ive always wondered

[Aaron Keast]

It looks like a straight-forward, key-lit with a black background. When ever the graphics pop up behind him, there’s a camera change, and he appears to have fill lighting added to him to give him the left side of his face and next some “flesh data”
Other times it looks like a good motion tracking job, the kind where you manually delete the spaces in between his fingers and the halo effect.
Then of course you’ve got relatively fancy pants keying system, something like the best a weatherman gets multiplied by 50.

Judging from the ligting changes, I’d say they green/blue screened him when elements were flying around him. A little spit and polish from people who make a New York living doing it every day. No problem for them.
f
In my inexperience I’d say give something like that a shot. But test looong in advance. You may actually find that cranking a couple knobs in the color keying / Color Replacement, you could come with some interesting looks. They wouldn’t look like that, though.

Oh, and those sectioned areas with the different video, I’m about to do a much less elaborate bit with some videos playing in the corners over the credits. Should just be a matter of importing the video clips, resizing them, and key framing them to appear, play, then fade. At least I hope to God that’s about how easy it’ll be. Adobe may be listening, though…

Good Luck!
-Aaron