Gadgetory

it seems like Hollywood blockbusters these days are always trying to outdo each other to see which film can have the most wildly over-the-top multi-million dollar special effects and while this sort of movie magic can require some really complicated post-processing much of it relies on a pretty simple piece of equipment the humble green screen which allows it to appear as though a piece of content was filmed in a completely different location via de fantastical one or totally mundane one but how does it work well when you shoot something in front of a green screen such as your favorite YouTube host you can tell whatever video editing software you're using to detect a range of colors in this case shades of green and replace anything that falls within that range with a transparent layer that means you can put anything you want behind it and it will peep through and although this is a pretty simple idea green screens have proved to be extremely versatile and are widely used to overlay even extremely complex and expensive CGI in high budget films now part of the reason for this is how useful the color green is modern digital video cameras use things called bayer filters to capture light these filters are designed to be more sensitive to green light than to red or blue because our own eyes operate the same way and are most responsive to green this allows the camera to record many shades of green very accurately so that when the raw footage is edited on a computer the software can precisely replace only green pixels and leave everything else intact green also contrasts very well with human skin color unless your name is Bruce Banner making it an ideal choice for use in a studio but green screens weren't always the most commonly used background for special effects before the advent of modern digital recording blue screens no not that kind we're actually more popular you see back in the era of the physical film real special film that was only - blue light was readily available making it easy to produce a negative that came out clear where the blue screen was which could then be overlaid with the background to produce a full scene blue screens were used extensively in classic movies such as the original Star Wars trilogy where producers filmed miniature models of starships in front of blue backgrounds and they continued to be used today in certain situations such as shooting low-light scenes so wait a minute Linus are you telling me that all I need to create awesome scenes at home is a camera and editing rig and a big green or a blue sheet well sort of before you whip out the camera and try to give James Cameron a run for his money there are a couple of things to keep in mind if you're shooting with a green screen although modern video editing software is very good at differentiating shades of green from other colors shadows and shiny surfaces can absorb or reflect enough green light to throw off your software and make the finished product look like a mess for this reason proper lighting is extremely important to professionals who make a living off of green screen recordings but are youtubers like me going to be using green screens forever we are starting to see cameras that can actually record depth information kind of like the Kinect for Xbox so the future could be very interesting but for professional cinematographers instead of casual gamers this technology is very very far away from mature so for the foreseeable future you won't be expecting to see me wear any green shirts on the st. 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