Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Working with Green Screen Video
When you know in advance that you will need to composite a character or object into a different background
scene, the typical approach is to shoot the foreground action against a colored background screen that can be
easily eliminated by compositing techniques such as those described in this section. The most common type of
colored screen currently used is a
green screen
.
Toshootgreenscreenvideo,youneedaccess toagreenscreen.Mostmultimedia productionstudios,includ-
ing those of many universities and technical colleges, have all you need to take green screen footage. Alternat-
ively, it is not especially difficult to build your own green screen equipment. You can find instructions on the
Web for doing this.
For the tutorials in this chapter, you can find a brief clip of green screen video in the form of a sequence of
JPEG images in the
greenscreen
subdirectory on the accompanying CD. The clip is from footage shot by
Norman England for his film
The iDol
(
www.theidol-movie.com
) and features a character walking toward the
camera, as shown in
Figure 9-35
(also repeated in color in the color insert of this topic). There are a couple of
challenges that this particular clip presents for the compositor, and you'll see what those are and how they can
be solved in Blender over the course of this chapter.
