Green Screen Magic

Keynote+iMovie=Green Screen Magic!

This week I set up rotational stations for my students to experiment with various green elements to use as green screen props. We experimented with green and blue food coloring in water, green play dough, green magnetic letters, green blocks, and green paper. I had each station set up for 4 people and when the bell rings, they switch to another station. The goal for this was to play with the features to see how they worked and then talk about ways we could use these tools in deepening our learning for different content areas.

The green screen is an integral part of the special effects process known formally as chromakey. … Chromakeying, also known as color keying, is the process of singling out one color in an electronic image and then using software (iMovie and iPad) to make that color transparent.

Here’s a video with a few examples (green marker, green food coloring, and green paper)

iMovie is the magical tool you need to achieve any green screen videos! The important part is making sure you have great lighting and no other random green objects in the movie frame itself. Also, no green clothing unless you want that to be intentional. Students will need to create a bottom layer (this is the layer that will show through the green) and then create a video layer on top. At the end of this post, I will also show you how to line up photos and videos by using Keynote to achieve the perfect balance and alignment.

How to achieve the human body effect:

Draw or find a free-to-use human body online. Save the picture to your Photos.

Capture video of a person holding a green piece of construction paper (make sure lighting is good) and have them slowly move the construction paper down the body and back up again.

Open Keynote and select a wide screen slide. (I prefer to use Split Screen so I can quickly drag images back and forth). Insert both the video and the photo on the same slide.

Change the opacity of the video and line up the photo so that the proportions of the body align. Once they align, you can delete the video.

Drag the slide thumbnail over to Photos app and now you have your bottom layer ready to go to align with your video!

Open iMovie

Add the photo as the bottom layer and disable Ken Burns.

Add the video and insert as a green/blue screen overlay.

Tap the green part of the video…your video should be in perfect alignment!

Happy creating! There’s so many ideas in bringing learning to life with green screens!