Few things are important for keying:

- shoot your footage in progessive mode.
I don't know what (kind of) camera you use, but fullHD at 4:2:2 would be preferable: 4:2:2 has more 'colorinfo' which makes it easier to key. I don't know what the format of the end result has to be, but shooting at 1080p and downsizing has one big advantage: possible borderlines get smaller too.

- check whether the piano 'fits' the green screen when placing is on your desired position. But be aware not to move it too close to the greenscreen, because it may cause spill (the green will reflect green light to your subject if you place it too close to the screen)

Sometims you must cheat to get things workable 😉 :
- when zooming out is making things difficult: maybe a cut to a total is a solution. Perhaps some one can mask that shot for you in After Effects if you can't key it?
- if the pedal is causing headaches: ignore the pedal

I'm not very familiair with FC Express so I can't anwser these questions...

Good luck!

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Audiovisual Designer - making corporate films, commercials & short films - http://www.brokxmedia.nl

BTW, maybe you can find a lotof anwsers in here:
http://www.filmmaking.net/discussion/forums/go/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10204

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Audiovisual Designer - making corporate films, commercials & short films - http://www.brokxmedia.nl

If I understand correctly, it sounds like you'll have to shoot the piano separately with a green screen and comp it in with the rest of your shot. So:

1) when shooting your chromakey footage of the piano, you'll have to work hard to match the camera angle from which you'd be viewing it if you were standing in the position of where your camera filmed the forest footage.

2) use a lot of diffused light to create the overcast lighting. That is, unless you can get the piano outside on an overcast day to shoot, to math the green screen lighting near-perfectly. You can find out more about this here: ?url="http://chromakeygreen.org/green-screen-lighting/green-screen-lighting-standard-setup"?green screen lighting?/url?

3) And, as WalterB said, shoot the chromakey footage in fullHD if possible. Higher resolution is better when you will be keying your shots.

With that shot, it's just a matter of compositing the different pieces of footage together using chromakey software to apply the effect.

hope that helps ya

Filmmakers and students of ?url="http://www.chromakeygreen.org/"?chromakey green?/URL? screen technique may benefit from checking out my blog. Happy filmmaking 🙂

Excellent first post, David.

Welcome to filmmaking.net

I think the way you have described it sounds good.
I think the issue with the pedal can be solved practically - Surely the forest floor was just mainly dead leaves? So could you not cover the section of floor under the pedals with leaves to create a forest floor - Shooting it from a slightly high angle at first as you pan up will mean you do not need a vertical background.

Secondly for the door I agree you should have a greenscreen just inside the door. Then:
1) render the first shot creating the piano in the forest
2) Then chroma key the door shot and put Clip 1 behind it.

Rob - UK

This may be basic but I've had my best success with green screen when I've had several high output lights dedicated solely to the green screen (to get it completely evenly lit) and have used a big monitor rather than looking through the viewfinder to check it (there is always a slight difference).

Also, separating the subject from the green screen with separate lights is critical. I saw somewhere that AE had a new keying feature that looked amazing...maybe too good to be true, but the subject was lit so as to be as "separate" as possible from the green screen and it looked like it worked pretty well.

I'm going to suggest that you visit www.cinematography.com and do a search for "green screen" for more research.

In general, your green should be lit separately from any of your talent or items to be keyed. You also want the green to be far enough away from the subjects to avoid getting green kickback that could make it more difficult to cut the key later in post.

And to be sure that you are lighting the green properly, you should NOT be trusting a viewfinder or monitor for this. Ideally, you'll use an incident meter and a spot meter AND/OR a scope so that you can accurately see if the green is lit evenly.

The best way to light a large green screen is with LARGE soft sources and/or KINO FLOS or the sun, of course. 🙂

Brian Dzyak
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