Evaluation

Overview

For this project we were set the task of using green screen to composite real life footage. As the project was supposed to have a personal theme I decided to recreate the journey I take home every weekend to see my baby daughter.

As I go home on the train I thought this would be an interesting project to try and put together, and after discussing it with ken we also came up with the idea of me falling asleep on the train and having a dream.

As I have gone into quite a lot of detail of how I put my project together on my journal, I will briefly discuss the different stages I went through to complete my project.

After finalizing my idea the first thing I did was to go out and obtain all the elements I needed to put my project together. First I started off by filming a back plate for when I get off the train. This involved taking a Canon XF100 and a tripod back home to Leicester with me, to film the train I normally catch to my home town pulling into the station. The day was pretty over cast so there were not a lot of shadows, but luckily there were other people on the platform to get on the train, which I think added a bit more realism to the shot.

Next I wanted to do the back plate for looking out of the window, in the shots where I am sat on the train. So the following weekend I took my camera back with me, and sat it on some books so it had a decent steady shot out of the train window. Unfortunately I think due to the speed of the train the footage was unusable so I set about different ways of obtaining this shot. What I did was to look on the internet and after viewing lots of videos decided on one I found on YouTube, which I believe is set in America, but was the closest to looking like the UK. 

Next I went out and got my photograph for the shot inside the train carriage. I took about thirty pictures all together with a Nikon D50, so I had plenty to go on with.

I then went into Adobe After Effects to start putting together the inside of the train shot. I did this by first taking the interior photograph and carefully masking out the window, and placing the window footage below it. I then duplicated the photograph and shrank it to add some depth to the window frame.

Just after Easter, ken and I then went into the green screen studio to film the shots of me on the train and walking down the platform. We set up two Kino Flo lights and a deflector to film both the shorts as I have explained in my journal, so that the lighting and shadows were as accurate as can be. We did several takes so that I had plenty to choose from.

Now I had all of my shots done I had to put the whole project together. To do this I used Adobe After Effects. I keyed out my green screen footage using Keylight 2.1 and placed it over the relevant back plates. After keying out I still had a lot of masking to do, which took the most time of all.

I then added shadows using a mixture of masks and duplicated layers, the whole time applying colour correction techniques to help match up my footage. I then added extra elements like a vignette to add extra shadows to the footage and also to draw the viewer to the center of the composition.

After I was happy with everything I then did my final colour correcting. I used an adjustment layer and placed it over the top of everything. I added a curves adjustment, tint and a glow to help make the colours more realistic, and you can see the results of this in my journal.

I then added shots of my daughter for the dream sequence that I had pre-composed earlier and placed them in to the shot, using a white solid to fade from reality into the dream sequence. After I was happy I pre-composed everything and moved it into a new composition where I then added a twirl effect which is used as the transition into the dream.

Then I rendered out the whole project as an uncompressed AVI so not to lose any quality, and took it into Adobe Premiere Pro for editing and adding the sound effects. I found all of my sound effects on YouTube and used Adobe Sound Booth to convert them to WAV files. All that was left to do now was to put the sounds in place and do some test renders and correct any errors. I then rendered out my finished project using the ‘match sequence settings’ option in Premiere Pro to get the best quality possible.

Problems / Help

The most help I had throughout this project was from ken when we went into the green screen studio to film my project. This is because he has such a great knowledge of lighting and how to get around problems. Thanks to his help I think my footage is many times over better than what I could have achieved by myself, and what I have learned from these experiences have been invaluable.

Other help I got was online in the form of tutorials. This was the case when I came to keying out my green screen footage. As I had never gone through this process before my initial attempts looked poor at best, with bits of my body completely missing. Luckily I found a great tutorial on videocopilot.net, http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/basic_color_keying/ which helped me obtain a much better result for my keying, as I have explained in much detail in my journal. I also found a really good tutorial on the same website http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/mid_air_emergency/ that helped me with my colour correction. It helped me in a sense that it showed me the different colour correction effects I needed to use like curves adjustments, tint and glow effects and how best to utilize these effects within my project.

Over the course of the project I also encountered many problems, some of them due to errors of my own making. An example of this was when we were in the green screen studio and we had just filmed both the shots I needed. Ken then noticed that the camera was set to interlaced, and as I could not remember if my back plates were interlaced or progressive we had to re film both shots, just to make sure. This made the session twice as long, purely down to my error.

As I mentioned I also had difficulty recording the shot out of the train window, was there was too much glare and reflection coming off the window when I filmed it on the train, and it was a dull day. After this I decided to source a clip off of the internet.

Another big problem I had was with the chair I had used to sit on in the green screen studio. We placed a green hoody over the back of the chair in hope that it would key out properly when it came to removing the green. Unfortunately the green was to dull and when I tried to key it out most of my body and face disappeared to, and no matter what I tried I could not get it to look good. So I then had to go through the clips every two to five frames, depending on my amount of movement and mask out the back of the chair. This was a very time consuming and tedious process.

Changes I Would Make

If I could go back and change anything or have had more time, I would have changed a number of things.

First off when filming my back plate I would have noted down if it was interlaced or progressive, and at what angle the platform was adjacent to the camera, so that we wouldn’t have had to film so many takes in the green screen studio, and my footage would have also had a better perspective scale to it for the platform shot.

While in the studio I would have set the camera up so that the back of my chair was just out of shot, either this or use a backless chair. This would have saved me a lot of time but it is also another lesson I have learned from this project.

Since completing the project I have also noticed a number of problems with the finished work. One of these is the shadow that appears on the window when I am sorting out my hair after waking. It looks a little odd and I believe there may be a partial mask over it I have left on by mistake. Also the train window is very blown out and could do with having a bit more contrast. I would also like to add some more reflections to my face, as when the footage brightness changes the lighting on me doesn’t. I will be changing all of these problems and adding the reflections for my show reel.

Conclusion

Over all considering at the start of this project I had not really experimented with green screen keying and compositing, I feel my project has had a positive outcome, and that the quality of my work is of an expected standard. I have learned a lot of invaluable experience from doing this module, from learning how to key, how to set up cameras and lighting and also what not to do during these processes, which sets me up well for the future.