This post explains how to use all kinds of backgrounds for your YouTube videos, your marketing videos, or whatever kind of video you want to push out there. You’ve probably watched behind the scenes of popular movies and you’ve most likely seen them using the green screen effect. This is chroma keying and it’s what we’re dealing with here.
You should know that your camera doesn’t really really matter. I’ve successfully shot and edited a clip with an iPhone 7 Plus and it looked pretty good. Now, this whole thing comes in two parts: the shooting and the editing.
Just as you can use a DSLR or your phone camera for shooting, you can also use your smartphone or computer for editing. Before we go into the editing part, we should first talk about shooting the video. Like me, I assume you’re shooting on a budget with limited equipment. You should watch the video to fully understand this tutorial. But if for some reasons you can’t, read on.
Before Getting Started
Now you’re going to need a green background. For me, I used this green cloth my wife I got from the local market. And this kind of cloth is everywhere. Plus it’s cheap. Just make sure it’s not shiny.
Set it up in a way it doesn’t look too crumpled and make sure you don’t have shadows on it. That is important. You also need a lot of light. Natural light would be perfect since I’m assuming you don’t have softboxes or those professional lighting equipments.
You can do this on a sunny day in broad daylight. Try using a room with lots of natural light flooding in. I normally do this in my apartment in a room with two windows. Now, when you’re shooting the video, don’t stand too close to the green background to avoid your shadow falling on the background.
And one more thing, don’t wear green! Your body is gonna be transparent if you do. I believe you now know how to shoot the right way.
How to Edit and Apply the Green Screen Screen Effect
I already said you can do this with an Android phone, an iPhone, or your computer. This video tutorial talks about how to do the editing on mobile using KineMaster, an application available for Android and iOS. It also explains how to do it on macOS using Final Cut Pro.