The Joy Of Virtual Sets - Page 3

Mad at the president? Key yourself standing in front of the White House. Mad at Hollywood? Key yourself into a photo of the Academy Awards stage.

Want to report the news--or comment on it? It's possible to key yourself into a slick looking nightly news set. This video was shot using several of the virtual sets originally produced by Serious Magic, a company acquired a few years ago by Adobe. They're designed to be used with Adobe's Ultra 2 keying software, which provides a relatively low entry price, and has an extremely intuitive, easy to learn GUI. (You'll still likely need an editing program to finish things off, and the clips in my video were later edited together in Adobe's Premiere Pro.) The Ultra 2 demo reel in the video helps to explain some of the very basics of green screen and keying.

As anyone who's spent any time surfing the Blogosphere or YouTube knows, this is a tremendous period of experimentation for Internet video, and it hasn't gone unnoticed. Hollywood in general has always been uncomfortable with the World Wide Web and Silicon Valley's empowering entrepreneurship. Primetime television has been distressed with the idea of YouTube since about five minutes before it arrived.

Traditional big journalism was initially very ill-at-ease with the Blogosphere and the pioneers who preceded it. As PC-based video technology and a growing number of free
video hosting sites make DIY news reporting almost as easy as blogging, and as chromakey applications allow for a low-budget operation to punch far above its weight, look for a similar reaction in the coming decade from television.

Katie Couric might not like the competition she's about to be faced with, but I think she'll get used to it eventually.

Article Author: Ed Driscoll

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