Surfer Dude Studios

The second assignment for the Future learn Visual Effects for Guerrilla Filmmakers course. This was a one week assignment that focused on Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying. a visual effects/post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on color hues (chroma range). The technique has been used heavily in many fields to remove a background from the subject of a photo or video - particularly the newscasting, motion picture and videogame industries. A color range in the foreground footage is made transparent, allowing separately filmed background footage or a static image to be inserted into the scene. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production. This technique is also referred to as color keying, colour-separation overlay (CSO; primarily by the BBC), or by various terms for specific color-related variants such as green screen, and blue screen.

Process

The principal subject is filmed or photographed against a background consisting of a single colour or a relatively narrow range of colours, usually blue or green because these colours are considered to be the farthest away from skin tone. The portions of the video which match the pre-selected color are replaced by the alternate background video. This process is commonly known as "keying", "keying out" or simply a "key".

The car

In this situation students were supplied with three pieces of footage;

• The actor simulating driving a car with a green background,
• The actor wearing a green t-shirt, simulating driving a car with a green background,
• Stock footage of a background, shot from a moving car.

There were to be two pieces of completed footage, one with the driver in his jacket, one with just the green t-shirt.