I offer this as advice to others new to video editing who wish to try these techniques


When you go beyond a single timeline and start blending photos or other video on a secondary timeline you are in effect dabbling in PIP and/or chroma-key technology. That can lead to wishing to record a video against a bluescreen or a greenscreen, using chroma-key to mix the topmost video into a background.

Regardless of what you read on the web or elsewhere, here are some tips I can vouch for, having done PD green screen for a while now.

1. Lighting with stage or studio lights can be a disaster. The reason is, getting it evenly lit - the human eye just cannot detect the minor difference in intensity or even-ness of lighting. Chroma-key depends on the background having the same color, luminance,intensity all over or you will get black sparkle or flaws when the image is processed in the editor.

2. The color of the background is almost unimportant. I have used green, pale blue and plum colored with the same results. The reason is the chroma-key is a spot color of a very specifc hue and your eyes, hair, clothing etc are unlikely to be an exact match, so almost any color will do except beige or yellow which seem to not work well.

So how do you get perfect lighting.? You need absolutely flat lighting and you have a free source - Daylight, but only when its constant during the recording, flat full cloud cover in UK is fine, meaning full cover clouds, not clouds with blue sky where the sun is constantlay breaking through because the light intensity and color changes visibly.

3. Choose a room with as large a window as possible. If you have net curtains, remove them or make them stretch flat and so not having folds or gathers or patterned flowery details. Pick a wall opposite the window and maybe 10 feet away or further.

4. Pin or nail a bedsheet (my pale-blue experiment) Make sure its flat with no wrinkles if possible. I nailed mine to the picture rail and skirting board with push-pins. My plum color experiment was a heavy blanket in thick polyester and was fuzzy but it was still nailed up flat as could be.

5. Next, place your subject about 2 feet or more away from the wall so the sheet or blanket is out of focus if possible which reduces any flaws in creases or other surface detail.

6. Place the camera as near the window as possible aimed at the subject and wall, zoom to crop with the subject in center and only the sheet or blanket in the background. If you can, leave a border area around the subject so you can crop again in edit if there are any sparkle flaws in the corners.

Try to shoot while the cloud lighting is flat and constant. If the sun breaks through, stop until its cloudy again. I did mine in southern Scotland in april-september but it depends where you live.

I guarantee this technique will work perfectly and the chroma-key will work well. (studio lighting I tried was so difficult to get flat even lighting in a small room and results in dark areas when you do the chroma key)

Finally, a variant of bluescreen is matte work where a special photo or image is blended over a video shot to give the impression that the background has a feature which is not there. Horror movies and SciFi make use of this to fool the viewer into thinking that mountains, castles etc are in the background and this is the staple of Hollywood post production. I include some samples and how-to below.




I have published some of these videos elsewhere but here they are together as samples to creating bluescreen and matte work - enjoy !


Successful BlueScreen at Home
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC5wUUDUuOw

BlueScreen Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exv9yqgefNE&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL


Making Mattes in PowerDirector
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQk-HDW4diU&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Mattes Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRhTCqlSpFA&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

and some actual finished videos ....

Ron in Paris (Humor)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLOXPbWC7C4


Ron in Paris Part 2 (Humor)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etat6YUGQQ4&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL


Sean Connery (humor)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5G4oyfSFDs&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL
If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem