June 17, 2025
Yup, I am still at it.
I’ve worked on my green screen until it is perfection. Hundreds of hours over several years to get to where I have it just right… and it is impressive. There are no artifacts, I can zoom in to incredibly wild levels without distortion and I am so pleased with it that in the next video I wanted to use this system.
That is UNTIL my eye spots the simple fact that on a scene that appears backlit, that throws shadows in front of where I am in the background… but in the location where I “stand” in the video, there is no shadow from my body in front of me. It looks fake, it looks like a green screen!
That sends me to YouTube on another wild goose chase to help me with the process of how to create a shadow. Apparently, no one has ever had a need to create a fake shadow that mimics the movements of the original video, so I am on my own… almost. There was one video that gave me hints and suggestions on what to do, but it was only about 25% of the way there. The rest, I eventually figured out myself, but that was another 20 or so hours and 5 iterations before I got it to where I think I am almost satisfied. I feel that I am going to need to make ONE MORE iteration that makes the shadow look a little more realistic, but that is so far in to the realm of nit-picking that even I don’t think it necessary at this time (maybe later?).
So, this is what it looks like at this time. I *think* I can live with this:
Note the shadow that flows from my feet towards the bottom of the clip. It’s dark enough to appear to be a shadow, yet transluscent enough to show the stones of the backdrop underneath.
I can live with this for the time being and improve on that later.