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Chroma key technique
Hi all,
I’ve got a bit of a head scratcher….
We have a series of chroma key shoots coming up for high end sports clients. The first batch of shoots is going to be shooting professional footballers (soccer), and we need to film them doing 3-4 tricks and flicks with a football and another with them turning to meet the camera and smiling. Obviously we need to shoot at high frame rate and shutter speed to avoid motion blur, but here is our problem.
The client wants to use the newest footballs that are available to professional leagues – they will be brand new, mostly white, but with patches of black/multicolour on them. Because they are brand new they are very shiny, and picking up reflections of the green surface – this makes keying very difficult.
Is there any lighting techniques, or a spray, or shine remover that we can apply to the football to stop the glare and reflections?
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5 Replies
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Yeah, I would think you could just spray the heck out of it and it would knock down the shine enough. You could use real dulling spray… although for something that lasts longer and will withstand a lot of handling I’d just head to the hardware store and pick up some satin or matte Krylon clear spray in the paint department. Works well.
You could also “polish” the ball with fairly fine steel wool to take some of the shine off… but you’d have to be careful not to damage the images.
And of course you’ll want to light with sources and from angles that will minimize reflections, but that’s the obvious part.
If the ball design contains both green and blue prepare to do a fair bit of garbage matting or even rotoscoping in post.
[Tom Sefton] “Obviously we need to shoot at high frame rate and shutter speed to avoid motion blur”
Well, you said “obviously,” but, it’s not really. You said “high frame rate” because I guess this is slow-mo footage? And you want high shutter speed to kill the motion blur because you’re wanting that strobby staccato action-movie “narrow shutter” look? Or are their other reasons?
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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No that’s exactly why Todd – thanks for your post though.
I’ll have to try and find some dulling or Krylon spray. We can’t steel wool the ball because they know it will scratch it and stop it looking brand new!
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This stuff will work as well or better than “real” dulling spray… probably a lot better actually. At a fraction of the price….
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Roll-on anti-perspirant that is water-based can also work as dulling spray. Cleans up with damp paper towel. Takes shines off baldl heads and soccer balls.
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If you’ve got someone with craft skills and patience, you also might try taking fresh rolls of white and black gaffers tape and do careful tape overlays on the surface of the balls. That will give you an extremely matte surfaces and has the advantage of removing without damage to the props.
Just another option if you can’t “spray” them dull enough.
FWIW.
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