How To

How to Add Chroma Key Green Screen Effect to a Movie for Free

Contributor
By eHow Contributing Writer
(7 Ratings)

Chroma key effects are essential to many movies, but an amateur enthusiast or a professional on a tight budget can find it hard to add them without breaking the bank. But if you know what you're doing, you can actually add those effects for free. Though you can find a number of different types of free movie software, Adobe Premiere is the easiest to work with, so the following steps focus on this software.

Difficulty: Moderate
Instructions

Things You'll Need:

  • Adobe Premiere, trial version
  1. Step 1

    Get your footage. Make sure the background, where you want to super-impose elements, is a bright green color that contrasts sharply with anything you want to keep in the picture. Make sure the green is as smooth as possible, with good lighting. Transfer everything to a digital format if you haven't already.

  2. Step 2

    Find the film or digital image that you want to add. If it isn't already digital, make sure that it's digital before moving on to the next step.

  3. Step 3

    Move your film files from the bin into the appropriate "layer", with the green screen film on top.

  4. Step 4

    Select the Green Screen Key effect, found in the "Effects" menu. This brings up the setting menu for the clips you plan on integrating together.

  5. Step 5

    Adjust the threshold setting until you can no longer see the green elements you want removed. Threshold measures the difference between the green, so any green elements may be lost if you aren't careful. You may need to do this multiple times.

  6. Step 6

    Scale up the cutoff, which adjusts the opacity of the green elements as determined by threshold. Just like threshold, adjust this carefully to make sure you get the effect you want.

  7. Step 7

    Change the smoothing setting until you like what you see on screen. This smooths over the edges of the clips, so a low setting gives you a sharp change, while a high setting produces a blurred line between the two.

Tips & Warnings
  • Watch the image on display as you make adjustments. Make sure that at least that much is acceptable before hitting the "Apply" button.
  • Import your files into the bin using the "File" menu on the top bar.
Resources

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