This is a little way off the ‘rift’ topic although it might be preparatory. I made a painting from one of my own photos of sheep sheltering from the sun in a thicket and deliberately included a strip of the bright green paint I’ve been using for green screen work. I wanted to make a physical painting that was inherently capable of being its own video host rather having to be adapted in video editing (do I even know if that’s possible?) for the purpose.

I used acrylics on white cartridge (A2) prepared with a layer of transparent primer for texture and substance.

To me, this looks like three different paintings even without the bright green strip across the middle – the top and the bottom being quite painterly but in different ways, and the strip with the sheep seeming more illustrative due to the charcoal marks.

But setting that aside for now, this is an exercise in film technique so inconsistencies in the painting itself can wait.

Using Filmora Pro and a video from Pexels which are free to use, I’ve produced this slightly apocalyptic piece which shows just how broadly the chroma key interprets green! There may be a way round that, there usually is, but for now here’s the result of today’s efforts.

My plan is to go back to the painting, primarily to make it a standalone piece with a coherent style but also to see if I can mute some of the green outside the centre strip just because I want to be more intentional about using the process. I like the serendipitous effect here but I’d like to have chosen to do that rather having it handed to me by a piece of out-of-control software!

19th April. I recalled something about chroma keys and yesterday, changed the painting to include more deliberately placed green. This took out the red/orange colour and unbalanced the painting qua painting so I added some gratuitous sheep which made matters worse! The lesson at the core of this is to paint knowingly which I don’t usually do, and to have the video material clearly in mind rather than trying to find something later to fit. Both of those key constraints would improve both the painting as a standalone piece, and the eventual greenscreen video.

I tracked down the chroma key and found all kinds of bells and whistles there although none quite got me out of the unwitting hole I’d dug for myself by having not the faintest idea what I was doing in the first place. But who was it said we learn better from mistakes than successes? Sounds trite but actually, the third video having been more successful than the others, I’ve made progress, and while I’m still being led by the nose here, I am at least beginning to choose the reins.

What I haven’t found yet is a way of tuning out from green screen pick-up other kinds of green. I can’t imagine there isn’t a way so I’ll be hunting down more tutorials. The only alternative is townscapes with bright green roads, or one vibrant green patch in an otherwise autumnal harvest scene and goodness knows what havoc would be wrought on Monet’s haystacks if anyone tried that.

Someone else with great wisdom observed that ‘knowing’ is the condition of being able to do something, while understanding is the ability to explain it to someone else. Or thereabouts.

Those blobby white sheep are quite the mistake, aren’t they!

This is the chroma key video.

Last iteration then I think that’s this one worn out.

This has been deliberately re-painted to place green – a different shade to see how that works – away from what had been hedges but now seem to be mountains. I’m reminding myself that, for the time being the painting is playing second fiddle to figuring out green screen.

Mountains, definitely mountains. Should have found an alpine bells audio track.