Best way to make a key look natural?

[Shane Ross]

[Benjamin Daines] “Basically what is the best method to making a chroma key look as natural as possible?”

MANY MANY factors. Lighting that matches what you will be keying against. Simulated wind if need be. Practice, skill, knowhow and understanding about how to composite. Practice.

[Benjamin Daines] “I do not plan on buying any additional software or plugins for FCP”

Well then, you are crippling yourself. Because the built in keyers are decent, but not the best. For keying INSIDE FCP, there is Conduit. Outside FCP you have After Effects and Shake, what both utilize Key Light. All are great options. SO if you want better looking keys, you are going to have to get additional software.

[Benjamin Daines] “Also will the 60hrtz flicker of floresent bulbs effect the quality if my key?”

They will certainly affect the “natural look” you are trying to obtain.

[Benjamin Daines] “I plan to use Floresent task lights to illuminate my green screen (the kind that takes the long tube bulbs).”

Uh…why?

Shane

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[Patrick Sheffield]

Look at: https://pistolerapost.com/reels/mv001.html

The couple on the beach? That was done with FCP’s internal keyer. But the rest on the reel were done mostly with Shake. You need well lit even greenscreen. And avoid DV – that’ll kill ya unless you know what you’re doing and you have additional software.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice Practice Practice

Patrick

[Benjamin Daines]

Only the green screen is going to be lit with the floresent lights, the talent is going to be lit with tungsten video lights with umbrella diffusers. The only reason I am using the floresent lights is because I just don’t have the budget to buy any more studio lights at the moment. The task lights will be angles at the screen and the talent will be set several feet infront of the screen so I think I will be able to keep the 2 kinds of light separate enough. Plus my video lights have a higher wattage than the floresent lights so the talent will be lit properly.

[Patrick Sheffield]

If you ARE using DV, make sure to use the Chroma smoother plugin in FCP before you key…

Also, if you want to get fancy, check out this tutorial on Light Wrap:

https://www.motionsmarts.com/tutorials/lightwrap/lightwrap1.html

If you have FCS, you’ve got Motion, so check it out.

Patrick

[Galen Fletcher]

In regards to your flourescent fixtures, if they are older and have magnetic ballasts then you may have trouble with flicker, the newer electronic ballasts shouldn’t be too bad especially with video since I’m guessing you aren’t shooting anything offspeed. Now thats expensive.
Also, make sure you have a good backlight on the talent, it will help overpower any green reflection you may get. Some DP’s like to put a bit of magenta on it as well.
I just a did film with two dance sequences in front of a 20’x60′ greenscreen and the reflectiveness of the grey dance floor that was brought in created absolute havoc.
The key to green screen is how well it’s shot, especially when using the simple tools in FCP.

[Ben Avechuco]

The lighting can make a huge difference in selling the key.
I make a commercial using background photos we bought from istockphoto.com.
The lighting was set up to mimic each photo before we recorded the actors in position.
Basically, this was done with 1 chair in a large room in my chiropractor’s office.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAdkm6urRPQ

The video was shot in HDV. FCP was the only program I was able to pull a clean key with the original HDV footage. I tried Shake as well as the Leylight in After Effects, but the HDV MPEG artifacts made it look bad. But I later added some more shots captured with DVCPRO-HD and used shake for 2 shots.

[Chris Borjis]

[Ben Avechuco] “The video was shot in HDV. FCP was the only program I was able to pull a clean key with the original HDV footage. I tried Shake as well as the Leylight in After Effects, but the HDV MPEG artifacts made it look bad.”

you pulled a clean key in FCP with good edge detail?

How did you manage that?

I’ve found the keyers in fcp just about useless, sure you can key the person out, but the edges are nearly impossible to get nice with any edge detail.

So I end up only keying with keylight in AE. It’s the only way I can get really good detail (like hair) to come through and not be a big blob of nastyness and this is with a perfectly lit background.