There has been a fair amount of interest in the technology behind the recent collaboration video that Suzi and I threw together (!) this week, so for the technophiles out there here is a brief account of how we managed it.
Suzi recorded her track first using her Kodak Zi8 and positioning herself to the side – leaving room for me – and reacted with the empty space much like an actor in a CGI movie would. I think she made this year’s Oscar shortlist. Below is a screen shot of what that video looked like.
As many of you realise, I then recorded myself against a green backdrop, also using a Zi8, and played along with Suzi’s video through an earbud. Here is another screenshot of what my original video looked like.
The green was then deleted from my video - a technique known as Chroma Keying - which left me with no background whatsoever. I then overlaid my video onto Suzi’s and resized and relocated myself to appear in the empty space.
All that was left to do then was sync the 2 videos - which was mostly successful – and render the constituent parts into a single video. Simple!
The biggest problem with doing this is the lighting. The green screen must be well lit and uniform in colour with no bright spots or shadows – something I only just managed as you can see from the screenshot above. I used Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9 to do all the editing.
Thanks to all who took the time to watch and comment on our collaboration. We really appreciate it.
Stuart
