White Done Right:
How to make your talent look good in seamless environments
by Charlie Burket
If you've watched any network promos, national commercials, movies, music videos, or web shows recently you may have noticed that many of them are utilizing white seamless environments (any Apple fans out there?). A white background is pleasing to the eye, and it allows the brain to easily focus on the action without a lot of distraction. Our DJTV series TechKnow greatly benefited from being produced on white. A lot of people have attempted to recreate this look, but with only limited success, and some of our viewers have asked us to explain how we achieved the look of TechKnow, with Eric Franks. As the editor of the show, I'm here to tell you how I did it. There are, in fact, a few tricks to pulling it off.
LIGHTING AND "DA PLAN"
It would seem that the process is as simple as lighting up a white backdrop and shooting talent in front. In reality, it requires a little more technique than that.
When I came on board as editor for TechKnow, a few episodes had already been shot on a large roll of white paper. Not only did the color of white vary with light placement, it changed slightly from shot to shot. We quickly determined that in order to keep the white backdrop consistently white, for color correction of our host's skin tones and for full creative freedom, we would need to be able to separate the talent from the backdrop in the edit bay. So the white backdrop used on the shoot was not the final "white" that our viewers would see in the show.
I was able to salvage those first few episodes by applying a luma key to the paper background and working in a solid white background to replace it. (More on that in a bit.) Moving forward, we decided to change the way we lit and shot Eric. The solution was to add a lot more light to the background so that we could intentionally overexpose the white paper while keeping Eric's exposure normal. This set us up for achieving the seamless environment we were looking for.
Keying Eric off the white paper provided two crucial components of the final look: 1) it allowed us to have a consistent white value on every shot, and 2) it gave us the ability to color-correct Eric separate from the backdrop.
KEYING IS KEY
A key works best when the keyable object is evenly lit and the camera acquisition format yields little compression on the footage. We shot TechKnow in DVCPROHD720PN using P2 cards, so our color space was suitable for keying. Also, it is important to note that while luma keying worked well for the production of TechKnow, this look can also be achieved utilizing chromakey techniques.
FIGURE 1/1A: A luminance key separates the host from the white paper background.
- FIGURE 2: Set up the timeline with the keyed A-roll footage of the host on track 2, and a white solid on the track below it.
- FIGURE 3: Replacing the white solid with a red one makes it easy to see if you have a clean key..
In our case, the footage was laid out on track 2 of our Final Cut Pro timeline and a solid white clip was placed on the track directly below. Next, the luma key was applied to the A-roll, allowing the pure white clip on the lower track to replace the natural, paper background with a richer, brighter white. I would then fine-tune the amount of keying by watching crucial areas on Eric, such as his eyes and the buttons on his shirt, as these areas also contain white values that were sometimes lost due to keying. After this was dialed in, I would typically check my key by replacing the white clip with a red one. This makes it very easy to see any areas that I may have keyed out inadvertently.
- FIGURE 4: The shot on the left shows the footage as it was shot. The C-stands and studio will be masked out later.
- FIGURE 5: The clip on the right shows the final effect after keying and masking.
When the key was suitable, I would apply a crop to both sides of the image to matte out any unwanted objects in the frame. Most of the time, the backdrop used on set did not fill the entire frame, and this was fine because Eric's action never left the boundary of the paper. Outside the paper, however, there were C-Stands, warehouse walls, and other production elements that needed to be cropped out.
After tightening up the left and right sides of the frame, the white seamless background we were hoping to create now filled the frame.
SUMMARY
Keying Eric off the white paper provided two crucial components of the final look: 1) it allowed us to have a consistent white value on every shot, and 2) it gave us the ability to color-correct Eric separate from the backdrop. Raw footage always requires some color adjustment for skin tonality and contrast optimization, this method allowed us to correct Eric's skin tones without compromising the color of the background. An added benefit was that we gained the ability to place Eric anywhere in the white seamless environment so he could interact with any object of interest.
Now that you know how we did it, try it yourself. There really is no wrong or right way to create the seamless look, as long as the results look "white."
Charlie Burket is a Producer and Emmy Award Winning Editor at Digital Juice.
