Senior Grad (Inspired by Key and Peele) (+ TUTORIAL!)

May, 2017
Software used: Final Cut Pro X.

The video for day 2 is a fun project I worked on for college fellowships graduating class. It’s inspired by Key and Peele’s East/West Bowl video, from Comedy Central. I had a lot of fun making this, so I decided to write a quick tutorial from my experience below:

Tutorial:

1. Add a background loop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMfZigH7bEU
   • you can use this link, or just find one on YouTube somewhere.
2. Set up a green screen AND
   • take a video of subject saying “[First Name] [Nickname] [Last Name], [Area of Study].”
     • *** I highly suggest using a tripod when shooting this video. Any camera shake can make the green screen video footage look very off ***
     • ***Also, avoid my mistake and iron/steam the green screen, it makes life much easier during editing***
     • My two cents: film better, save time editing later.
   • take a still photo of a goofy pose
     
3. So the green screen “chroma key” is where it’s important because video editing programs can take care of pretty much the rest. I’ll let pros do the teaching, here are two helpful links:
   1. Adobe Premiere Pro: https://larryjordan.com/articles/premiere-pro-cc-create-a-green-screen-key/ (source: Larry Jordan)
   2. Final Cut Pro X (which I use): https://www.macworld.com/article/2025968/how-to-key-a-shot-with-final-cut-pro-x.html (source: Macworld)
4. At this point, once you figure out how to get rid of the green background correctly, it’s just basic stitching together.
   • A. Base layer: background video
   • B. Still photo layer: add some opacity (transparency) and place on one side
   • C. Video layer: place on other side
   • D. Text: add a sports “lower third” text
5. Result:
   
   • ***As you can see, the green screen editing wasn’t PERFECT on this one, mostly because of uneven lighting during camera and the wrinkled green screen. However, thankfully, the video goes so quickly it’s not too noticeable. PLUS, this was just a non-professional video for my fellowship graduating class!***

Anyway, that’s a quick run-though of my process when making this video last year. It was really fun, and I’m very proud of the result. But most importantly, I was able to use the this opportunity to spend with each individual shown in the video while filming. Plus, I’ll always be able to look back at this video and bask in the nostalgia.

Creating video with friends is always a fun thing to do, especially when my mindset has been to enjoy spending time with them. That was the same for my bloom of portrait photography during my time at Rutgers.

Feel free to ask my any questions regarding how I did this. Thanks for reading!

***featuring my CCF graduating class of 2017; special shoutout to Jon in the tutorial and Alex in the thumbnail, and Jas in the intro sports commentator scene. ***