Australian film - Federation of Australian Movie Makers

The Protea Video Club Newsletter
Brought to you from the Cape
It was a pleasant surprise to receive four early entries from two members of the newly formed Johannesburg
Video Club. Although their names are familiar to us from way back it was good to have them on board
again entering our competition. Let’s hope we will receive a few more entries from the Club as we all know
from the past they can produce some top quality work. A gentle reminder to the others, including our own
PVC members!!! The deadline is the end of July.
Chroma Keying
Not ‘Flying down to Rio’, but flying over the waterfront in Cape Town
The highlight of our meeting on Saturday was a demo on Blue screen, also known as green screen or
Chroma keying. Mike showed us some very interesting tutorials, downloaded from “Videomakers” “Tips &
Tricks”. It pointed out that Green screen is the most popular choice for video due to the imaging devices in
today’s camcorders as they are more sensitive to green than to red or blue. The primary use for blue is film,
says ‘Videomakers’. We only had a blue cloth, trying to get green in the right fabric was very difficult we
tried all the fabric outlets without success. We asked a studio if they would sell us some, but they weren’t
very keen and besides it was very expensive.
Anyone out there who knows where to buy the right colour green in the right fabric and has used it
successfully please let us know.
It is also surprising how large a piece of fabric you need. Remember if you are filming someone full length
then the fabric has to run under their feet as well, so you are looking at something in the region of 5 metres
in length by at least double the width of your arms outstretched.
One of our members had brought along a young lady, Carol, who may be interested in joining the PVC.
Whether she would want to be with a load of old fogies remains to be seen, if she does then she will be the
first lady member in the club.
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Australian film & video