sweeetlilgurlie wrote:@AJ: That's cool about the bluescreen! I've always wondered if that would be possible to do with less-than-a million dollars-worth of equipment.
Definitely. You can do it for almost no money at all. I use the very thin blue curtain in my window as my blue screen. The sunlight from outside already illuminates the blue screen evenly. I set up a lamp behind my feet shining upwards to make sure my shadows don't show on the curtain, and I can chroma key the blue out almost perfectly. (Example of one of my blue screen videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug7AjKqpoTs)
You can even do it with other colors besides blue. The 2 important things are:
1. The screen behind you must have as little variation in hue as possible. (If patches of the screen are lighter or darker than everything around it, that creates problems.) This is why it is very important that the screen be lit properly, and that you make sure that your shadows don't go on the screen.
2. Anything you put in front of the screen cannot contain any bit of the same color as the screen behind it. (Rule 2 becomes a little less strict if Rule 1 is followed well...for instance, if the sheet is solidly light red, you can include something with a more dark red.) This is why bright blue and neon green are mostly used for chroma key screens, however...they're usually the least used colors for everything else in life.