First Blue Screen Test Is A Learning Experience!

Alright! Here it is! The first blue screen test footage for the movie. As you can see, it wasn’t a complete disaster. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a fair start. I knew this was going to be difficult and this first test only cemented that fact.

What worked? Well, I was able to cut out the blue from the live action footage and merge it with the background image.

What didn’t work? To put it plainly, it's not that good.

Why? Lighting, lighting, lighting! The first rule to getting good results with Chroma Key is to have good lighting. I clearly did not have good lighting. You have to get a good, even blue in the background for Chroma Key to work. If you don’t, you get splotchy, uneven removal of the blue. That is exactly what happened here. In order to correct this problem I altered the color levels to make the blue stand out. This also brought out the blue in everything else. I countered this by tweaking the brightness, contrast and saturation. What was left was a color tone to T-Boom that didn't come close to matching the background. He is also slightly transparent at times.

So, what I learned from this is that without good video to start off with then there is no point in trying the Chroma Key process. That said, I’m going to spend the next week working with different types of blue backgrounds to see what works the best. Then I need to figure out how to light it evenly. Once I get those two things done I will hopefully have a better video.