Digital, Baby!

We've gone digital. Digital cam, digital music, digital editing, digital digits...

The Funday Pawpet show, our progenitor and inspiration, has the necessary analog equipment to do chroma-keying, editing, and special effects. I do not.

What the FPS crew can do in a couple of seconds (barring technical difficulties... It IS a live show, after all) takes me days, or weeks even. I spend far more time editing our videos than it ever takes to do the actual filming.

I'm always trying to push my personal limits in turning out a good video. Back on "Major Tom", I learned a number of things almost right away (though not soon enough). For instance: LIGHT the greenscreen well and evenly! This gave me no end of trouble when editing. The more variation in the background, the wider the color range needed to remove it. And the larger that range gets, the more likely it is to share colors with parts of the image you DON'T want removed. Oh, and DON'T use props that have colors similar to the background. They are the first to go when things get loose. (The CAPCOM headset was a big mistake.)

If you'd like to see some of the methods used on "Major Tom", this short clip demonstrates a little of the techniques.

Major Tom, Behind The Scenes
WATCH (flash)
[right-click to download]