Green Screen Help!

[Pat Jaeger]

Hey Dettmer,

You forgot to attach the image! lol

[Dettmer Graffam]

I’m a baffoon! Here’s the image.

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Sorry to tell you this but this is the WORST chroma shot I have ever seen in my entire life! WHoever directed this should never be allowed anywhere near a chroma screen.

Everything called for a bluescreen. And the foliage should have been shot separately on black and luma keyed and then composited.

This is a complete mess. Just do the best that you can but tell whover that is in-charge that this is a near impossible task and that a re-shoot should be on the cards.

Anyways, try not to use Keylight’s Spill Suppression which can add alot of noise. Use AE’s or something better. I suspect that you’re going to lose a lot of the green that’s in the white areas of your matte so lots of green has to be added into the mix after the key.

Good Luck
RoRK

broadcastGEMs.com – the leader in customizable royalty-free animated backdrops

[Dettmer Graffam]

Oh dear! A re-shoot is not on the cards. I’ll try and do my best. How do I turn off the spill suppresser in Keylight? Isn’t it automatic? Sorry about the stupid question!

Any other advice from anyone else would be highly appreciated. Thanks a lot!

Dettmer

[Fernando Mol]

Well, if you can get it clean, then add some noise elements to distract the eye.

What is going to be the final background?

Key the shot so the soldier looks fine.

Maybe you will need to go out and shoot or take a picture of some foliage, then add one to the front and another to the back of the comp. You can animate a picture with the puppet tool.

You can mask the top part of the foliage if it is too distracting.

[Ben Griggs]

I have been messing with some equally messed up chroma shots where the lighting is just off.

My best results for footage like that came from duplicating the footage layer and messing with the levels. A couple of gradients on the sides may be needed to get it all smoothed. Once you have adjusted the duplicated layer to show crisp contrasting greens precompose it and use that layer to extract your matte.

Doing this you really damage your color but your not using color from the duplicate layer, only the matte. Used along with some junk masks you should get somewhat acceptable results however it’s quite tedious.

Past that, what is to be put in the background is what will make or break the final look. If the director won’t/can’t shoot again try to convince him to have an overcast cloudy background rather than a clear blue sky or other solids.

[Dettmer Graffam]

Dear all,

this is all fantastic advice. Thanks a lot. I am in the midst of working through the various shots…there are a few in the sequence…(Urgh!).

The far background will be a sunset with blurred out silhouttes of trees. The middle and immediate background will be some more out of foucus foliage. I have done some rough work through all the shots testing the backgrounds – after all your great advice. And because the foliage is so “busy” it does help to distract from the dubious key.

I wll try all your advice for the keying next.

I have also added some camera tracking within my virtual “set”. It is helping no end to divert attention from the problems.

Luckily it was shot on Digibeta and not HDV.

I promise to let you see the final result. I think it’s the least I can do for all your help…

I might be back with another question once I get into the keying!