Sunday 11 May 2014

Going Green Invisibly

No - I haven't joined the Green Party, painted myself or Penny green, or been decorating. Since I got the MacBook and found out that iMovie could work with green screen photos or videos I've wanted to experiment. A few days ago I spotted an excellent 'how to' on the Instructables site and immediately stuck it on Pocket for future reference.

Today I gave it a whirl for the first time. First I took some video of the rain clouds which are plentiful here at the moment. Then I looked for a subject to add to that. In the end I chose a daisy and set up a Heath Robinson 'set' to take the photograph against a sheet of green paper:

P1040536

The important thing was to try to evenly illuminate the green background so iMovie would have least difficulty in removing the colour.

Not perfect, and I think it might have been better if I masked out the daisy stem. The video wobbles a bit as I had the Lumix resting on a fence trying to hold it still against a blustery wind but the main thing was the idea worked:



For those with Macs and iMovie who want to experiment here is the link to the Instructable.

6 comments:

  1. This is good. I'll have a look at this.
    Why does the daisy change colour?

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    1. Adrian: YouTube strikes again! The original is nowhere near as blue on the daisy petals. As there is green among the yellow in the centre, that got removed along with the background green. Maybe I should have used a blue background? Some of the blue on the petals could be a result of the LED lighting and partly the way the Lumix reacts with a 'saturated' background colour.

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  2. Interesting John.

    I got a large green screen sometime ago, (free), when I got my video editing software. I might have a play with it sometime.

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    Replies
    1. Keith: That sounds ideal. With the A4 paper the daisy was about as large a subject as I could use. I have an old home made pinboard. Maybe I'll get some matt green spray paint and make a larger one.

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  3. very cool! could you have a fan on the daisy blowing from the right so it looks like it is outside blowing with the clouds?

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Thank you for visiting. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Any comment, or correction to any information or identification I get wrong, is most welcome. John

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