Chroma keying

[Douglas Spotted eagle]

Hi Brent,
Keying is a tool/workflow that allows you to shoot a subject in front of a single-colored screen, and then extract that person from the scene, placing them anywhere you’d like.
If for example, you’d like to put your child into the Coliseum of Rome, you’d need to record your child in front of a solid colored background (green is preferred for digital) and you’d need a still or video of the Coliseum.
The Chromakey tool is one of a few tools that allows you to extract your child from the solid color background.
On the COW and on the VASST site, there are several tutorials teaching the most simple, and most complex methods of using the Chromakey tool. The VASST DVDs also cover this tool.
It can be a very fun process, and opens the door to infinite creative opportunities.

Douglas Spotted Eagle
VASST

Certified Sony Vegas Trainer
Aerial Camera/Instructor

[Danny Hays]

Also lighting is very important when chromakeying. Getting the green screen evenly lit and backlighting the forground subject is very necessary if you use the chromakey plugin in Sony Vegas. It does not have spill supression. Spill supression helps remove any green than may show up on the edges of the forground, so that’s why backlighting the subject help with this. Some people use a magenta gell on the backlight since it’s the opposite color of green. Putting as much space between the screen and the forground subject also helps in reducing spill. If your shooting standard def DV footage, I always put a chroma blur plugin before the chromakey pluging in the chain and set the blur to medium. this helps alot with the jaggy edges commonly seen when chromakeying DV footage. Hope this helps, Danny Hays