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Keying a Suit
Hello.
Recently I’ve been trying out a concept. What I want is a white silhouet, or outline, to walk around. Now, I have two different approaches to doing this. First, shoot everything twice, second time on a green/bluescreen, and use that data for the outline. This technique is demonstrated here:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=UaS8DsLFMqwThe second one is a little more blunt. Using a certain fetish suit, I have my actress basically walking around wearing a bluescreen. However, due to my lack of experience, lighting equipment and better video equipment, this is proving difficult. Here’s a frame of what I’ve shot:
https://img147.imageshack.us/my.php?image=keysuitih9.pngNow, I know it’s backlit and the colour bleeds over a little. So, if I want to use this footage, I could just manually make a mask over the suit. However, is it still possible to use it the way I intended? When I try to keylight it, it doesn’t get such a good effect. Is this because the footage is not good enough, or because I’m not good enough (yet)?
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2 Replies
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There are probably a few reasons why your second technique is not working well. You’ve already hit on a few of these. Lighting, for example, is not ideal. One of the nice benefits of a green/blue screen is that a screen is relatively flat and can be lit more evenly than a person. Also the color of your suit is an almost even mixture of green and blue, but most keyers work on the principle of there being a large difference between one channel of the ‘screen’ color and the other two channels in the screen, in addition some of the elements in your environment are almost exactly the same color as the suit.
In the specific example image that you posted a red suit would likely work much better, but then in shots with red elements (natural wood, human skin, etc.) you would face problems. I think a better solution might be to use a black matte fabric suit and light your environment brightly (but, of course, don’t overexpose). It should be easier to control the lighting of your environment than the lighting/color of your subject. Then you can use a luma key (or even Channel > Invert and Color Correction > Curves) to generate a matte for the black suit. I haven’t done this myself, but it seems to me that it would be the best bet.
Darby Edelen
Lead Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Thanks Darby and Dave! The problem with experimentation and inexperience is that sometimes, things don’t work out. I don’t have a lot to do, so I think I’ll manually rotoscope these shots, and when the time comes for the actual shoot, I’ll keep those shots as brief as possible. I only need them for when the actress actually physically interacts with the screen, and rotoscoping, like shooting on film, is something I feel I should do at least once in my life.
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