[Don Balch]

Some instruments will be easier than others. Drums, for instance, will be easier because they’re stationary.

1. shoot drummer playing the drums — this is your evaporation layer.
2. shoot drummer paying air drums — this is your results layer. You’re right, a greenscreen barrier is necessary to serve as an interaction point to stop the drumsticks. Otherwise, the stick will float right through the drum.
3. mask the evaporation layer until just the drums show
4. position the results layer beneath the evaporation layer.
5. Find a tutorial on ‘object-to-dust’ or smoke on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0chai-EkBY might be a good start
6. Basically, you’ll need to do some sort of transition of the evaporation while revealing the smoke. The tutorial will show you how to do this.
7. Might play with the opacity of the smoke.
8. Even if the initial footage is not shot perfectly, the transitioning smoke will hide most flaws.
9. For the best effect, ensure you have include plenty of objects / layers before and behind the drummer along the Z axis. This is needed to ensure it appears as if the drums vanish from the middle of the set rather than being wiped from across the screen.
10. Add a blur to the foreground and background objects / layer to mimic depth of field.

I’m just winging it with this advice, so it won’t get you all the way there, but this is where I’d start.

[Don Balch]

Thanks! I hadn’t thought of that, and for shots that do not require actors to move much, I think it’s a quick, useful solution.

[Don Balch]

Thanks,

To get a better key and achieve the two F-stop difference, I dropped the brightness of the eight bulbs, increased the subject lighting a bit and am toying with 200 vs 400 ISO.

For the full-body shots, I bought a .40 wide-angle lens converter that will fit my 1.8 lenses. Am planning on purchasing a Minolta 28mm 2.8 lens.

To maximize space, I’m thinking about lining the side walls with something magenta. As both side walls are outside of the set, my thinking is that the diffusion might create a more neutral spill that wouldn’t be removed in the keying process and would basically allow actors more room to move. Would this work? Some people advise using a magenta gel filter on the back light to adjust the spill tone–not the same, perhaps, but similar. Would that work?

[Don Balch]

Sorry… I thought I posted my link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rtnVJ-T73Y