Ren: The Girl with the Mark is an award-winning web series remarkable for the high production values it achieves on a micro-budget. A newly released video gives a behind-the-scenes view into filming one of the show’s biggest sequences.
If you work in video, you may be familiar with Red Giant Primatte Keyer. Red Giant’s Primatte and Digital Anarchy Primatte Chromakey both use Primatte chromakey technology, developed by Imagica Corporation in 1982. [Wikipedia] The last update for Primatte Chromakey for Photoshop was January 2012, but it does work in current versions of Photoshop.
If you’re working with still photography, it’s often necessary to cut someone out of the background to place them into a new scene or to add special effects. While there is no specific “Chroma Key Tool” that is built into Photoshop, it still has great tools for removing the background and other elements from an image, non-destructively.
Despite my big plan to quit editing last year, I somehow ended up cutting nearly all the behind-the-scenes material for Ren, including a dozen YouTube videos and 30-odd exclusive set diaries which have just been released for sale. Guess I just have a fondness for BTS stuff.
What angle the key light hits a character at is a KEY (groan) decision for a director of photography. The lighting featurette [I posted on my site a while back] looked at some of the options, but today I’d like to expand on those with some more up-to-date examples.
Imagine a clock face. You’re looking down on the scene and your talent is at the center with their eyeline to twelve o’clock.
Rain. How we’d love to go inside and have a cup of tea when the old British precipitation interrupts a shoot, but quite often the schedule demands that we carry on regardless. Here are a few tips for filming in the wet stuff. Cover the Camera
If you don’t have a proper rain cover, a transparent recycling bag with a couple of holes cut in it will usually do the job, but have someone hold an umbrella over the camera at all times as added protection. If you have them, put on a matte box and top flag to keep rain off the lens.