Green-Screen Workshop/After Effects

Today and on Tuesday we have been taking part in a green screen workshop and after effects. Green screens are used in all kinds of TV programs and films and are evident in studio introductions for News channels. In order to introduce the stories for the episode, a presenter is often used in a studio to talk a little about these before the packages are played. It is not completely essential for the brief that we use a green screen but that is something that would make it look professional to achieve a studio look. We looked at two different methods for the green screen on Tuesday. One was the traditional method with a green curtain that completely fills the background, the other was a more modern method with a green light that is seated around the camera lens and send out a green light onto a silver pop-up screen. This manages to achieve the same look as the green material, allowing you to get the classic green screen background. This was a completely new experience for me and was really interesting to see how the two methods worked. The process of setting up the modern method was a lot less time consuming and simple which takes away from the long set up process. Today, we had an after effects workshop with Ferg to learn about how to turn the green screen into a background of your choice. Rather than using our own footage we were given some pre-recorded footage of a presenter sitting at a desk that had already been green-screened. He showed us how to use Adobe After Effects to add a new background. You have to first eliminate some of the tones to make the person in the foreground one defining shape. This helps it to compliment a new background when you edit. I found this workshop quite challenging as editing is an area I struggle with. However, I found it interesting to learn a new technique and Ferg explained each step in depth so we could use it in our own projects.