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After spending all of July and part of August in and out of the hospital
and several surgeries, I recovered in time to complete the editing on my
movie for the NAMMA and AMPS Fall contests. I even beat the entry deadlines.
When I started my movie back in May the entry deadlines had seemed a long
way off. Little did I know, that I would be incapacitated for almost two
months.
[For background information see Jim's article on
Trading Wax for Gold] |
I knew it was rather ambitious, but I had plenty of time, so I had decided
to use blue screen to record the narrator for my movie, a documentary. I
wanted to superimpose the upper body of the narrator, together with the audio
of her narration, over the action scenes.
Keeping the audio in sync with the video proved a bit vexing.
I had not used the blue screen technique for many years, but I seemed to
remember it is a bit easier if you don't try to use the whole body. There
is no problem keeping the blue screen hanging straight since the subject's
feet aren't touching the screen.
Surprise, surprise. It came out pretty good! It was almost clear of shadows,
borders and the other blue screen artifacts. After editing a scene or two
I was pleased. I recorded all I needed from the narrator and went about editing
my movie. |
All went well until I came to one scene where the narrator held up her little
digital camera to show that she was going to take some candid scenes herself.
The narrator was holding out her hands to show the audience that she was
going to take some candid scenes with her little digital camera but her hands
were empty except for a sketchy camera shape and a black case hanging from
a strap around her wrist.
I was stunned. What the heck happened?
Then I realized, the blue screen effect worked perfectly. The pretty little
camera was shiny blue. The Blue Box World program had done its thing.
It had removed any vestige of blue, leaving only the strap and black case
hanging from the narrator's wrist and the outline of a camera in her hand. |
What to do? The narrator is no longer available and I needed that scene.
I tried changing the recorded scene to a green background, but of course
that changed the camera to green also. So that wouldn't work.
The scene was about ten seconds long; maybe I could sort of paint the camera
a different color or just fill in the outline in black. At 30 frames a second
I soon decided that, painting 300 scenes with a video paint program that
I had never learned to use very well, was not a good idea.
I finally decided, nothing is perfect, perhaps the audience will wonder a
bit about that sketchy camera and think it is just another of those fancy
little digital cameras. By the way -- the candid scenes that the narrator
recorded with that itty-bitty blue camera were surprisingly good. Perhaps
you will see my movie this fall and you can look for that sketchy little
camera. |
