Movie Making History of Blue and Green Screen Effects

History of Chroma Key [Music Playing] Tips & Tricks This time on Tips and Tricks we are going to take a look at the history of Chroma Key. How to process begin, and how film producers use this process over the years to help them cinematically everything from blue screen to green screen this time on Tips and Tricks. [Music Playing] Superman Returns Warner Bros. Pictures Spiderman 2 Columbia Pictures Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Warner Bros. Pictures Superman Returns Warner Bros. Pictures Batman Begins Warner Bros. Pictures Spiderman 2 Columbia Pictures The history of Chroma Key is based on the need to have the control and convenience of shooting on set, married with a beauty of shooting on location. Location shooting ranging that extremely difficult let say the middle of the ocean to the impossible, let say a battle scene in deep space is the prime instance where Chroma Key comes in to play. The idea of being able to separate the foreground and seamlessly integrate another background has driven some of the best minds in the film and TV business to come up with very solutions over the years. [Music Playing] Originally developed in the 1930’s by “A Radio Pictures.” Producers use a process that combines two or more images into one known as a traveling matt. This process was pioneered by Leinwand Done. He uses traveling mat and double exposure to create transition in such films as a 1933 musical “Flying Down to Rio.” The effects of effects of double exposure have known sometimes but Done in tend that minimizing the background of the second exposure by using a traveling mat took a big leap forward and believability. The process involves projecting the background image on to a counter mat and then optically re-photographing the result. Well, not perfect as you can see some bleed through in the airplane it was pretty impressive for 1933 and the audience has bought in to the effect. Special effects master mind Larry Butler this largely credited with the creation of blue screen during a fantasy film, “The Thief of Bagdad.” Release in 1940 by London films. The film was the first kind the future dazzling special effects as well as Technicolor. When color film became available it opens the door to new advances and key and “The Thief of Bagdad” was the first film to use the Chroma Key process. By using three strips of film one for red, one for green and one for blue Butler was able to arrange the original negative a newly imprinted positive strips in such a way that the blue negative and green positive films strips create a pretty solid mat that could be composited with new footage shot against the blue screen. These are all run through and optical printer so that the final film prints will show the finish composite. Well, not yet a perfect key due to the limitation of the equipment at the time. The basic concept was use in color film compositing until the advent of digital technology. Arthur Windmere began to develop even more blue screen techniques by creating the ultra violet traveling mat process in 1958 adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel “The Old Man and the Sea.” [Music Playing] Star Wars Episode V The Empires Strikes Back Unfortunately, the process was extremely time consuming as the film how to be combine one frame at a time. The Chroma Key process was finely perfected by Richard Edlund after he created a quad optical printer for the Empire Strikes Back in 1980 [Music Playing] The quad optical printer was the key to taking rough and a long process making it easier and much more accurate with better results for the final shot. [Music Playing] Two projectors, a film camera and beams meter combine the images together one frame at a time. This part of the process had to be very carefully controlled to insure the absence of black lines. During the 1980, mini computers were use to control the optical printer to get it just right. [Music Playing] They switch from blue screen to green screen largely reflects to switch to video in the late 70’s. [Music Playing] Although blue screen is very complementary to human skin tone and better with film due to the blue motion layer film strips contain. Green screen became the favorite in the video world, because digital camera retain more detailed in the green color channel. It also requires less like and has a higher illuminance value than blue. In the past decade the use of green has become more dominant in videos special effects. Also, the green background as favorite over the blue for outdoor shooting where the blue sky might appear in the frame and could actually be replaced in the process. CGI are computer generated imagery is now use for the majority of Hollywood releases. The principles are the same as working with the green screen. The only difference being the background is constructing on the computer in stead of shooting an existing location. The effort that generation of film makers poured in the special equipment and techniques in order to pull a good key was intense and difficult requiring both artistic sense and a technical mastery of the media. The next time you shoot some green screen footage and simply click the Chroma Key effect with you mouse spear a thought for those uncelebrated men behind the scenes, who made the whole process possible. As you can see green screen is still very popular and very useful in video today. In our next segments we are going to take a look as some simple tips and tricks on how you could use this effect to make you videos. [Music Playing] Video Maker Camcorder. Editing. Computer Video-Audio &Video Production. DVD www.Videomaker.com