Custom Search

Monday, January 18, 2010

What Life Is Like In Green Screen Studio: A Glimpse

By Phillip Guye

Life in a green screen studio can be exciting, if you are not one of the cameramen, that is. It can be so lifeless and boring to keep preparing and rearranging the lighting and all of the apparatus that is there in the studio. On the other hand, for you and I who watch only the finished product, life in a studio (that boasts of the best quality of green screens) looks to be very exciting. One wonders how it is feasible to capture on film someone being chased by a tiger or something even worse.

There are pictures in newspapers and magazines of football players at a match. Sometimes, there is a image of a particular player whose expression is caught for perpetuity, or so we think. It is quite possible that this expression was caught in the confines of a green screen studio and not on the soccer field. A picture of the soccer match in progress is superimposed on the green screen which has already served as the background in the studio. The football player is asked to stand in front of the screen, a look of ecstasy on his face, to copy that which he had when he made that brilliant pass during a significant league match against an arch rival team.

Naturally, not all pictures are orchestrated on a green screen studio; there are quite a few photographers who risk their lives to capture live action on film. These are folk who belong to a very different breed. Their love for the art of photography can take them to places that they have never been to and get them concerned in situations that might sometimes even cost them their lives. For example, prize-winning photographers do not win awards based mostly on stills that are taken in a studio with a green screen. Rather, they win awards based primarily on footage taken out in the real world without the computer effects that are conveniently and simply created using a green screen studio.

Similarly, there are many photo executives who believe that it is important to capture wild animals on film, risking their lives in the middle. One classic example of this is the sad story of Steve Irwin, who was fatally attacked by a stingray. There is not any chance of attempting to duplicate this sort of a going down inside a green screen studio ; unless of course, someone is attempting to make a movie on Irwin, whereby the actor has to enact the final moments of the 'croc hunter' as Steve Irwin was fondly called.

Here, the actor will be asked to do all the movements and facial expressions that Irwin would have demonstrated in his last moments against the background of a green screen studio. Once this is done, the superimposing of the underwater battle between the stingray and the dying Irwin would be carried out by the film editing and compositing methodologies that are helped by the newest software, available in the flick industry today.

About the Author: