U2 project and blue screen tests.

At one point last year I had considered using myself and actors to study figures within archive conflict footage, then rehearse and act out for the camera in front of a green screen setup. This would then enable me to simply key out the background leaving the actors. This was appealing for a while but it occurred to me strongly that it was import and for the figures to come from actual broadcast material from my youth, that same material that helped form my ideas of the country I inhabited. This was also driven by a submission I sent of to One.Zero to try and be chosen to supply some of the footage to be displayed on giant pixel screens for the last U2 tour. My work was selected which left me in a bit of a dialema as they where very sticky about copy write clearance on any material they used. So after some phone calls to various archives I realised the substantial cost of buying footage for such a commercial application. One. Zero did not have any budget for purchase of material or even payment to any of the artists supplying their work, so this is where the initial idea of chroma keying came from. The tests proved somewhat successful, but the lighting was hard to get just right in the size of the photographic studio I had access to (8 x 5m), not to mention having enough room to perform the running sequence that I intended to film. This meant I would need to gain access to a large studio or an old industrial type space that I could paint, and then light in the required manner-diffuse tungsten, light with rear lights having slightly yellow gells inserted to create clean keying round the figures. With the hand in deadline approaching it became apparent to me that the amount of energy that I was starting to put into a project for a rich rock group, that provided me with no payment or working budget, and was starting to divert my attention away from my ma studies was really getting to not be worth it. So I wrote a in depth letter explaining this and that I wanted to withdraw from the project. The relief that came with this decision was fantastic. I had gained another lesson in spreading myself too thin.

Some of my blue screen tests keyed onto a new background: