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How to Make your own blue screen at home for movie and special effects

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Making your own blue screen at home for movie and special effects

In this Lens I am going to talk about using a blue screen for visual effects, often used for Composition work, animations and also integrating real shots with creations you make on your computer. I will provide an example of a recent shot I've created, in which I took a picture shot of myself behind a using a blue screen setup.

NOTE: In this context I refer to using a blue screen, however you can use virtually any color screen you want. The optimal choices, however, are blue and green for background screens. I explain more about the choices below in the section, Blue-screen, green-screen - Which one should I use?





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Movie Magic: You can do it too!

Many people are awed by the visual effects of Hollywood magic and are antsy to start a project on their own, but just don't know where to start. Some just want to do blue screen work for a personal project with family, friends or just by themselves. Others are going to school and would like to incorporate the usage of blue screen in their projects.

Blue-screen, green-screen - Which one should I use?

Blue-screen, green-screen, chroma-key - it's all the same thing! The idea is to pick a material that is very CONTRASTING to skin tones and items you will have in your shots. Normally blue screen is all that we hear about as far as making movie effects, but many professionals use green screen nowadays, as the color is very contrasting to most items used in shots. For my project I used blue because the colors worn in the shot were very contrasting. It ended up with a very nice result, as seen here.

Supplies - very cheap!

No matter what your purpose for using blue screen, there are a number of ways to make your dream make this a reality. However, using a professional blue screen can run you a couple hundred dollars, or maybe under $200 if you shop on ebay (See my Squidoo recommendations for Ebay shops below). But maybe you don't want to commit the money to buying a professional blue screen just yet. Normal blue screen material is muslin fiber, a material you can get at a fabric store like Joann's. However, getting these materials by the yard can be very expensive. So one way you can go around buying pricey material is to go to a party supply store, and pick up the following:

1 Blue plastic tablecloth roll, dimensions 100' x 40". - $13

It will run you approximately $13. See, isn't that cheap?!

Secondly, of course, you will need a camera to take your blue screen shot. It doesn't have to be a professional camera for a pet project or schoolwork, but just one in which you can transfer your shot via a USB cord into your computer. Alternatively, you can also scan your picture shot into your computer as well if you have a scanner, but in my opinion transferring via USB will give a clearer shot for your editing program to work with.

Lastly, get some basic push pins to pin up your tablecloth. Nothing fancy is needed, however I recommend clear push pins because they are next to invisible for shots.

Make Room for Magic!

Next, all you need is a nice area to apply your tablecloth to a wall. For my shot I simply used the front door area of my apartment. I used my tablecloth vertically for a longer length so I can get a full body shot (See image below). You can use it any way you want, whatever will suit your needs for a perfect shot!

Take your shot!

Not too much I can say here beyond the basic direction: Have someone take your shot if you plan on being in it, or take your own shot using a tripod, or placing your camera somewhere for a good shot. Make sure your shot covers only the area in which the blue screen is the background. Here is my blue screen image below:

THE ENDING RESULT:

The ending result is in the shot below. I used Photoshop for my tweaking efforts, and to also add images. For a more detailed review of this, see my next lense on How to apply Photoshop to a Blue screen image.

Want to share your own special effects work?

If you have a video or image in which you used blue screen, you can post the link to it here for others to see!

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shy3d

I am a software, web and graphic designer.
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