Scroll down to watch two videos about how to Green Screen.
My day isn’t complete unless I top it off with The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. I positively LOVE the guy and think he is a comic genius. (Jon Stewart too.)
So when I saw the other day that he was having another green screen challenge, I knew I had to take it! Last time, George Lucas entered but didn’t win. (Obviously his video was the best, but Stephen Colbert was nice enough to actually award the prize to a regular Jane who didn’t have a multi-million dollar budget and all the Star Wars digital effects at her disposal.)
Here is how the contest worked. Comedy Central posted a video of John McCain giving a speech in front of a green background. They had actually erased the original background and replaced it with a solid lime green background. Lime green is the color most often used for chroma-key effect. In fact using green is so common that chroma key technique is known as green screen technique. With the proper video editing software, you remove all the lime green and replace it with anything else you want.
I downloaded the video clip, (it was in .mov format which is quicktime) and drug it into Final Cut Express. I put the clip on my timeline on video line #2. Then I applied the green screen filter to McCain and put the replacement video in the time line on video line #1, underneath the shot of McCain.
The green screen filter takes out all the lime green so you can see whatever video is beneath it in the timeline.
The instructions of the green screen challenge were to take the given video clip of John McCain giving a speech and somehow make it entertaining. (Were they implying that John McCazin is boring? Surely not!)
I ended up doing the first thing that popped into my mind. Honestly, it is not really my feelings toward John McCain, but rather my feelings on the last 8 years of republican rule.
Personally, I was rather pleased with the final video and am anxiously waiting to see if it gets selected for the Stephen Colbert show. (Update. It didn’t. Waaaa.)
Watch the show and keep your fingers crossed for me. Here’s the video. After you watch it, you can watch the second video posted here showing exactly how I did it in Final Cut Express.
I also put together this video showing how I did the green screen effect and how I used key frame animation to send Mr. McCain swirling into oblivion. This video tutorial gives you a detailed explanation of how I did it using Final Cut Express video editing software.
If you have questions about these, or any other video production techniques, please use the contact us section of the website to drop me an email. I love hearing from Video Production Tips readers!
Lorraine Grula
Internet Video Gal
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2 Comment(s)
By Bob@CommonSenseConversation on | Reply
Fair video production video, poor site marketing. You just assured that you won’t make many sales to conservatives. Of course, you probably don’t want any of that nasty filthy lucre anyway…at least not from conservatives.
By Internet Video Gal on | Reply
Hi Bob.
There you go again…making rush judgements and assumptions.
Lorraine