Things to Remember

If you are in a studio and can't paint or hang your matte, you may want to explore Reflecmedia's LiteRing option, which I have found to be very reliable and effective. Using LiteRing also ensures that the power and brightness of your screen is consistent and easier to key out.

This chapter presented a common production scenario: The footage wasn't perfect and needed tweaking. Using the Three-Way Color Corrector you got the green screen element to be more uniform and easier to key out. If you think about what the Three-Way Color Corrector achieved, it should point you towards the visual qualities that your photographed green screen should have when you photograph it. A good green screen has a strong green color value that has little to no tonal range variation or shadowing in it. The color of the green screen should not reflect back and spill onto the shoulder and side of your subject. Premiere Pro doesn't have any tools to fix that color spill, but you can turn instead to After Effect's Keylight and it's powerful spill suppression tools. If you are serious about your green/blue screen work then I won't pull any punches: You're better off using the After Effects Production Bundle and Keylight; if budgeting and a learning curve has got you down, however, this chapter showed you the way within Premiere.

Beyond green/blue screen keying, Premiere Pro's Garbage Matte effects enable you to crop your image. Simply drag the handles to remove entire sections or areas of your image.

Whether you enhance your image from the get go by having a cleaner brighter key (LiteRing) or you use another tool for compositing (After Effects or Ultimatte), this chapter has outlined and exposed a number of issues involved in the shooting and post-production process working with green/blue screen material.

This concludes the Advanced Effect Techniques section and from here you'll get into advanced editing and professional workflows, all of which build upon the foundation and rhythm of work that has been established thus far.