Chroma Keying is a visual effects technique where we replace the background, make it transparent or composite images or videos based on color hues. Here we shoot the subject against a solid background and replace all the pixels associated with that background with a new background relevant to the shot.
Long story short, if we are shooting our actors against a green background, we are gonna replace everything which has that particular green hue in that shot. Green color is most preferred because it offers a hue distinctly different and farthest from skintones.
Chroma Keying has become one of the most defining aspects of filmmaking for the last two decades. Today we will learn how to do Chroma Keying inside DaVinci Resolve.
Steps
- Place your green screen footage in our timeline.
- Drop the background footage you want to be replaced with, right below the green screen footage.
- Apply 3D Keyer from Open FX and drop it on the green screen footage.
- Make sure Open FX Overlay is enabled.
- With the green screen footage selected, choose the picker from 3D Keyer settings and pick the green hue you want to replace.
- Switch the view to Alpha Highlights B/W, where you can see the transparency coming up in the video as the green screen is being replaced.
- Try picking more green hues in order to remove the green residual. Play with the 3D Keyer settings to fine-tune your hue selection.
- Now when the keying is done, head to the color page and grade it in accordance with the background footage so that it can go seamlessly in the composite.
- You can try additional steps like Motion/Camera tracking, play with the scales to fit the perspective, depending on the requirements.
- To make this composite gel perfectly, we applied Sirus LUT and Ultra-fine film grain from our 16mm Pro 4K Film Grain & Textures pack.
You can follow the link to the tutorial below and have a better insight.
Important
From using double exposure and traveling mattes workarounds to green screens and virtual production, filmmakers have come a long way in these hundred years. Even for Indie filmmakers, it has proven to be a very effective and efficient way to extend their stories above and beyond the confinements of their limited shooting sets, to virtually go as far as their screenplays can offer.
The more you can composite, the more you can do the virtual magic. This is why why we provide premium 16mm High-Quality Film Grains and Textures scanned in 4K along with custom-made LUTs so that you can create composites that stand apart. Subscribe to our newsletter and join us at Filmblade, a virtual production house, where we regularly reveal new filmmaking secrets to elevate your narrative.
