Journal #8324
Posted 10 years ago2014-01-09 04:26:46 UTC
Arguably one of the oddest jobs I've ever had was doing the live graphics for this Duel in the Pool swimming event on a massive screen in the lead up to the Commonwealth Games.
It involved chroma keying eighty athletes in two days on-site, and one of the quirks of being freelance is that I often have to provide my own kit - cue the use of my lights, my green screen and my PC. I am, however, entirely okay with spending two days chroma keying round bottoms in swimsuits and a cute blonde presenter.
My workspace was in the walkway between the warmup pool and the main pool so it was unbelievably weird working away as eighty half-naked Olympians marched back and forth past me. Also I had to do the entire job without shoes on, as walking poolside with shoes is forbidden.
It was very, very cool seeing my work on the big screen displaying in front of a capacity crowd over a whole four-day event, but that was an incredibly odd job.
It involved chroma keying eighty athletes in two days on-site, and one of the quirks of being freelance is that I often have to provide my own kit - cue the use of my lights, my green screen and my PC. I am, however, entirely okay with spending two days chroma keying round bottoms in swimsuits and a cute blonde presenter.
My workspace was in the walkway between the warmup pool and the main pool so it was unbelievably weird working away as eighty half-naked Olympians marched back and forth past me. Also I had to do the entire job without shoes on, as walking poolside with shoes is forbidden.
13 Comments
You must log in to post a comment. You can login or register a new account.
Looks like you had more fun though. Shame you didn't have a chair.
Chroma keying is removing an area of a video based on its chroma properties - i.e. the green screen shown here.
Stu, the camera was resting on the chair, don't worry
The most used color is green because there is no green shade in our skins. I've also seen blue used, but it's rare.
[edit] Damn it, I did not know Archie stays awake at 6 a.m.
Blue screens certainly aren't rare, by the way. They're a lot better for keying blonde-haired people and green-skinned orks.
I'm a swimmer incidentally, so i can definitely appreciate that nice 50-meter pool, that place is huge! (the pool where i train is 25 meters and no deep end, and i ONLY go there because it's literally a mile away from my house..)
Cool shit! =P
PB: please let me know what you get, i'm buying a gaming laptop this spring as well!
I envy your job Archie.
I spent the last few days in a boiler room, foundry, and Army base. Nasty crap in each.
For a start, the choice between blue or green screen is context sensitive. It depends on the situation: are there blue elements in the scene? Are there green elements? That will be the first thing that dictates which colour is used.
Secondly, it's speculated that the vast majority of digital imaging sensors are far better at picking up green tones than other colours. Since there's an overwhelming trend towards shooting digitally, the prominence of green screens over blue is purely a technical advantage based on current equipment standards.
Between those two reasons, you'll generally see a steady mix of both colours, but you're more likely to see the mix on a film set than anywhere else.