for screening, although they don't call it black screen. Try some greenscreening today! Note: Basic cheap or free editors may not have keying or screening capability.

Best Regards, Kenny