Learning to use a green screen!

My job at CEF of Montana becomes my dream job with every passing day. I get to do the things I love as a job and I even get paid to learn new things!

During the last couple of weeks, I have learned to use a green screen as a part of my job. There was a demo video for one of the CEF songs that taught how to do the actions. Everyone's first reaction: boring.

No one liked this video. The song had a Hawaiian/Tropical theme to it, which was honestly the best thing about it. The people in the video were not energetic, the actions were minimal and not very exciting, and the overall effect put us to sleep.

The solution?

"Lauren has a green screen. Why don't we just remake the video?"

Long story short, I do have a green screen, it was given to me, I have never used it.

However, I was eager to learn.

The evening we spent filming that video will go down as one of the best nights of my life. Not only was I doing something I loved, but everyone else was having fun with me.

So. Here's the learning/teaching part. I did make some mistakes.

1. Make sure your green screen is big enough for the task you want to use it for.

My green screen wasn't small. But it wasn't big either. The result: people's hands got cut off.

I either had to zoom in so close in the editing process that you couldn't tell what was going on or everyone's hands magically disappeared at certain points.

2. Hot spots

Places where the screen is brighter than everything else. It makes everything super hard to edit later.

3. Reflective clothing

Part of this is my inexperience in video editing. I know there is some way to deal with this. But when you're starting, avoid reflective clothing.

I had a pair of white basketball shorts that kept trying to disappear.

Of course, editing is the biggest part of green screening. This is really where I learned the most.

But, because I am still very inexperienced at this, I'm going to show you the resources I used to learn how to edit green screen videos.

First off I used HitFilm Express as my video editing software. I found it online for free. It has everything a real video editor would have minus some special features. I still don't know what most of it does and I'm still watching tutorials to figure it all out.

Anyway here's a link to the website where you can download it if you want. https://fxhome.com/hitfilm-express

Now, here are some of the tutorials I used to edit my videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSex5tog8tM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1ayXCMXj4s

Please note that the second video does have some language in it.

There were other videos that I watched but these were the most helpful.

Here is a playlist of some other videos you might find useful: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLr1BQWSWW4ZUG5bu_LpA0rkhgDuLDg_b0&disable_polymer=true

I would post my video, but it belongs to CEF of Montana. I'll let you know if it ever goes on that website :)

Of course, I still have a lot to learn. I could have tightened my green screen so there weren't any wrinkles. I could have lighted my subjects better. I could have gotten rid of my hot spots. Plus there are things like tracking and masking that I still don't totally understand.

If I've lost you at this point, that's ok. I've just been watching too many videos.

So, what's the point of all this?

I want you to learn. I want to challenge you to go find a green or blue background and putting yourself into a different place.

Even if you aren't a video person or a computer person. I want you to try something new and test the boundaries of your creativity.

Once you've made your video, send it to me at grinderlauren@gmail.com

If I like it I'll feature it on the blog.

So, are you going to try it?

Let me know if you want more posts on this type of thing.

Also, let me know what other things you do want to learn about. What can I challenge you with?

What can I inspire you to do?