Showing posts with label greenscreen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label greenscreen. Show all posts

Friday, June 12, 2015

Quick and Easy Green-screening for School News


Have you ever wondered how they do all those neat effects in the movies or how they do the weather broadcasts on your favorite news show?  Its called green-screening, and it is a whole lot of fun and really easy to do.  Yes I said easy to do.

Recently a school in the district that I work for asked me about kicking their news show up a notch by doing something with green-screening and they did not know where to start.  

So, where do you really start?  I have worked with many schools to help them add green screening into their news shows and there is a different process to go through for each school( that is another blog post coming soon ).  So here is the good and the bad of what I have found for this school.

I have researched many different methods of green-screening and have found one that I like more than others for the school that wants to just get started and needs something that is really quick and easy to get started with that has a small learning curve.

The Good:
I like Green Screen by Do Ink, which is an iPad app, it is very easy to use and setups in seconds.  From launching the app to recording your first video takes less than a minute as long as you have your environment set.  But why listen to me ramble on here about Do Ink when you can hear about it from them.  



Since Do Ink is an iPad app, you will have to make sure that all of your resources are loaded onto iPad ahead of time.  Then it is just a quick three steps and you are off to the races with your green screen video. Once you have recorded your video you can save it to the camera roll and that's it, that's all.

  • Step 1: Click the Plus Sign to create a new project
  • Step 2: Add your background image/video and/or live video
  • Step 3: Click the Record button


Well, there is something else you will need and that is the Green background.  So what do you do?  Do you have to buy an expensive green screen in order to do this.  That answer is no.  All you need is something that is green, or blue, either will work with this app.  Now I have been working in schools for over 12 years and every time I am in one there is always a bulletin board with a paper background on it.  Yep, I said it.  You can use that same craft paper that you use for your bulletin boards.  

The Bad:
With all of the good things that Do Ink has going for it, the only thing I found that could be considered as bad is the $2.99 price tag for the app itself.  Hey and if that is the only thing, I could really just leave it out of the blog post.

All in all it is a great app that is very easy to use and for both teachers and students in the classroom.  It offers up some wonderful opportunities to extend learning both in and outside of the classroom for students, at least the ones I have worked with, because they are excited to use the the app and to create something with it.  Oh and the possibilities are limitless for what they can do with it.  Give it a try and see for yourself how Green Screen by Do Ink can make learning fun in your classroom.


Video provided by Do Ink via Vimeo/Youtube
Image provided by Evan Herreid in association w/MeadowlarkES

Friday, March 23, 2012

Green Screening Made Easy

OK, so most of you know from reading my blogs or if you have met me know that I am not a Mac person.  I am the farthest thing from being one it seems with the educational company that I keep.  But I have to say that over the past few months I have been working on some small video projects especially with Green Screens and have been having a lot of problems with it on my PC.  So a few weeks ago when I was at my State technology conference I sat in on a workshop entitled Green Screen Cafe which has made me think it could be time to switch over to another platform for video editing.

The presenters were from an area school system that have adopted the Mac platform for creating and designing some really unique projects using Green and Split Screening tools in the classroom.  From what they discussed the students really liked the projects and have enjoyed doing them all year.  Two of the presenters were from an Elementary School and the third was from a High School.

They started out the presentation saying that it does not take very much to start green screening video work.  Three things are needed to get started.  A Green Screen, video camera and iMovie (Apple product, but you know that) and that is all you need to get going they said.  They did offer up some suggestions for low cost alternatives for green screen and video cameras. 

Green Screen Alternatives:
  • green bed sheet
  • green curtains
  • paint a wall green
Video Camera
  • flip cameras
  • cell phone cameras
  • document cameras
So I started thinking to myself in this room of mac users, I am totally in over my head until they started to show us how to create a quick green screen movie with iMovie.  I was amazed at how fast they did it, just minutes and we had a completed product.  They started out by telling us that there is one setting that has to done in order for things to work correctly.  In iMovie you have to change the General, Preferences list and put a Check in the box for Show Advanced Tools - Green Screen.  This allows the Green Screen options to show in the iMovie options when editing video.

So they started out by telling us that we need to pull in the background image first, that will show through the green screen.  Then overlay the video, with the green screen back drop, on top of that image.  Make any necessary edit to the clips and there you go.  An instant green screen video in under five minutes.  Now they did say that the videos that you will be using need to be in .mov format but that is easy if you are pulling from another video source.  Just use Zamzar or any other of your favorite file conversion sites to convert the video into this format.  And you can get background images and/or video using a Creative Commons search if you do not have your own images.

With all the pains I have gone through with the PC side of creating green screen videos, I might now have to go out and take a look at iMove and maybe possibly purchasing a Mac product for myself to use.

So what are some ways that you can use this in education?  How about these:
  • Planets/space
  • create virtual tours of foreign lands
  • lighthouses
  • county-wide read-a-longs
  • historical skits
  • Christmas around the world
  • meet your teacher
  • election videos
  • candidate interviews