Behold the Green Screen!
Green screen?
You mean a screen that’s green in color?
What’s the big deal about it?
It’s everything man. Robert Downey Jr wouldn’t be such a badass if not for the green screen (of course there’s applause for his spontaneous tricks and one liners!) and Man of Steel wouldn’t be so stunning either without the green screen.
Alright. A green screen is actually a technique that makes people look like they are somewhere they aren’t. The subject is filmed against a plain background, which is normally either green or blue. The green background is later replaced with whatever surreal atmosphere you want to and a lot of work goes into making it look believable.
My encounter with the green screen was accidental and here’s how –
For a kid who was placed school 1st in the 10th grade public exams, the next herculean task of clearing the 12th grade must have been a piece of cake. Well, what is life if not for its mystery, oodles of sarcastic fun and wrong timing! Then on a fine Tuesday morning, all hell broke loose; the results were announced and I passed out with a mere 61%. Not bad! Actually I was pretty nauseous about physics and math! I realized that I had lost my grip on deferential calculus and equations and that I was no longer worthy of being called a nerd.
Before my parents decided to deploy the engineering bomb on me, I underwent a massive change over shifting my perspective to HBO and Media! Thankfully, the time I spent on HBO, CBS Prime and Tech Forums, they provided me enough content to brag about movies and technology! So, long story short- I’m a Media Science Student now embarking on an incredibly creative journey on Photography, Film Studies, Public Relations, Cinematography, Script and content writing, Advertisements, Event Management, VFX and SFX , Editing and Animation. (Obviously, you have to specialize in a particular field and choosing it is an excruciating pain because they’re all tempting!) Now, I get to wake up saying film dialogues instead of formulas and equations!
Creativity is a serious quality. The ability to create a feature film or to fill a green matte with breath taking visuals requires vigorous practice and whooping creative quality to make it a success and a critical choice! Speaking of the green screen, does anybody know how important it is? The green screen is our like a modern day God. It gives you creative control. Let’s say you want to create the illusion of hanging down from a highly treacherous mystical mountain. Raise a uniform shaded green screen behind you as a background. Give proper lighting. Record yourself hanging down from a bunker bed or a ledge. Say hello to composting software. I use Nuke. With a little bit of tweaking and masking, you’re hanging at the edge of the Mount of Doom!
With that said, I would like to point the name of the university I’m studying in. It’s College Of Engineering, Guindy (CEG). I’m pursuing – M.Sc Electronic Media (5 years integrated) from Anna University, Chennai.
It is also worthy to note that Anna University is the first university to take up the idea of India’s University Grants Commission (UGC) to start MSc (Electronic Media) programmes. http://www.annauniv.edu/MediaScience/index.html
Ahem! Back to the topic – a little thank you to God! I normally don’t thank God because I believe in the theory of randomness, but the plan to escape the idealistic concept of engineering- notoriously planted by advertisements and ultra- modern educational fundamentalists in the minds of innocent parents, required a fictional upper hand!
My only regret I spent an insane lot of time preparing for the IITs (Seriously, what was I thinking!)
