Green IT Screens

courtesy : Green IT Screens

How does a green screen work?
The reason behind the name “chroma keying” is simple, but brilliant. In video editing software, you can select a particular color (or “key”) and it will be removed from your footage. Then, you can replace that color with another layer of video. When done right, it can simulate a realistic backdrop and make your actors look like they’re in another world.

Are they always green?
Technically, the chroma key process can be done with any color background, but bright green and blue are the most popular. Since these colors are totally distinct from a human’s skin tone, there is little risk that body parts will be cropped (or “keyed”) out. Digital video cameras are also sensitive to green, so less editing and lighting prowess is needed for a clean key. On the other hand, blue screens are better suited for film cameras, because the film’s negative can be limited to the blue channel. This results in a clear background, which can then be copied onto another negative to achieve the final effect.

Blue and green may get all the credit, but colors like magenta and red have also been used to make objects disappear or replace a background.

The unfortunate by-products of your average on-location film and TV production play like B-roll in a hard-hitting climate-change documentary: Thousands of discarded plastic water bottles. Idling vehicles and diesel generators sending toxic emissions into the surrounding area and into the ozone. Barely used construction materials headed straight to landfill.

But that’s an old story, and it’s getting rewritten. Today, a growing number of production companies, aided by a growing number of governmental and non-governmental organizations, are stepping up their sustainability game in a big way. They’re recognizing that, for the production industry to maintain its momentum well into the future, it needs to clean up its act.

“Recent climate-change reports show that we have a very, very limited time to make changes,” says Sarah Margolius, founding president of Sustainable Media Production Canada (SMPC), a brand-new Ontario non-profit with a mission to green the industry. “Because of this, I think there is a growing realization that greening our productions is something we must do. Consequences like flooding and rising temperatures are certainly felt by productions, so it’s about future-proofing our industry too.”

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