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Chroma Key (Blue Screen) Background and Set Up
Chroma Key Shooting in the TV Studio and using FCE

 

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Blue Screen Background and Set Up

What is Blue Screen Imaging?
Creating a blue screen composite image starts with a subject that has been photographed in front of an evenly lit, bright, pure blue background. The compositing process, whether photographic or electronic, replaces all the blue in the picture with another image, known as the background plate.

Another term for Blue Screen is Chroma-Key. How does Chroma Key work?
Chroma-Key is a television process only. The Chroma Key process is based on the Luminance key. In a luminance key, everything in the image over (or under) a set brightness level is "keyed" out and replaced by either another image, or a color from a color generator. (Think of a keyhole or a cookie-cutter.) Primarily this is used in the creation of titles. A title card with white on black titles is prepared and placed in front of a camera. The camera signal is fed into the keyer's foreground input. The background video is fed into the keyer. The level control knob on the keyer is adjusted to cause all the black on the title card to be replaced by the background video. The white letters now appear over the background image.

The background image can be as simple as drawing a picture. You can make a background using photos, film, video footage, a model or toy.

Luminance keying works great with titles, but not so great for making live action composites. When we want to key people over a background image, problems arise because people and their clothing have a wide range of tones. Hair, shoes and shadow areas may be very dark, while eyes, skin highlights and shirt collars can approach 100% white. Those areas might key through along with the background.

MAKE SURE ACTORS ARE NOT WEARING COLORS SIMILAR TO THE CHROMA KEY BACKGROUND COLOR.

Chroma Key creates keys on just one color channel. Broadcast cameras use three independent sensors, one for each color, Red, Green and Blue. Most cameras can output these RGB signals separately from the Composite video signal. So the original chroma key was probably created by feeding the blue channel of a camera into a keyer. This works, sort of, but soon manufacturers created dedicated chromakeyers that could accept all 3 colors, plus the background composite signal and the foreground composite signal. This made it possible to select any color for the key and fine tune the selection of the color.

Why Blue? Can't other colors be used?
Red, green and blue channels have all been used, but blue has been favored for several reasons. Blue is the complementary color to flesh tone--since the most common color in most scenes is flesh tone, the opposite color is the logical choice to avoid conflicts. Historically, cameras and film have been most sensitive to blue light, although this is less true today.
Green has it's own advantages, beyond the obvious one of greater flexibility in matting with blue foreground objects. Green paint has greater reflectance than blue paint which can make matting easier. Also, video cameras are usually most sensitive in the green channel, and often have the best resolution and detail in that channel. A disadvantage is that green spill is almost always objectionable and obvious even in small amounts, whereas blue can sometimes slip by unnoticed.
Sometimes (usually) the background color reflects onto the foreground talent creating a slight blue tinge around the edges. This is known as blue spill. It doesn't look nearly as bad as green spill, which one would get from green.

Usually only one camera is used as the Chroma Key camera. This creates a problem on three camera sets; the other cameras can see the blue screen. The screen must be integrated into the set design, and it is easier to design around a bright sky blue than an intense green or red.

Lighting for Blue Screen

Good lighting is essential to a "clean" bluescreening process. The background should be lit evenly, so that there are no dark or light patches, shiny spots or shadows. Your subject should be lit so that they do not throw a shadow on the background, if possible, and so that there is no blue or green light bouncing off the background and spilling onto the subject. Doing all this will take some trial and error, so give yourself time.

1. Put distance between the subject and the background. If the talent is standing or sitting on blue, then it is more difficult, almost impossible, to have separate lighting. Six to eight feet away from the wall is ideal to prevent unwanted shadows and color spill. If there is a little spill, you can help this with an amber or straw fill light on the talent where the spill is obvious.

2. The trick is in lighting the foreground without messing up the background. Light the background (blue) as evenly as you can so NO hard shadows appear on the background. This may take 2 to 3 lights to obtain the best results. (You may have to use a flat lighting scheme on the subject to minimize the shadows)

3. Blue Floors - Try to position lights so they are pointing in the same direction as the lens, and not straight down into the floor. This will reduce most glare to a minimum. Where this becomes a bigger problem is set pieces such as blue desks and props that pick up glare from side lights and back lights.


4. Experiment with light intensity. Four scoops positioned about fifteen feet from the wall and set to half intensity work well. Lowering a light's intensity with a dimmer also lowers it's color temperature, making it more orange, and therefore making the backing more orange, and less pure of a blue. Generally it is best to start lighting the subject first, then adding fill light to the backing to even it out.

One popular technique to minimize "the matte line" around the subject is backlighting. A straw, yellow, or CTO gel on the light helps to wash out blue spilling on the talent's shoulders and hair.


Stills

If you're just looking to make composites with Stills, your best bet might be the Knockout 2 Photoshop Plugin from Procreate. It's available in both a Macintosh and Windows version. This will mask an image even if it doesn't have a blue backing.

Source: http://www.seanet.com/Users/bradford/bluscrn.html
A good resource for Chroma Key work is: http://sharedthunder.com/bluescreen.html

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Blue Screen Shooting
Using the Mixer in the Studio For Blue Screen

The camera shooting your chroma key background will be Source A and the camera shooting your final background will be Source B. Make sure your Source B is ready to go and the Cut B button is active. Next, select A as your next source Then push the Chroma Key button. The preview screen of the mixer will not have a small cursor flashing. Use the arrow keys and flashing cursor to select the blue background around your subject and press the OK button. Use the Shift and arrow keys and the OK buttons to fine tune the chroma area. If everything looks ok push the correct button to feed to tape.

Other Uses:

Beam Me Up! (transporter effect)

Select cut "A" and next "A" with a dissolve effect. When the landing party says "energize" wait one second and hit the freeze button on the mixer. You will see the landing party frozen in the preview window. If you are recording this, try to record 2 - 3 seconds of the freeze. Then, have the actors move out of the camera view without moving the camera. Next, release the pause from your recording deck and move the T-bar from top to bottom and watch the actors disappear. To have them reappear, reverse this process by filming the room without the landing party, follow the steps above and then have the landing party move back in front of the camera.

Hole-in-the-Head Effect

By applying squares of your chroma key background paper or fabric to your actors in front of the chroma key source, you can create a number of illusions. Anything with selected chroma key color will disappear, allowing you to add whatever images you want. You can show what your actors are thinking by placing colored circles on their heads, and keying in video of a tropical island or other "thoughts". Place a colored square on their tummy and insert an image. Use your imagination!

Source: Videonics

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Blue Screen with FCE

Film your blue screen and your other footage. If you are just using a still image background only film the blue screen footage.

Import all video to FCE.

1. Place (drag) the key (blue screen) footage on the top Video track. Place the background footage or image on the bottom video track.

2. Position the Timeline playhead over the stacked clips so ou can see them in the Canvas window.

3. Select the blue screen layer by clicking it and then from the menu bar choose Effects - Video Filters - Key - Blue and Green Screen. The filter will be applied to the top clip.

4. To adjust filter settings, double-click the blue screen key layer to open it in the Viewer window.

5. Click the Filters tab so the settings for the Blue and Green Screen filter appear.

6. From the Key Mode drop-down list, select Blue.

7. Keep an eye on the image in the Canvas window, click and drag the Color Level slider to a lower setting until the color or the blue screen disappears. Drag the slider slowly so that you can see the effects in the video drop out little by little.

8. Click and drag the sliders to adjust Edge Thin and Edge Feather and tweak your work to your satisfaction.

9. Save and Render.

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How to Link to Hancock

Go to Network
Go to Local
Enter Name : student
Enter Password : xxxxxx
Find Franklin
Find Hancock
Look for the folder you want to access
Drag the folder to your Dock to make a shortcut

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Fun Shooting Techniques

- Pop in and pop out - Make objects and people suddenly disappear and reappear. Shoot a person in a chair. Stop the camera - it must be on a tripod with a trigger control handle. Have the person get out of the chair and continue filming. Stop, have them return to the chair and film again. Use this idea for other situations.

-Speed up, Slow down, reverse clips for effect

- Walk Through - A walk through makes it look like a person has walked through the camera. Have the person walk toward the camera (watch for headroom). When the actor is a few inches from the camera stop shooting. Next, have the person put their back a few inches from the camera and have the person walk
away from the camera and just as they start to walk start filming. Keeping them in motion in your final editing is important.

- Experiment with camera angles - lay on the floor or grass and have your subject walk over you as you shoot. Hold the camera at angles or even upside down for special shots and emphasis. Create illusion by holding the camera sideways and have subjects do finger push-ups against the wall - straining as they "act" it out.

- Try using slip editing. Set your camera to manual focus. Shoot an item very close up using macro and then switch to regular focus. The object in macro should go out of focus and the background come into focus.

- Shoot "night scenes" in FCE by bringing down the brightness in the Preview mode.

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