"Green Screen" Magic! "Where I Want To Be" Challenge

I always look forward to seeing what the students in my Electronic (Digital) Media Productions II class come up with in the project I assign them dealing with chromakey or green screen technology.

The idea is to blend two images, one of themselves photographed with a green background (in our TV studio, which has green walls for this very purpose) and then an image they find with the theme of "Where I Want To Be." This can be anything and everything, from dream jobs and vacations to celebrity encounters and other life magic moments.



As a demonstration, to show how this process can be done in Adobe Premiere Pro, I took these two images and blended them together, then adding some words. I recently completed my third book, so this creation is something I can truly use on my website/blog and for other promotional purposes.

I first took this photo of my three books, the newest one in the middle. Using my iPhone photo editing tools, I cropped the bottom and top so the image is free of unneeded space.

Then in our student computer room, which has a large green sheet pinned in a corner, I snapped a few selfies. It's important in this process, to not be too close to the green background, which can cause shadows and bleeding of colors when the blending step is done.

Also, you don't want any part of the image you want to not have the green background in it. There are properties of the colors green and blue that make the chromakey layering possible.

This is the final image. Premiere Pro allows for resizing and moving the inserted image. 

I also processed this image in Adobe Photoshop to sharpen it increase the size to 300 dots per inch (dpi) should I want to submit to a newspaper or magazine.  Fewer dpi can result in blurry pixelation of images in print formats.

Next, I will share some of my students' green screen creations!

Victaveus Douglas from his blog, Big Vick News

Malik Jeter from his blog, Jettin' With Jeter    

Sterling Jones from his blog, 187&Bark       

Alliyah Charles' blog is called The Vent

Shantel Alston's blog is Catch Up With Shantel

Isaiah Hughes calls his blog Up Up And Away With Hughes Media 

Here is Christian Manning's green screen creation from his blog, The HGV Media

ROTC student Trendon Howard gives us a "Hoah" shoutout with his composition created in April 2018.

Marcus Wilson (created Fall 2015)

Kiiyah Stokes (created Fall 2015)

Ed Stephens (created Fall 2015)

Kyre Cox (created Fall 2015)

Robbie Stephenson (created Fall 2015)

  The three-step process with Thomas Blake (created Fall 2017)