Basement green screen set

Basement green screen set

This is my low-rent, quick-and-dirty green screen set in a corner of our basement. Annotated flicker image is here. Lighting and video pros can probably offer a dozen ways to improve on this but –like so much in life– I stop as soon as I hit good enough. I probably have no more than $50 bucks in this set-up. Next project is a graffiti mural on one wall.

Chroma Key effect with CamTwist

Greenscreen

I finally figured it out. Sort of. If you can count stumbling on the right configuration and being unable to do it twice in a row "figured it out." But I now know that it can be done. (The background image is lobby of our new offices in Dallas.)

My setup is pretty crude. Two flood lights from Lowe’s and a few yards of green felt on the basement wall. It’s pretty clear that lighting is critical for this effect and I might have to come up with more or better lights before I try a video background.

And streaming (over the wifi) from the basement isn’t gonna cut it. Too slow. Gotta get an Ethernet jack down here or set up in the upstairs office. But hey, that’s what weekends are for, right?
I’m proud to say I PayPal’d the CamTwist guy $50. It’s worth far more than that.

Early green screen effort

One of the new features (toys) in Leopard I’ve been most excited about is the addition of green screening in iChat and Photo Booth. This is the effect they use on The Daily Show (and the evening news) to make it look like the reporter is standing in front of the White House or the Supreme Court.

Mr. Jobs left me with the impression that I could put a still image or video behind me and have hours of fun. You can see the result above. I think I could get the lighting and the green screen working but the sound is off for some reason. One hopes this is fixed in a future update.