In video production, knowing how to use a green screen is an essential skill for any producer. It is an irreplaceable tool and can give you a lot of creative freedom in post-production. But in my book, knowing when to use a green screen is just as important as knowing how.

There are so many resources on how to shoot green screen for your project. Forums and blogs are filled with tips and tricks and best practices. In my experience, clients and producers seem to view green screen as a magic tool that makes a shoot easy, and avoid the hassle of being on location. However,  if you’ve had some experience trying to achieve high-end results with green screen, you’ve no doubt been frustrated with the process.

If you find yourself needing a shot of an actor hanging off the edge of a skyscraper, then green screen is probably going to be the most economical, and safest option. Often times, however, I’ve been asked to shoot green screen for scenes when a park, a news set, or a nondescript background was needed.

While green screen may appear to be a simpler option, often times I find that by the time I set up all the lighting properly, and spent the time in post-production to get the key and background correct, my time would have been much better spent researching and securing the right location. Good green screen work takes a lot of forethought and post-production time, and if not done properly, can easily bring down the production value of your entire project.

For interviews or a spokesperson, using a white or black background is a simple way to give you some of the options a green screen shot offers, without the time-consuming task of keying and precise lighting. Some simple editing can allow for graphics and other assets to be placed alongside your talent. I’ve always found white and black backgrounds to be easy to work with, while continuing to keep the production value high without a huge time investment.

So the next time you’re considering breaking out the green screen, consider your options carefully, and make the choice that will result in the highest production value you can achieve.

On May 7th Adobe released Creative Suite 6, and it’s pretty clear that their eyes are keenly focused on video production. While we’re still in the process of writing our review of the software suite, here are a few of the features we’re think video producers everywhere will be excited about.

Adjustment Layers in Premiere – Here’s the situation. You’ve edited together a very complex sequence of shots which features a drunk stumbling from home from a night at the local watering hole. The sequence is composed of several point of view shots cut tightly together, and sprinkled with wide shots of the person walking down the sidewalk. You want to make sure every POV shot is blurry and de-saturated so the viewer can see the world as the drunk sees it. Before, our only solution was to either apply the blur and de-saturation effects to each clip individually, or nest each chunk of shots and then apply the effects. Adjustment layers change this. They work just like they do in After Effects. Simply place an adjustment layer over the shots you want to affect, then apply the effects you want to the adjustment layer. It will transfer those effects to every clip underneath it in Premiere’s timeline. Now, if you have to change the amount of blur or desaturation, you only have to change the settings on the adjustment layer(s) and not each clip or clips inside of a nested sequence. To me, this feature is about six versions late, but better late than never!

3D Text (and Basic Shapes) in After Effects – Have you ever needed to do simple 3D text when working in an After Effects project? Unfortunately, After Effects could never do true 3D. Rather, it could place 2D objects in 3D space. That means if you wanted 3D text, you’d have to put 2D text in a 3D composition, duplicate it about a hundred times, then offset each layer’s Z position by one pixel. What a pain! Alternatively, there was a way to use the Shatter effect and turn off force and gravity to give pre-composed text a bit of extrusion. Still not very efficient. Finally, Adobe has added an extrusion option within the settings of 3D text/shapes. For those that only need very basic 3D tools, this may save you from spending a couple grand on 3D software.

SpeedGrade – Okay, this isn’t so much of a feature as it is a complete product. Adobe aquired IRIDAS, and included it in the creative suite for the first time in this sixth version. The first thing you’ll notice is that it doesn’t really feel like an Adobe product. The user interface is way different. Additionally, quite a few Adobe UI conventions that are ubiquitous in Adobe products aren’t there. The software itself, however, is great. Dedicated color grading software is being used more and more frequently outside of Hollywood. DaVinci, for example, can now be purchased for $1000 on OS X, where it used to be a $20,000+ system only. It only makes sens that Adobe wants to get in on the action. Considering the price for Adobe’s Creative suite hasn’t risen any (in fact, the Creative Cloud option looks like it’ll save you money), having a dedicated color grader is a welcome addition!

Obviously this isn’t a comprehensive list of new features. There’s tons more to look forward to in CS 6, so keep an eye out for our upcoming review!

Video production is such a wide and varied field, from hobbyist and amateur producers, to Lone Wolf business people and full-fledged production facilities. Is your interest in editing video production or video production service? Are you a wedding video producer or a newbie looking for advice? Are you making online video or educational video? Video producers come in all flavors and inquiring minds want to know: who ARE you? What kind of video work do you do? Let us know, we’re curious about what type of video you make, and for what purpose.

Recently, EarlC, one of Videomaker‘s moderators, posted a Videomaker Forums Survey looking to answer some questions about the type of video producer who reads Videomaker, either online or in a paper edition, and who reads our forums and who is active on them.

As many of you might know, Videomaker forums are chock full of advice from real video professionals working in the trenches – and best of all, they’re FREE! How many places can you get service for free, huh?!?! Read the rest of this entry »

We always like to call attention to dedicated creative people who are making big things with video, who can do more with less.  That’s why we were so excited to see the video work of The Movie President.  The Movie President is the brainchild of Kevin A. Millward, a film student at Northern Kentucky University.  Kevin’s movies are a great example of what indie video creators can accomplish, making great entertainment on a shoestring budget.

Like a lot of video creators, Kevin fell in love with the movies at a young age and started making movies when he was in sixth grade.  His earlier films starred family members, friends and neighbors, though he sometimes had difficulty keeping his non-professional cast interested.  He founded The Movie President after becoming friends with Chris Hart, another NKU student with the same passion for movie making.  Together, they’ve created a string of short horror flicks, quirky comedies and Star Wars tributes.  He’s now pursuing a film school education with the intention of starting a career in movies.

“Over the last year, I have learned a lot of crucial lessons while producing short videos,” says Kevin. ” The most important lesson, however, is one that would seem obvious, but applies to every single shoot that I do: Anything that CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong.  I’ve experienced everything from actors bailing at the last minute and locations becoming suddenly unavailable to extreme weather changes and cameras breaking.  As cliche as this sounds, I’ve found the best mindset to have in this field is to hope for the best and plan for the worst.”

Among Kevin’s most interesting videos are the “Tales of Terror,” a series of short horror projects.  We don’t see many young video creators tackling creepy subjects, so these immediately grabbed our interest — from the story of a man trapped on a psychotic game show in  “Deathtrap” to the campy cannibal feast that is “Hungry for those Good Things.”

“The biggest challenge in making short horror films for YouTube is the issue of keeping the content appropriate for most ages,” says Kevin.  “When it comes to horror, it is sometimes difficult to avoid violence, blood/gore, and disturbing dialogue.  For the most part, the videos I have made are suitable for most audiences, but occasionally I will have some negative feedback and controversy attributed to the content.  The line between entertainment and offending someone is often blurred in this genre, but I am a strong believer in taking risks.  If you don’t put yourself out there and try new things, you won’t get very far.”

But we also wanted to call special attention to Kevin’s short action comedy, “Finger Wars.”  You remember when you were a kid and you would pretend your finger was a gun? What if it really was?  This goofy romp takes that idea to its (illogical) extreme. With quick, tight cuts to increase the tension and a frenetic action-flick soundtrack, we were really impressed at how well this video managed to straddle the line between gritty action and absurdist comedy. But what really makes it are the special effects.  We’ve demonstrated some easy techniques for adding gunshots to your videos and you can see the results of similar special effects in this movie.   The comedy wouldn’t work in this case without some top notch special effects (and accompanying gun shot sound effects) to heighten the realism.  Luckily, they’ve got plenty. Check out the sequel to see even more finger wars – with bigger explosions!

Kevin and Chris are currently in pre-production for a spoof exploitation trailer called “Priests with an Attitude”.  Written by Chris Hart, it’s the story of two priests who take the law into their own hands as the last line of defense against the villains of a crumbling town. The pair are also at work shooting more Tales of Terror videos, a series of parody consumer reports, and possibly a prequel to “Modern Jedi: Episode II – A Dark Force.”  Learn more and watch some of their videos at The Movie President on YouTube.

You can see more of Kevin’s short films at The Movie President on YouTube. You can also find The Movie President on Twitter @MoviePresident and Facebook at www.facebook.com/themoviepresident.

Spotlight: HP Z1 – Workstation

We’ve been watching this one for a while, and a good thing  since it’s going to change the layout of lots of video editor’s desktops. The Z1 brings the upgradeability of a workstation to the desktop, and an all in one desktop at that. Building from a good base is a life lesson, and the Z1 understands it with two of it’s three available processors as a quad-core Intel Xeon processor that is usually reserved for the highest-end computers.

Since the largest thing you’ll see in this computer is the monitor, HP provides a 27-inch display that can tilt horizontally and snap open to allow your to add your upgrades. Cool features also include a Blu-ray slot-load writer, 1080p webcam and SATA storage up to 2TB and 300GB SSD.

In case you missed our first post on the Z1 or are interested in how the announcements sound when they become presentations – click here.

Best Editing Software: Adobe Production Premium Creative Suite 6 – Editing Suite

Adobe you know, what you’re waiting on is CS6 and rightly so, it will be a very strong presence in the video editing world for good reason, such as a clean and easy to use interface and good utilization of 64-bit processing. The suite combines big names like Premiere, Audition, Photoshop and After Effects with many more for a package that gives video professionals and enthusiasts an extensive group of tools.

Their emphasis this time around is to speed up your editing, allowing for hover scrubbing within windows, better/more intuitive performance in Audition and uninterrupted playback in Premiere. Another welcome expansion will be found in multicam editing and color correcting. There’s plenty more new features to discover, and as for pricing, we can’t be sure, but to get into the ballpark, CS5.5 is $1,700 and upgrades are about $400.