Assessment 3C - How to Guide of Music Video Techniques (iii) - Chroma Key & Effects

Chroma Key and Effects 

Successful uses of Chroma Key
Chroma key would be used to create something that would be difficult to create for example if you wanted to film a music video of someone performing in the Bahamas and as a small film maker you can't afford to fly over to the Bahamas. so you will use green screen in order to pull off this effect off. the main reason why production companies use green screen is because they can achieve unrealistic characters in music videos, a good example of this in music videos would be "ET" By Katy Perry, this video won an award for special effects.

Another reason why music videos would use green screen and special effects would be used to achieve "Hyper-reality" in the sense that we as film makers can create a world that doesn't exist. If chroma key is used well it can create an atmosphere which is completely unrealistic and also you can achieve something quite unique. for example with greenscreen you can interpret the lyrics. this is shown in "Good Life" By Kanye West.

Unsuccessful uses of Chroma Key

Bad chroma key can sometimes be down to having a very bad editor or it can be used to create a style. A video that can describe this would be Lil Yatchy's "1 NIGHT.  This video contains a ridiculous amount of chroma key but the artist said the purpose of this was to establish his personal style to show that he was fun, Random and energetic.  This video contains alot of intertextuality so in order to fit all his links with existing content he made sure that he overlapped all his links, so the video looked messy but creative. When videos tend to have such bad chroma key or effects, they tend to go viral.

Another example of a bad use of chroma key and effects in music videos would be Kanye West's video for his track "Bound 2" which went viral overnight due to the fact that the video contained bad effects and green-screen and the video also contained him and his wife having intercourse on a motorbike. so in relation to Goodwin this contained Voyeurism and because it became viral and people created Parody music videos. it was recreated by famous comedians "Seth Rogen" and "James Franco."

Bad Example of Chroma key

The video for David Hassellhoff's video "hooked on a feeling" is known for its dreadful use of green screen For example throughout the video there is hypereality as he is flying but the execution to create the effect that Hasslehoff is actually flying is bad because the subject doesn't fit in to the shot due to poor choice of mise en scene.

Are music videos reliant on Green-screen and Effects?

I would say music videos rely on effects quite a lot but the more technology that is established, artists tend to face the problem that they don't want to be cliche so they would use old styles of video for example VHS in order to create a nostalgic feel for such a futuristic endorsed mindset of the audience. Film makers rely on special effects because now film makers are being recognised for what they contribute to the video instead of the artist taking all the credit. this is why today there are music video producers that are becoming well know for example:

• Kaylum
• Hype Williams 
• Director X
• Benny Boom 
• and many more

The reason why these people are becoming well known for they're work and they get credit as well as the artist is because companies now offer awards for special effects and directing music videos.

How to Guide: Chroma key and Effects

In order to use chroma key you would need to create a set with correct lighting to avoid hotspots and also you would use a green screen in order to distinguish the colour difference so it would be easier to key the music video. once you have filmed your clip with the green screen and the correct lighting you can begin to piece your video together, so now you would go into post production. Chroma key requires an editing software such as Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro.

So once you import your footage and place it in your timeline you would need to apply an effect called "keyer" and once you have applied this effect the footage will crop the green background and make the background black.

Once the background is black you will be able to place other backgrounds on the footage. so if i wanted to overlap a drone shot of New York over this clip. i would drag the clip of the New York Shot and i will place it a layer below the lip-Syncing.

I source the footage from shutter stock. Once this is placed upon my footage this was how i created my Chroma key test clip.