Enter the Green Screen

This week was packed with some amazing “real life” experience! We stepped away from the computers, for a little while at least, and into the school’s green screen room.

UNDERSTANDING SET-UP

Waaay before you can turn on a camera and start shooting comes the set-up, or pre-production. We ran over the various components of the control room, from audio board to the text editing program used in news shows. We then entered the actual green screen room and began set-up for the camera. We ran over the basics, from mounting and the importance of someone always being with the camera, to what each button did. Onto the stage!

STAGING IT

You cannot even comprehend how long it takes to get a few seconds of shot! First, we had to actually decide what we were going to shoot. Next, came placing the actor, so we could begin lighting. This was the most intensive part. After a quick demo of the “basic” lighting techniques, mainly a three point lighting system with additional detail lights, came the laborious task of moving the actual lights. Safety is definitely numero uno at this point in production. One false move and a person can go tumbling down a ladder with a 15 pound REF light following! We ended up using 2 Vit-Kit lights and a spot light on the ground with 2 REF lights and 3 larger lights hanging from above. The final step, which the entire class forgot about whoops!, is “whiting out” the camera. This basically entails placing a white card in front of the actor and color correcting the camera.

SHOOTING

Finally came the shooting. This went relatively fast compared to set-up. We caught four different actions with everyone in the class using the camera at least once and standing in front of the camera at least once. The most difficult thing I found was remembering to leave the film running after a shot to create a buffer zone inbetween each take.

FINAL CUT AND AFTER EFFECTS

Now that the physical part was over, it was time to get to editing! For this class, we will be editing in Final Cut and compositing in After Effects. First, we opened the raw footage into a new composition and dragged it down into the timeline. We trimmed it down to one “scene”, a girl pulling apart an invisible paper. You can also edit the audio track in a movie with Final Cut, but we didn’t have to today as there was no recorded sounds. Finally, we saved the individual scene out and opened it in After Effects. It was a bit free choice today in playing around with the footage. I decided to repeat some of the steps from the first assignment and delete the background out from the scene and correcting some of the matteing with Key Light. Eventually, after further instructions from next weeks class, I will probably put in my name being stretched out in between the girl’s hands.  

Example of messing around with the footage:

-Shortened the timeline to the exact action and changed background color to back. Also corrected “character” with Key Light 1.2′s black and white matte feature.

HOMEWORK

Being as today was pretty much just demo, homework is taking the film we shot and playing around with it in Final Cut and After Effects. Next week comes the real action!

Until Later!