Chroma-keying/virtual studios

We’ve been using blue (or green) screen in film and television for a number of years. There are a few technical details you have to consider in your planning.

Why use blue?

The choice of blue as a colour is simply because there is relatively little blue in the reflectance of any human skin tone. And you don’t get many people with blue hair. Technically we don’t need to use blue – most modern chroma-keyers are capable of keying out any colour.

What happens?

The vision mixer looks at the signal as it comes in. Wherever it sees blue, it takes that bit out and replaces it with another video source. We are not talking brain surgery here.

Standard mistakes

Obviously the presenters’ clothes cannot contain the background ...

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