Greenscreen Compositing in Final Cut

Post date: Apr 18, 2016 8:53:10 PM

You will find the shots: Flo Greenscreen and Flo Background in the Folder of Sharing on the server.

Drag them to your desktop.

Once you have the shots:

1. Create a new event with File > New > Event and then create a new Project with File > New > Project. Name the project Greenscreen. If you don't do this, it's not the end of the world, your clips will just get mixed up with clips from other projects. It's messy. Don't be messy!

2. Name your project! "Untitled Project" looks amateurish. Don't look amateurish.

<----Yuk!

3. Drag your green screen shot to the timeline.

4. Drag your background under the green screen shot

5. Click the Effects button, then select Keying, then the Keyer.

This is how it looks in the new Final Cut:

This is how it looks in the old version:

6. Drag the keyer to the green screen shot. If it looks good, that's great. If not, you may need to adjust it with the Keyer controls.

7. Click the button that makes the View look like the Original clip.

8. Then click the Sample Color button and drag a box over the green screen in the view window.

9. Click View: Composite to see it with the green cut out.

10. You may need to add a little "Fill Holes" if your person is invisible anywhere.

Other things to do:

1. You will also probably need to transform the shot to put your person where you want. Use the transform button to resize, move, or rotate the shot.

Some things to do before you are finished:

Sound. Remember sound is 50% of your video. Don't forget this.

Color correction.

Your green screened person should match the color of the background.

Go to Effects > Color > Color Correction and drag the effect to the clip.

Start with saturation and raise it all the way up. This allows you to see the colors very richly.

Move to Color and adjust the Global to match something in the shot. I looked at the blues in his shirt and the blue on the building and tried to make it match by pulling out orange.

Then I saw reds in the highlights. I moved the highlights thingy over into the red and lowered the red.

This looks better so I went back to saturation and lowered it a bit to match the saturation of the background.

Combine both the clips.

If you select both of them, you can then right-click them and select New Compound Clip. Name it and then it will turn into one clip that you can edit it just like a regular clip.

Color correct the combined clip or apply a look.

This blends the elements together by giving them all the same color look.

Finish the shot with a title at the beginning and end with credits.

Remember to Command-t at the beginning and end of any video.

Post this to Youtube and then to your website.

Remember to write a few sentences about what it is and what you learned.

Be ready tomorrow to film your own green screen shot.