This set is a four part tutorial that covers shooting for chroma key, keying your footage, converting to transparent flash and installing the player. Any questions? Feel free to ask them in the fourm.

  Shooting for Chroma Key

The first thing you need to do is video yourself against a green screen. The screen should be even, smooth and lit to produce rich color. Here are some tips that will help produce excellent results:

• Use a wrinkle-free screen (green is best for video)
• Light screen evenly
• Position talent at least 3 feet from screen
• Use rim light on talent
• minimize spill of green on talent
• less (light) is more

Budget Setup (what you can start with):

• Green Screen Paper  or flex screen
• Two work lights with 600 watt bulbs
• Diffusion material (Tough Spun)
• Single chip DV camera

The idea here is that the talent lighting will illuminate the background enough to pull a key. I've done it, it works, it's inexpensive. The diffusion is critical to minimize the shadows on the background and soften the light on the talent.

Optimum Setup (what I use):

• Screen by eefx.com
• 3 Chip DV Camera (Sony PD-150 or similar)
• Lights by Pacific Coast Lighting Systems for talent key and fill
• Lights by Home Depot (HD) for screen (daylight fluorescence)
• Lowel ViP-Light for rim light
• VIDEO: My Portable Set Up

The rim light should be placed high and angled down on to the talent. This adds a slight rim of light that helps when you go to key and also when compositing.

Key and Fill light are film terms. Key refers to the main light and fill, well that "fills in the other side. Why not have two lights or one and light head on? Well the talent looks best when there is some 'modeling' or 'shape' to the face. Ideally, you want a nice round look and not a flat look that comes with one main light or two lights of equal strength.

  Keying Your Footage

Here are tutorials on keying your footage using various tools:

Using Ultra 2
Using AfterEffects
Using Vegas
Using Composite Lab Pro

Converting Alpha Footage to Transparent Flash

This tutorial shows you how to take the "Alpha" footage (video with an alpha channel) and convert it to transparent flash.

Installing the People on your Page Transparent Flash Player

Now we bring it all together and install the POYP (Transparent flash) Player.