Last year we spoke to Jack Tunnicliffe at Java Post in Regina, Western Canada and he gave us some insights into producing the Canadian TV series InSecurity. The show’s FX-heavy visuals rely heavily on a couple of Red Giant stalwarts, Magic Bullet Colorista II and Red Giant Warp, but Jack’s go-to tool for greenscreen finishing and fine tuning is Key Correct.
Above is an example of a sequence from InSecurity where Key Correct really made a difference. Here, Jack tells us why.
“Every time I do a green screen – and I do a lot – I use Key Correct. During production of InSecurity we have to put a city background in for many episodes moving around the boss’s office. It all has to be tracked with Mocha and then keyed. I use Key Correct for all of this and it’s made it a really good-looking show.
“Key Correct really comes into play when the lighting on the green screen isn’t ideal and you have to start massaging the keys. Key Correct gives you the tools to deal with noise in the alpha, filling holes that happen in the foreground because an actor is wearing a blue or green item like a neck tie for instance. A situation like this might require time consuming roto work to recover the tie but the alpha cleaner filter fills in the hole automatically with one selection and you’re done.
“I want everything to be photo-realistic so people don’t know it’s a greenscreen. The Spill Suppressor is awesome for taking the green or blue casts out of the foreground without harming the original image. Some keyers have suppression that erodes or deteriorates the original foreground. And we’ll use Light Wrap, which is built into Key Correct, as the final element in the keying process that helps make keys or composites realistic by blending the edge of the foreground a little with the pixels of the background image making the composite more photo-realistic.”
We’ve discussed using Key Correct on InSecurity, a Canadian prime-time TV show. But Jack told us that Java Post uses Key Correct in most of their commercial productions, making every keying job really stand out – or not, if you get my drift.
