Working With Green Screen for TV News

Video Transcript

"BILL ALBIN: Hello, I'm Bill Albin. And on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to teach you what you need to know to be a local news reporter. In this clip, we're going to talk about a green wall. A green wall or green screen or matte wall, there are a lot of different names, but basically it's the same thing. It's just a green wall. Now some things you want to keep in mind when you're using a green wall, never wear green because those parts of you that are green will disappear. So if you're wearing a green tie or a green jacket or something, it will disappear on the wall and you don't want that. You use a green screen for a variety of reasons, particularly, things like weather. The weather person would want to show you where things are going on, but obviously, he can't be there. I mean, if you want a map of the United States and say, "Well, there's a front coming across the Great Lakes." Well, you could illustrate that on the map and refer to it. Now obviously, there's nothing here right now, so how would I know it's there? Well, you have a monitor. Oftentimes, the weather person or whoever else is standing on the green wall will want to refer to--if I'm pointing at Wisconsin, I know I'm pointing at Wisconsin because out of the corner of my eye I can see the monitor. I can see where my hand is, and I see that's Wisconsin. And then I can refer to, particularly, your facts and the different weather situations that are moving around on this map. And so for that reason we use this, and what it does is it allows us to use things like maps and cool graphics and things that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do. You wouldn't want to print off a whole map of the U.S. every day. The paper cost would be ridiculous, so we use something called the green wall."