Blue Screen Dismemberment

Blue-screen theatrics are so cheesy. Big fat cheese puffs of fun! So of course, when our group was faced with the task of creating a short video clip using blue-screen, we immediately thought of disembodied heads and limbs. I mean, who wouldn't, right? I know I enjoy me some fine floating heads in the middle of a hastily crafted plot. You know you do too. And wow, the effect was surprisingly easy to achieve. Just hide your body behind the blue drape, fiddle with a few things in Final Cut and voila! Instant decapitation, quick and painless, no animals harmed in the making of these cheetos. But seriously though, blue screen is where the magic happens in video land. And while it's easy to do, it's so hard to make it look good. Hence, its hokey reputation because it's usually painfully, blaringly obvious that something is out of place, something doesn't look right. The devil is in the details, all those little things like lighting, scale, perspective that are often inconsistent between the background and foreground. But if you can keep those things in check, or else make those discrepancies work for you, then you have a fighting chance of creating something cool.