Thing 25: Green Screen Fun

I have a little user anxiety about Green Screens so this is probably a good choice.

I was trying to explain Cool Tools to my daughter (she's 23) and I showed her the list of topics so she could see what they were like.  She picked this one, so I decided to give it a shot.

Watched your goofy green screen videos....now I'm not so nervous about trying it!

As I was reading Mr. B's blog Behind the Scenes all I could think about were the management problems I have, especially at this time of year.  I tried to do a lesson on logging in and exploring World Book online today and wasn't able to finish the lesson because of behavior.  I will try to imagine what it would be like to have students who would work in randomly assigned groups without fighting and complaining.

His project was really good and I agree with him about oral delivery.  It is so hard to get kids to speak naturally when they are presenting.  Adults too! It reminded me of the play my school put on a few years back.  The kids did great remembering the lines but they sounded like robots.  I would really like to be able to do a project with my students like the one Mr. B did.  Maybe I can get one of the teachers to work with me next year if my schedule allows it.  The way it is now, when I am teaching a class, the teacher is on their break.  Mr. B said the project was completed in one calendar week with 45 minutes per day! That is awesome.  It would take me 5 classes on that timeline which isn't bad and I bet the kids would really enjoy the process.

Getting in on the Green Screen by  Justin Birckbichler 

When I got to Mr. B's list of things needed for making a green screen presentation, I have to admit, I'm getting a little nervous. I am planning on using my iPhone camera to experiment with this but  Mr. B says you need a camera or ipad (some kind of tablet) and a tripod.  I have many digital cameras at school but they are all in various stages of disrepair.

OMG, now he says I need editing software and something called a “chroma key"! This is sounding more complicated and impossible the more I read! Where the heck does he teach!? He says the kids can do everything themselves? If they are invested.  The trick is getting them invested.  He says editing apps are less than $30 but can I put them on any device that I can use at work? I will have to research that.  

Diving into Green Screen Headfirst with Middle School

This article is really making me think I won't be able to do a green screen project. The author has 1 to 1 ipads at her school....let's see, I have.....zero. And DoInk has to be purchased? Even for $2.99 I can't add it to any device owned by my school.  I don't mind spending my own money or using my own device.  My phone is utilized quite a bit at school for many purposes....let's keep hope alive. Maybe I can use it.....The project this teacher did took a larger block of time to create the videos but she did it without previous experience with the apps or with the green screen.  That gives me hope. 

Learning about Do Ink

Yay! Green Screen by Do Ink makes it easy to create incredible green screen videos and images right on your iPad or iPhone.

I can use my iPhone! 

I bought the DoInk app for my phone and used green construction paper to make my background green screen.  I tried to get my cat to roll in catnip on the green paper but he was very uncooperative.  Then I had my bf be my guinea pig but none of those worked out well.  My most successful image was of my dog's llama toy. 

This is much easier with two images than with a video.  It cuts the picture down really narrow from top to bottom. 

Sometimes the green construction paper didn't work that well. 
Here you can see the paper.  
In this one, you can see the tape holding the paper: 
Here I was able to adjust the chroma color to get rid of the paper behind the lamb:
This is cool but not very easy.  None of the videos I tried to use were successful.  
This one isn't bad but you can still see the tape a little bit.
I adjusted the Chroma color and it got better.  I guess I'm getting better with practice:
It would help to have a larger green area without tape and without variations in the color of the paper.

So now I'm having fun but want a better green background so I can do more.  This is my uncooperative cat with some turkeys we saw in the Dominican Republic.
I learned how to combine a background picture and a picture that was taken on the green paper.  I also learned how to crop the background and to resize the greenscreen picture which is important because otherwise you end up with a giant cat or whatever you took a picture of on the green background.  If I had a larger green area I could see how a video would work.

This video is not very good because I was moving the camera too much and parts of the background that is not green shows in several places. I wasn't able to cut the length of the video.  I am going to try again.  I have to watch more tutorials.  

When I got to work today I was able to make a much better green screen out of some green material.  Plus I've had more practice so I created some great pictures.  I'm not having as much luck with videos mainly because the people doing them don't do what I want them to! Here are some of the best pictures I created:



The videos are the hardest.  It's hard to get them to send and load but here are a couple of the ones that came out best:






I think the information given in some of the links makes this sound much more complicated than it is if you use DoInk.  The Chroma filter is included and you can get all the background you want on Google images.  I thought this was going to be very hard but it wasn't.  It was so much fun.  I could continue this Thing for days but I have one more to finish by the end of the week so I'm going to stop here.  I need a lot more practice with the videos but I think I've got the pictures down.  Thank you for this one....another fear conquered! 

Comments

  1. omg - what fun. those videos are terrific!! Tell the kids I love them all! (the kids and the videos) Love that you shared your whole adventure with this. DoInk really is the key. Glad you were able to use it on your iPhone. It would be great if the school library system office could get a kit together with an ipad, a greenscreen background and a tripod, and could loan it out to the libraries.

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