Need help with Keying

[Steve Roberts]

You’ve just learned a difficult lesson. The background must be evenly lit and bright enough (but not too bright) to be seen by the keying software as a saturated green (or blue). If it’s too dark or too bright, it loses saturation and starts to look like areas in the talent.

That said … if you have access to the Pro verion or Production bundle, try using the Keylight effect — it’s a separate install on the AE CD. If, however, you only have the standard version with Color Key, all is not lost.
The most important keying is done around the edges of the talent. Draw masks called “garbage mattes” roughly around the talent, hopefully cutting out the worst of the background. Once you’ve done that, apply color key and click on one color in the remaining background. Apply it again, clicking on another color. Keep doing that until the area around the talent is keyed out.

If that doesn’t work, you have two recourses:

1. Reshoot.
2. Rotoscope. This is where you draw masks on the footage that follow the talent. It can be a royal pain in the behind. Do it once and you’ll never light greenscreen badly again. 😉

There are rotoscoping tips on the COW: use the search function at top left. I’ll just add that when drawing masks, look for extremes of movement or shape, and place your mask shape keyframes there. Let AE interpolate between.

Anybody else?

Steve