The true power of green screen

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I'd call that more the "True art of Compositing" - green screen is just one tool in the process, the art is in bringing multiple elements (live video, still images, 3D elements, etc) into one seamless shot that looks completely believable.
 
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ItDonnedOnMe said:
I'd call that more the "True art of Compositing" - green screen is just one tool in the process, the art is in bringing multiple elements (live video, still images, 3D elements, etc) into one seamless shot that looks completely believable.
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Agreed.

A green screen won't magically make things better, just like shooting with Spielbergs camera won't save a crappy story. Green/Blue/whatever screens are simply a tool for generating a moving matte so that multiple images can be composited together. You could do all of the shots in that video without a greenscreen... It would be awful meticulous work of hand painting masks on every frame (I've done it, it sucks). All the greenscreen does is speed the process of pulling that mask up a bit.
 
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ItDonnedOnMe said:
I'd call that more the "True art of Compositing" - green screen is just one tool in the process, the art is in bringing multiple elements (live video, still images, 3D elements, etc) into one seamless shot that looks completely believable.
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Yea ok.

Still, I don't know about wherever you live but some film makers here don't even know what green screening or compositing is...so this helps to show them the what it can help achieve.
 
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Will Vincent said:
Agreed.

A green screen won't magically make things better, just like shooting with Spielbergs camera won't save a crappy story. Green/Blue/whatever screens are simply a tool for generating a moving matte so that multiple images can be composited together. You could do all of the shots in that video without a greenscreen... It would be awful meticulous work of hand painting masks on every frame (I've done it, it sucks). All the greenscreen does is speed the process of pulling that mask up a bit.
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Correct.

you had to paint masks on every frame? That sounds tedious...thats how they did "A Scanner Darkly"
 
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FantasyFilmProductions said:
Correct.

you had to paint masks on every frame? That sounds tedious...thats how they did "A Scanner Darkly"
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Yeah, and it was within a 20ish hr window I had to get the work done. Luckily it didn't have to be "perfect" :)

https://vimeo.com/2480307

Overall quality is pretty awful. I was pulled in last minute to assist with the edit and the roto work, had nothing else to do with the production.

Generally not a big fan of sharing most of the things I've worked on precisely for the reasons described in this: https://vimeo.com/85040589
(I'm still in the gap)

But in this case, my involvement was minimal, and without it they literally had a bunch of unusable footage. :lol:
 
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Will Vincent said:
Yeah, and it was within a 20ish hr window I had to get the work done. Luckily it didn't have to be "perfect" :)

https://vimeo.com/2480307

Overall quality is pretty awful. I was pulled in last minute to assist with the edit and the roto work, had nothing else to do with the production.

Generally not a big fan of sharing most of the things I've worked on precisely for the reasons described in this: https://vimeo.com/85040589
(I'm still in the gap)

But in this case, my involvement was minimal, and without it they literally had a bunch of unusable footage. :lol:
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Did you do the grey girl scene?
 
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This gets posted every once in a while but it never gets old. :)

Lots of indie filmmakers/viewers like to make the claim that they have never ever seen 'a green screen' that looked realistic. The thing is, if it's done well you won't notice it, like the examples in the OP.


Wunderbar! I have been wondering, instead of doing a table read for my draft episodes, how about doing it in front of a green screen?
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If you like, but why would you want to? What would be the advantage of shooting a table read in front of a green screen?
 
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FantasyFilmProductions said:
Did you do the grey girl scene?
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Scene?! More like at least half of the frames in the whole piece.. lol

Yes, everywhere there is a mix of color and B&W, there's not a green/bluescreen involved, that was all frame by frame hand drawn masks. Since she's supposed to be a 'projection' of sorts -- she's his long lost love who moved away to be in film, so his memory of her appears as a projected image -- she's flickery and grainy, scratched.. The flicker helped hide issues with the masking but it was still a huge pain in the ass. Even when it kind of appears that she's standing still, she sways and moves her head ever so slightly.

I actually met the girl in person a couple years later and had to bite my tongue, I was tempted to say, "Oh, I know you.. you move a lot." or something of the sort. :lol:
 
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Will Vincent said:
Scene?! More like at least half of the frames in the whole piece.. lol

Yes, everywhere there is a mix of color and B&W, there's not a green/bluescreen involved, that was all frame by frame hand drawn masks. Since she's supposed to be a 'projection' of sorts -- she's his long lost love who moved away to be in film, so his memory of her appears as a projected image -- she's flickery and grainy, scratched.. The flicker helped hide issues with the masking but it was still a huge pain in the ass. Even when it kind of appears that she's standing still, she sways and moves her head ever so slightly.

I actually met the girl in person a couple years later and had to bite my tongue, I was tempted to say, "Oh, I know you.. you move a lot." or something of the sort. :lol:
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lol fair enough...I hope I never have to do that.
 
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Will Vincent said:
Yes, everywhere there is a mix of color and B&W, there's not a green/bluescreen involved, that was all frame by frame hand drawn masks.
Click to expand...

Seems like a lot of those shots would be good candidates for a difference matte - at least as a starting point so you don't have to mask everything by hand. When the background & camera is static like that you can subtract it and then use a much less precise garbage matte to clean things up - it's certainly not as good as green screen, but I've used that technique when I had to put together a quick matte that wasn't planned.
 
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Partially due to web compression, but mostly the original. I don't remember if they used a weird record setting on the camera, or what.. but they had problems ingesting footage and the result was pretty terrible... Aside from wholly inadequate lighting, or shot planning, etc. ;)
 
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Cheers for that one Photon. Always good to see just how much more advanced the pro's are given their mega budgets, equipment, and experience...I always find the "how" even more amazing then the "what" on things like this. They are incredibly skilled.
 
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