Travis’s green screen setup. Lights are helpful but not necessary.
Since the office was officially working a half-day Wednesday due to it being the day before Thanksgiving, I decided not to make the monotonous one-mile commute into the office and instead worked from home. Being geographically dispersed, my team meets daily via videoconference and I decided I was done with putting the walls of our spare bedroom on display for my coworkers to see.
The day before a holiday called for something a little more whimsical, so I hatched a plan. I found some free software for the Mac called CamTwist that can do chroma key. Chroma key is the “green screen” technique that TV studios use to insert backgrounds behind their reporters and presenters. A few years ago our son, Travis, got a green cloth that makes a decent green screen. I borrowed his green cloth, set it up behind my office desk, fired up CamTwist, and displayed a holiday-appropriate scene behind me of wild turkeys in the woods. My coworkers loved it!
Travis’s green screen takes him to Hogwarts and beyond.
Once Travis saw what I had done we set it up for him to use. His laptop is a Windows machine, so CamTwist gave way to other free software called Open Broadcaster. Soon he was onscreen, flying a broomstick over the grounds of Hogwartz, as happy as he could be.
It made me realize that anyone with a computer, web camera, and twenty bucks worth of green fabric could set up their own studio where they can create their own amazing scenes. Bring the Seven Wonders of the World into your living room. Ride a dinosaur. Drive the Indy 500. Any photo (or video!) you can drag off the Internet, you can place behind you on your green screen. Weather too rainy to take your kid to the park? A green screen lets you bring the park to her! It’s better than any jungle gym!
My home office beats your home office
When I was a kid, the best my brothers and I could do was make hokey movies with our dad’s 8mm home movie camera (and forget about editing). Kids today now have Hollywood-quality moving-making tools right on their tablets. Adding a green screen and a free program like Open Broadcaster or ManyCam (for Windows) or CamTwist (for Mac) opens up a world of creative opportunities.