Digital News Production: Green Screen After Effects Workshop

Having the skills and experience to add effects to our green screen studio piece is key for our package. I now know the step by step process of transforming simple green screen footage into a professional appearing package feature.

This is the original piece of green screen footage...

Now after following out these steps with the footage on Adobe After Effects...

• Adding the Key light effect
• 'Eye dropping' the green screen colour (making it turn transparent)
• Using Screen Matte tool to define solid colours for a clearer transition into the effects
• Using Screen Pre-blur and Despill Bias tools to remove green outlines around the presenter's body
• Finding websites that provide free visual backgrounds such as iskysoft and particularly Ignite Motion
• Picking out a background similar to the style that we will choose for our package
• Placing it in After Effects and scaling it, blurring it, colour correction it and using the time stretch tool to slow it down (all to make it less distracting from the presenter)
• Finally, using 'colour balance' and 'curve' to fine tune the over all quality of the clip

The end result became this...

This has been an extremely helpful lesson in how to get our studio piece looking like a realistic news piece and understanding how to transform our green screen footage. The end result has turned out very well.

The similarities between the above end result and our real green screen end result are that it was also have the presenter in a mid shot and the background will be a backdrop rather than a setting .

The difference are that our presenter will be wearing black, our background will have a red tone and the visuals will be clearer and more related to our topic of gaming.