If you work in video, you may be familiar with Red Giant Primatte Keyer. Red Giant’s Primatte and Digital Anarchy Primatte Chromakey both use Primatte chromakey technology, developed by Imagica Corporation in 1982. [Wikipedia] The last update for Primatte Chromakey for Photoshop was January 2012, but it does work in current versions of Photoshop.
If you’re working with still photography, it’s often necessary to cut someone out of the background to place them into a new scene or to add special effects. While there is no specific “Chroma Key Tool” that is built into Photoshop, it still has great tools for removing the background and other elements from an image, non-destructively.
Shooting interviews is a great way for a cinematographer to learn to light. I figured out loads about how human faces react to light of different kinds from years of experimenting on the talking heads in corporate videos. And because those interviews were often long and dull, there was plenty of opportunity to evaluate my lighting as I relaxed behind my locked-off camera.
It was a classic prison cell scene, one of those shaft-of-light-through-the-barred-window jobbies. Amanda Stekly and her team did a great job of creating a two-walled set with moss, wet stone and even real snails. Outside the window was a platform to sell the illusion that the cell was below ground level.
Despite my big plan to quit editing last year, I somehow ended up cutting nearly all the behind-the-scenes material for Ren, including a dozen YouTube videos and 30-odd exclusive set diaries which have just been released for sale. Guess I just have a fondness for BTS stuff.
Lately I’ve been working on the electronic press kit for Kate Madison’s web series, Ren. An EPK is a collection of footage that a broadcaster can use to edit their own piece about your film or series.