Odd Chroma Keying idea, will it work?

[David Roth weiss]

[Thomas Morter-Laing] “I also would rather not pitch this idea until I know it will work, and I can’t test it because I currently have no funds for proper green screen with decent lights (a bit of a catch 22).”

Hate to be a party pooper, but…

You will not be able to pull this off in a satisfactory way without a very big set for the whole band, a giant green screen, which they’ll need to be far enough away from that their shadows don’t hit it, and lots of big, hot, and expensive lights.

And, an effect like this is not created by actually pulling the green screen out of the shot, it’s a complex composite effect added in place of the green screen in a compositing app like Nuke, Flame, possibly Combustion, and made to appear like a piece of material, and animated to appear like it’s being ripped away. If it was done in a car advert you can be certain it cost an absolute fortune.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

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A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Paolo Esposito]

I would agree 100% with David. Your best bet would be to do the effect but entirely on the green screen. You can even have the “basement background” keyed in during the transition and than cut to another shot with the actual “basement background” without keying. Although to get the best results you would need to use programs like the ones David mentioned, (nuke, combustion etc) you may get something somewhat similar in AE, there are some great tutorials out there where you can get ideas to composite a similar effect.

You may want to go over the tutorials here in the cow and at VCP to get ideas.

Hope that helps.

[David Roth weiss]

[Paolo Esposito] “You may want to go over the tutorials here in the cow and at VCP to get ideas.”

It’s a bit more complicated than that I think Paolo. Thomas would have to learn to create a realistic and dimensional fabric layer with an image bitmapped onto it, and then he would have to animate it so that it moves realistically like fabric, etc., etc., etc.

This reminds me of the old inside joke from the days of westerns, where the script reads, “they circle the wagontrain.” Those fours words occupy less than one line on a single page, but it would take a week to shoot.

Thomas’ idea is great on paper, but not very realistic I fear.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles
https://www.drwfilms.com

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing and Apple Final Cut Pro forums. Formerly host of the Apple Final Cut Basics, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[Thomas Morter-laing]

Hmmm…..hmmm…….hmmmm……………………………yeah, so thats why i suggested pulling away a physical green screen, because Im sure bitmapping an image to a keyed “layer” isnt massively hard to do (I seem to remember motion having the ability to do something like this…) But you guys are making some very good points…. back to the drawing board perhaps….

😀
Tom Morter-Laing
Freelance Editor
Certified Apple Product Proffessional, 2010
http://www.depictproductions.co.uk

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[Atticus Culver-rease]

Unless you a visual effects wiz, or know someone who is, I think you’d have better luck doing this practically rather than using green screen. You could have a sign/print shop print your backplate onto a large piece of vinyl (or preferably something with a more matte finish, you’d have to research what would be best). Then stretch it on a frame and place it behind your band, light it convincingly, and pull it away as you planned to do with the green screen.

[Jason Jenkins]

The post portion wouldn’t be too tough to pull off in After Effects with the Zaxwerks 3D Flag plug-in. The much harder part is pulling off a good chroma key shoot.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jason Jenkins] “The much harder part is pulling off a good chroma key shoot.”

No doubt. You’d need a green studio the size of a small airplane hangar depending on the angles you needed/lenses used, and number of people in the band. You would also need a pretty decent camera to keep all the details like flying drum sticks. And hope you don’t have a horn section, light spill/reflection would be killer. You’d need some lights, for sure.

Sounds like a lot of work, and fun.

Jeremy

[Sachin Desai]

Hi Thomas!

low budget is the key to invent new ideas… don’t shoot the whole band together, shoot every member at a time I hope the band is not VERY BIG… this will save your cost for big green screen and lights..

than composite it may be in after effects and if you are or a friend of yours is a good after effects user you can use after effects camera and and rightly said about the 3d flag plugin….

create whole scene in after effects 3D or may be some other compositing software

you need to be a good composite artist to pull out this effect,,,

best luck

Sachin Desai

[Gary Askham]

I’d say the biggest problem in doing it for real would be the lighting. It’s hard enough to light a green screen on it’s own but you’re suggesting lighting a green screen and then everything that’s behind it.

I like Sachin’s suggestion. Film all the elements separately and then put them together afterwards. You might not even have to make it look realistic – lo-fi can be pretty cool and effective. Highlight the bad compositing as if the band are cut out of paper, put them on different z-planes maybe using After Effects’ false 3D feature.

————————
FCP and Avid Technical Support
Air Post Production
Shoreditch – London

[Mark Suszko]

How I think I would approach this is,

1: smaller, fixed green screens, one behind each single member or pair of members and their instruments. Much easier to afford and light. They only have to cover *just enough* area around each person to pull individual keys. This lets the band still play together as one for realism, timing, and consistency. Garbage masking between the greened sections turns the entire frame into a green screen. People forget that a lot, and assume they need bigger screens than they really do.

2:Behind the band, but in front of the actual green screens, you leave an alleyway clear, where the stage hands and the prop screen can come thru. The stage hands walk thru, not with a huge green screen, but just the rolling stands or fake frame for one, with a rope or chain or piece of PVC pipe between them to maintain their distance from each other. You will have to roto the stagehands, or, have another stage hand walk behind the real stagehands, holding up a green or blue panel, which may key okay, but even if it doesn’t it will make the roto work easier… I am assuming the stagehands need to perform live with the band for reasons of dramatic timing, but if they don’t it would be simpler to shoot all their work in a separate pass, and not have to worry as much about lighting everything and tripping over everything else… If the stage hands are mimes, they can mime the action while staying in one place, and that makes the keying job easier again…. you add the left-right motion in the final compositing.

Attached to the rolling stands will be a couple of tracking balls on sticks. You will motion-track their passage thru the scene, and create the prop green screen in AE or another compositor, tracking it to the motion track you got from the balls.

3: Now you have the ability to project or map any stills or motion video and CGI cloth or boards you want onto the moving fake greenscreen, including video of a real greenscreen. The back-most layer you generated from the *real* green screen and garbage matte, you fill in with a permanent digital matte painting of the supposed airplane hangar or studio backlot or whatever it is supposed to be.

I think what I would try to do is re-write the visuals so instead of a couple of stage hands, it was maybe a crane moving the screens; something mechanical that is more easily simulated with CGI. There was already a music video or two done where the backgrounds were all curtains, and the reveals were done by dropping the curtains from the top, so as they fall down they reveal the next curtain/graphics.