The classic 1945 Laurel and Hardy film, The Bullfighters uses a Chroma Key effect with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy's heads on the skeleton puppet after they got skinned alive Richard K.It was invented by Larry Butler, who won an Oscar for it. The first film to use the chroma key process was The Thief of Bagdad back in 1940.It can be fairly tricky to create a viable Chroma-Key effect, especially with amateur equipment - often, it requires fiddling with hue and saturation, and even then, there is often a faint, tell-tale 'border' around the subject where the green-screen footage and the 'real' actor don't match up. Also notable for causing occasional unintentional hilarity - when background and foreground are poorly matched, or the visual effects budget is low, the effect is anything but seamless. See notes at Ninja.Īlmost all productions use Chroma Key at some point, but there are some standout examples. The suit looks like a Ninja outfit, and that is not a coincidence, as it serves the same purpose as the black outfits traditionally worn by Japanese stagehands. Performers in recent Jim Henson Productions shows have used these suits to perform with puppets without having to raise them above their heads.
A garment that can be used for this purpose is a one-piece jumpsuit in the background color, with a full-face mask, and a mesh eye piece, called a "gimp suit" or, in the case of a blue background, a "blueberry" in the trade. The invisibility effect can be used intentionally to allow a performer, or part of his body, to interact with props while remaining unseen. Magenta is sometimes used, as is black, but the latter is problematic, as it's almost impossible to shoot a person without having some black visible on their person, in eyes or shadows. Green became popular because digital editing systems can isolate green with less light in the background, and because lime green is less common than bright blue in costuming note There were also a few actors who also had Blue Screen-colored eyes Broken Arrow (1996) offers an example, where an astute viewer can occasionally see special effects in John Travolta's irises. Blue was a popular choice in the early days of color motion pictures, because it is complementary to the reds found in human skin. The color used is now entirely arbitrary. The technique is usually used to composite the subject into a computer generated environment, but other live action footage, matte paintings, traditional animation, or some combination of all can be used also. Before the existence of computer editing, the effect could be achieved using rear projection, double-exposing the film, or a Matte Shot. It relies on filming the subject in front of a solid-color background - usually green or blue - and causing the editing system to replace that color with the background signal. More commonly known as green screen, the process by which a subject filmed on a camera can be seamlessly inserted into a scene generated by other means.