Changing the Green Screen Background

Looking back at the completed green screen footage, we decided that it did not look at realistic as we wanted. Therefore, I thought we should play around with the background and see if I could make it better. To begin with I wondered if I could make it look more realistic with the existing background. As the problem was with the lighting, I decided to change the lighting of the foreground image to make it match the background more smoothly.

1) I selected 'Colour Board' and then on the 'Exposure' tab I increased the highlights slightly and then decreased the midtones and the low-tones.

2) Then, I used the effect 'Day into Night' which makes the footage look more gloomy, matching the gloomy dark background more.

3) Then, I used the Keyer effect which allowed me to change the background of the footage. I imported the image of the cell, making sure the picture was of a high quality so it would not be blurry, as this would not look effective.

4) Finally, I played around with the Keyer effect, making it 'shrink' slightly so that there was not an obvious grey line surrounding the protagonist's outline.

This made the footage more realistic than previously, however I thought I would also try a different background to see if this was more successful. I took all the same steps, but used a different picture which had brighter lighting to suit the foreground more smoothly.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Evaluation

PROS

• The image conveys how she is trapped with her mental illness. The grim mise en scene and low-key lighting gives a creepy edge to the image, reinforcing the psychological genre.
• The image does not look completely realistic, which could be seen as a good thing as it reminds the audience that it all in her mind, and that she is not really in a padded cell/prison cell.

CONS

• The lighting still does not completely match the foreground. This is because in the background the lighting is seen on the right side and this is impossible to recreate in the foreground image.
• The background is not the same quality as the foreground footage. This is more obvious in Option 2 with the prison cell, which would have to be changed if we were to use it as it currently looks very unprofessional. This could be solved by finding a higher resolution photograph.
• Overall, I think this idea, although somewhat effective, is not to my liking as it looks only semi-realistic and so the audience cannot be sure whether it is supposed to be realistic but is failing or whether it's in the character's mind, which may be misleading.