Resub// Keying and Green Screening.

This post is about my efforts to create a  live action on live action piece for the resubmission. The techniques employed are pretty simple once you have got the hang of them, but getting the hang of it wasn't that easy. I first had to learn how to pull a proper key in after effects so I can separate the actor from their background so I can then input any other background I chose.

This is my character shot, the other shot which I will composite the separated actor from will be the exact same shot minus the actor and green screen. This is done for continuities sake as the shots need to line up otherwise you can see the difference between the colours of the actor and colours of the background. A blue screen might have worked better here because the blue helps bring out skin tones and as there isn't much else going on it might have got a clearer image.

The above image shows the keyed out character from the background. The background is blue because I have removed the colour from the green screen rendering it transparent so that you can see whats going on behind it, the blue is the background colour, which probably should be black.

To pull an effective key there are a number of things to consider:

1. Use keylight to separate the actor from the background

2. Screen pre-blur will add smoother edges to the key, a value between 3-5 will work well.

3. Use the screen matte option to view it in black and white. This allows you too see which parts are transparent and which are opaque.

As you can see I have actually keyed this out pretty well with almost all of the black being where the green screen was, which is exactly what we want. If you start to see lots of grey outlines of shapes in the background of your clip, adjust the clip black and white more so the two shades are as pure as they can be. 58-black and 75-white worked well for me. 

4. If that matte is still not clean enough use a screen grow matte which will further clear up the clip. also use a simple choker which will tighten up the edges.

For the dematerialisation of the actor when she is 'beamed' up. I used a simple technique which I think worked well. All I did was keyframe the opacity of the actor and then move along the timeline, keyframe again, and reduce the opacity to give the illusion that she is being abducted by an alien spaceship. 

I actually enjoyed making this small sequence despite the heartache it gave me earlier in the year. I much prefer live action on live action to live action on CG. I could definitely sign on to this king of CG as I think it can look incredible if done well, where as the CG, to me, will never look as real as they think it does.