KEYLIGHT Problems! May be the worst shot Bluescreen ever!

[Sam Moulton]

i’m no expert at keying but my first thought was to break up the shot into various areas, maybe 4, and then work on each section. I messed with the photoshop file for a few minutes and fond that I could pull a good key of the dancers almost all the way to the middle of their legs. That would be one layer. Then I pulled a key from there to the ground, then I worked on the shadows and tried to create a shadow pass layer only. combining the 4 separate layers with quick garbage mattes to block the areas that wouldn’t key properly, then using the shadow layer as a track matte over a grey solid set to multiply over a background, i got a good result with a believable shadow. I think it would be impossible to do with only a single layer and a single application of Keylight. BTW… didn’t learn this on my own, learned it from a class i took at NAB. the instructor, cant remember his name, said that he hardly ever pulls a key with only one copy of the footage. he always isolates the problem areas and works on them separately.

[Sam Moulton]

one more thing, i didn’t try and eliminate the shadow, I tried to turn it into something I could use. the way they are lit they have to be casting shadows so they look funny without them.

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

yes, but you can always create a shadow later by taking the final key, making it a 3D layer, Tinting it black, rotating it 90 degrees and placing it on the “floor.”

Hate to sound like a broken record, but Andrew covers this sort of thing in his Crerative Cow DVD.

keeping That shadow may be limiting what you can actually do so forget about it and add it back in later.

—————————————-
Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
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Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Dan Lachevre]

Thanks for all the responses. Good to hear everyone is shocked by the lighting. Makes my grumbling feel justified!

I have actually created the shadows in the way you described Aharon. Whilst using the existing ones may look more believeable Sam, the footage is actually part of a greater scene with other shots also casting shadows from a particular light source

A few questions:

– Sam with your multiple KEYLIGHTS do you use the one footage layer and multiple Keylights or multiple Footage layers keylighted then track matted? If you got a better result than my QT I’d love to see what settings you used if possible

– Do you guys use the AE Matt Choker? It’s sometimes great, sometimes not. All you need sometimes is to simply smooth off the edge of the key to lose the aliasing but the Matt choker will sometimes need too much of the image choked to do this. Anything else I should look at?

Thanks again for all the help guys!

Danny

[Sam Moulton]

I used many layers. should have saved the project but keying stills is always easier than keying moving footage. I used one layer for the top of the frame where the spears are, one for the main body of the dancers, one for the feet, and then 2 for the shadow. all of the top layers had keylight set to show the matte and they were screened over each other to fix some gray areas, then an adjustment layer was used with levels to clean up the matte. These were all combined in a pre-comp that was used as a track matte for the original footage which cut out the everything including the shadows. The shadows were keyed out and used as an alpha matte for a dark gray layer that could be blurred and laid over a floor plate using the multiply mode adjusted for look by changing the opacity. was that clear. that’s about as much two fingered typing as i can do tonight…

[Dan Lachevre]

THANKS Sam. I really appreciate all that. If you’re ever in Sydney I’ll buy you a beer!

Did you compare your result to my final frame? Just wondering how it faired and if you’re matt choking looked better with the spears etc.

Cheers

Danny