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| Screenshot from Painting with John Season 2 trailer © HBO |
John and his friends aren't riding horses through the woods. They're standing in front of a blue screen. Or a green screen. Either way, the technique is called chroma key. It's what weather forecasters use to show big animated maps behind themselves.
And it got me wondering if I have a chroma key option too. According to Justin Odisho's YouTube tutorial, I do. So I tried it out on the latest episode of Creating Fashion with Laurel.
Using my gimbal to keep the camera steady, I did a few passes over my mother's iron. I shot it in such a way that the angle of the iron would change as it moves.
I used a piece of my mother's fabric for the screen. It doesn't seem to matter what color it is, as long as there isn't any of that color in the subject.
The Ultra Key effect in Adobe Premiere pro is kind of like the magic wand tool in Photoshop. The wrinkles in the fabric made for an inconsistent shade, so it took some doing to select it all without selecting the iron. Next time I'll use bristol board instead of fabric.
Ultra Key removed the purple from every frame of the video, creating a video transparency. Notice my mother writes her name on her tools so they don't go missing when she's teaching in classrooms.
This diagonal wipe moves from left to right, revealing the next video clip. Transitions are a big challenge when editing. They can be jarring and distract from the flow of the story.
By covering the harsh diagonal with the iron, the transition now blends with the images. I matched the pace of the iron to that of the diagonal, so the one would remain over the other as they move across the screen.
The iron effect is right at the beginning of this episode, at 0:25. I made another chroma key effect using my mother's shears (her big scissors). They fly across the screen at 28:38.
Now that I know how to do this, I'm going to be doing it a lot. I figured I should take the time to note what started me down this video collage path. Thank you Painting with John!
