What is Greenscreen technology?
Greenscreen video shots can be used for creative live-motion projects involving custom background. Shooting Videos with a Green Screen involves filming a person or adding visual effects in front of a solid color (green). In the background you can add a customized background or further visual information later.
The technology uses the visual effect of chroma keying and post-production technique for layering two images or video streams together based on colour hues (chroma range). The technique has been used in many fields to remove a background of a video and adding another one. A colour range in the foreground footage is made transparent, allowing separately filmed background footage or a static image to be inserted into the scene. The chroma keying technique is commonly used in video production and post-production. Particularly newscasting uses greenscreen technology . Chroma keying can be done with backgrounds of any colour that are uniform and distinct, but a green background is most commonly used because it differ most distinctly in hue from any human skin colour.
Green screen, what do you need?
In principle, you need very little equipment: a sufficiently large green (or blue) cloth, a mobile phone or tablet for filming/photographing and a corresponding app. An easy way to approach greenscreen technology is the IOS app „Do ink“, but other it can also be used in other apps suchas „clips“ or „iMovie“
Greenscreen: What do you have to watch out for?
Very important: Not only the green background but every green colour is removed from the photo/film. This means that the clothes or any item shown in the foreground should not contain any green colours, unless the effect is deliberate (with completely green clothes you could make flying heads).
The better the scene is lit, the better the background can be removed afterwards. The best place for filming is a location outside on a cloudy day. You should avoid shadows on the green background while filming. When shooting indoors, make sure the scene is well lit. For perfect results studio spotlights are useful, but it can also be done without.
Greenscreen: Why is it useful in classroom settings?
Through greenscreen technology the students gain insights into the possibilities of image editing. Through this playful and creative testing of different design possibilities, the students experience and try out for themselves that this technique can be used to create images and films that would never be possible in reality. For example, you can transfer students into a completely different world such as a superhero world, a foreign country or a different historical era.
In the process, they train to understand and evaluate media designs and thus develop their media competence. Pupils learn to understand media creation during their work and continue to build their media literacy. Through the deep engagement with the topic dealt with, the students reflect on learning content in a new way. At the same time, they improve their presentation skills. During the video making, especially voice, body language and movement can be analysed.
Greenscreen: ideas to apply greenscreen into lessons
- Create exciting reports
- Make your own news reports or weather forecast
- Explain topics clearly and create learning videos
- Create music clips
- Presenting stories or literature as short films
- Document historical events
- Presenting foreign languages on location
- Analyse pictures and explain important connections
A GREENSCREEN EXAMPLE you can find here