Digital Compositing A brief primer by K.

Shaw Have you ever wondered how Nicolas Cage can ride a motorcycle without holding on to the handlebars? Maybe you've heard terms like "blue screen", "green screen", or "chroma-key". The weather man's tie sometimes turns invisible. How does that happen? Once upon a time, in an age before computers, the special effects wizards at Hol lywood film studios would put multiple strips of film through a photochemical pr ocess called "compositing". If you had film of an actor standing in front of a d ark blue backdrop, certain processes could be used to make background film show through the dark blue parts of the foreground film. Using special projection tec hniques, you could even "matte" the foreground layer over a limited portion of t he background layer to make it appear that the action was filmed from far away. In the computer era, these primitive techniques have been replaced with cheaper, easier, and more convincing alternatives. Most newcomers to digital compositing will refer to it with such terms as "layer ing" or "green screening". Such individuals typically assume that computer softw are is sufficient to automatically create the convincing illusion that we know a nd love. It is not. Simply layering a green screen clip over a background clip i n a non-linear video editor will result in jagged or blurry outlines that break the illusion. Such flaws (called "artifacts") took other forms in the days of an alog film compositing. For example, in Ben-Hur (1959), dark blue outlines are cl early visible on actors in the sailing shots. In Star Wars (1977), the TIE fight ers are surrounded by sharp-edged auras when composited over a black space backg round. In Terminator 3 (2003), Arnold drives a truck in front of a green screen without any visual artifacts whatsoever. This incredible improvement is only pos sible thanks to the careful use of sophisticated digital compositing software. A team of effects artists oversaw the compositing shots of each of these films, a nd each film pushed compositing to the technological limits of its time. For the casual film maker who wishes to explore digital compositing, non-linear editing software such as Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas is recommended. For those who are not satisfied with the sub-standard compositing of those programs, the a uthor recommends using more advanced node-based compositing software such as Ble nder. Blender is free software, but that freedom comes at a price. In providing the necessary low-level control to pull off a convincing compositing effect, it becomes quite difficult for a beginner to use. Perhaps the most perplexing featu re of any compositing software is varying levels of opacity. Consider the techni ques employed in a green screen effect. An actor stands in front of a sheet of b rightly colored green fabric. The camera records him or her at such an angle tha t his/her head, arms, and torso appear over the top of green. It is then the com puter's job to determine which parts are green and which are not. The actor cann ot wear a green shirt, or it will appear invisible. Common sense would indicate that any part of the image could be either "green" or "not green". However, a lo t of compositing software is capable of recognizing parts that are "somewhat gre en", and removing the green from those parts to make them transparent. In this w ay, one can hold a glass of water in front of a well-constructed green screen, a nd the transparency of the water will be preserved in the final image. Combined with other digital effects, this technique can result in powerful and realistic imagery that would be impractical to physically create.