UPLOAD

Go Green!

Special video effects are available to anyone with a cheap camcorder and $25 of software. Greenscreen is the most powerful of these, and is surprisingly easy to use. By Bill Barminski

Would you like to make a video of yourself standing on the moon? There are two ways to do it. You can build a rocket and fly there — expensive, not to mention dangerous. Or you can use a greenscreen to make it look as if you are there. Yes, a greenscreen. I hope I won’t be shattering too many illusions when I tell you that this is how they did a lot of that cool stuff in Star Wars. They placed an actor in front of a greenscreen and filmed the scene while he pretended to fight a giant space squid. A technique called chroma keying was then used to remove the green color, allowing a new piece of video to be placed behind the actor.

This is called a composite shot, and the process is called keying. In the past you needed high-end software costing hundreds if not thousands of dollars, but today you can do it for $25 plus some cheap paint and lights.

But just let me issue a word of caution: greenscreening can be tricky. There are many variables that can affect the outcome. Even professional filmmakers run into unexpected problems from time to time.

Photography by Bill Barminski

58 Make: Volume 12