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July 2010

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The Keys to Shooting Greenscreen Give yourself enough time, light it right and plan ahead. By Randi Altman portant, of course, but pros realize they can get away with a little more thanks to today’s tools. Meanwhile, DSLR cameras are making their way onto greenscreen stages and come with their own set of challenges.While it provides a gorgeous pic- ture, it is a compressed format. Some have solutions that include existing tools meant to deal with HDCAM footage, others go in knowing what they are up against and work around it. W GREEN ON THE GO Shooting green at different locations can be chal- lenging, and visual effects pros need to be prepared for anything. For this Kia spot, Framestore created rapping hamsters by replacing actors’ heads, arms and legs with CG appendages. “There are such a huge variety of situations you will be in when shooting greenscreen,” explains cre- ative director John Bair of NYC ’s Phosphene (www.phosphenefx.com).“One day you might walk onto a set that’s got a perfectly-built and perfectly-lit wall of green.The next day you need to pull off a shot very quickly and just throw up some green, whether it’s the craft services area or anywhere.” A situation just like this came up recently for Phosphene and Bair while they were working on HBO’s original movie You Don’t Know Jack, about Dr. Jack Kevorkian and starring Al Pacino. The movie looks back at how Kevorkian found his way into physician-assisted suicide and includes interviews the doctor did with patients in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. A big part of the visual effects work was shooting Pa- cino (playing Kevorkian) greenscreen and composit- ing him into that VHS interview footage. “There was a day where we were planning to shoot greenscreen in a certain — and not ideal — location later in the day,” explains Bair.“Suddenly we realized there was time to shoot it right then and there, so we found a small side room in a restaurant across the street; they let us put up a greenscreen and we shot some scenes with Al Pacino — all of 20 Post • July 2010 www.postmagazine.com ith keying software more advanced and stable than ever before, effects pros working with green, blue or other color screens can now focus on the job at hand. Lighting is still im-

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