Monday, March 27, 2017

Green Screens and Diagetics

We see so much Green Screen and CGI work in our movies now,that we don't even process that they are there, even the youtube videos we watch use special effects on a regular Basis. This lesson is to help students get a better understanding of green screen work and the process it take to create a believable special effect.


Something to note: This is a hard concept and and a lot of work, your students first attempts might not be as successful as you were hoping, but it is important to see those mistakes and really have a conversation about how they would go about fixing and improving them in the future. I would even suggest doing a practice film where there all just try to overlap green screen footage as practice. 

There are two types of green screen work you can you use.

Computer animated Green Screen: where the green screen is over laying your characters and your scene and your actors have to react to the green screen to keep make it look realistic. 

Green Screen Background: Where your actors do their acting in front of a green screen and then their surrounding are added in post production. 

When you are setting up a green screen you want to make sure that you have plenty of lighting. Green screen usually work best with a 4 point lighting system. You want two light facing the green screen and two lights facing you actor, The "Bawler on a budget" version is having two lights and aim them at a low angle so the shadows don't get casted behind your actors. It distorts the background and makes it almost look like fog behind the actors.


Diegesis: Is the rule of the universe in a movie. I could go on for a while about it, but I think this video does a better job of explaining.



These two concept go pretty well together, because not only are the students required to use the green screen, but they have to start thinking about how to make it make sense in their video. 

There is a ton of green screen footage on youtube, that you can download from Youtube Downloader. 

Here are a few Examples of student animation that I am sure you will enjoy. They run the Gambit of variety. Some chose to use a lot of Green screen work where others, kept their film simple. 













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