So you can’t afford Betacam. You are giving up one meal a week to afford that Final Cut Pro rig you’ve got and you certainly can’t spring for more pro equipment. You’re not going to be able to afford what the industry sets as the bottom line for professional keying. You are a DV Guerrilla and you want to make unbelievable things happen in your garage. You want to make your kids fly through the air next to an airplane. You want to sit in a chair next to yourself and have a short conversation. Is it possible?

Oh, sure. There’s some limitations you really need to take into account and it will take a little cleverness and a lot of experimentation, but you can key quite well with a prosumer DV camera and FCP.

Unlocking the Keys…

What’s really involved here, though? If you have no experience at all with keying, let me say a few things first about that. Keying, whether chroma or luma, is the process of matting out specified colors in a frame of video. FCP can look at each frame, find every pixel containing the color you have chosen for a background key color and make that pixel transparent. Then whatever you have on the video layer underneath shows through. If you use Luma Keying instead of Chroma, FCP will instead select all the pixels in Continue Reading...

OK, so from Chroma Key Basics for DV Guerrillas Part 1, you have gotten up to shooting. As you enter this stage of the game, you should have some Chroma Key footage to work with. If not, go get some now. Keying is not an inborn gift. It is a skill that is improved upon with practice. One thing that must be understood with any compositing work is that there are always different ways of working. As you experiment, you will find the process and method that serves you best.You will also steal lots of great stuff from other compositors.

The only rule of thumb that pretty much applies to everyone is to stay organized. Write down everything. Save everything. If you finish a project, archive the project file when you trash your media. Sometimes after you finish a project, a better way of doing things comes to you out of the blue. If you save the project file, recapturing and rendering is a snap and you can quickly find out if you were right. If you use the same lighting set for your footage, chances are that your keying settings will be the same. Also, set up an archive of Favorites in your filters folder and pull and tweak them instead of always starting from scratch. Wasted time re-doing work you’ve already done is depressing after the fifth time around. Think ahead.

Mon-Key See, Mon-Key Do…

For those just joining us, let’s review what keying is and how it does what it does. FCP can look at each frame of video, find every pixel containing the color you have chosen for a background key color and make that pixel transparent. Then whatever you have on the video layer underneath shows through. Keying means choosing a color for a Continue Reading...

Choosing the right colors for your website is just as important as selecting graphics and content. This article discusses what factors to consider when selecting your website colors.

Colors have many effects on people. Certain colors can invoke specific emotions in people. Emotional reactions can affect the image of your company in the visitors mind and can have a major effect or your company’s “brand”.

If you doubt color evokes emotion, consider the phrases, “green eyed monster” “seeing red” or “in a black mood”. The green-eyed monster is a reference to jealousy, seeing red means a person is angry and a black mood refers to depression. People do associate colors with specific moods. Scientific texts have proven that different colors can make people happy, sad, relaxed, excited, angry or afraid.

Anything that can evoke those responses in people needs to be looked at carefully when designing your website. Colors tend to be classified as “neutral, “warm” or “cool”. So, let’s take a look at some of them.

Neutral Colors

Whites – Whites stand for purity and cleanliness. In eastern cultures white is the color of death while in western cultures in is the color of marriage and hope. Continue Reading...