The background doesn’t have to be a green screen.
This means it can be very difficult to remove the entire green from the scene which leaves you with artifacts-mainly around your actor where the task is the most difficult-that immediately give away the illusion.Īs I alluded to earlier, Sony Vegas software features a handy Chroma Keyer filter that works quickly and effectively in situations where you were able to shoot against a nice, evenly lit background. Every little wrinkle in the cloth causes shadows and those shadows make it difficult to achieve an effective key. You quickly learn how difficult it can be to light the shot properly. This often means you’re attempting to shoot in front of a piece of green cloth hung behind your actor. Naturally, we can’t all afford the perfect setup of a Hollywood sound stage and thus we resort to those resources we can afford. If you’ve ever attempted to use the technique, you have probably quickly learned about some of the challenges involved. But poorly executed, the chroma key technique can quickly brand your work as the height of amateurism.
If done right, keying effects can be totally convincing to the point that you might think Spiderman is really perched on the ledge of that high-rise. You may even have already used Vegas software’s Chroma Keyer filter in order to place an actor into an environment that you couldn’t afford-either financially or as a matter of safety-to get to in reality. In this case, we’ve put our handsome actor at the side of pit row at the race track. Figure 1: With chroma keying techniques, you can place an actor into an environment that it would not normally be feasible or even possible to get to.