Completed a first draft edit of the green screen scientist scene. Edits need tightening a little and a few more cutaways needed but overall the scene flows well. Pleased!

Going to leave it a couple of days and will go back to it again and review.

Once edit is complete then will need to key out the green using Keylight and follow my workflow I mention in my last blog to get it all into Shake.

Will now need to work on the best way to get the CGI hanger footage rendered and ready for the various scenes including getting us 'extras' into the scene!!!

After testing Phyxx Keyer in Motion 5, Motion's own keyer, old Primatte and old Keylight in Shake; as expected, up to date Keylight in FCP7 keyed the best.

So just like Eco, the workflow will be:

Edit green screen footage in FCP7;

Use Keylight in FCP7 to key footage;

Use basic garbage mattes in FCP7;

Export each scene with embedded alpha channel using Animation or ProRes444 codec with colours set to millions+;

Import FCP7 exported files into Shake and composite background, light wrap, colour correct etc;

Export from Shake back into FCP7

What is going to interesting in Shake is how I can use the FCP7 exports alpha channel and add in more travelling mattes for things like the clip board and other hold out mattes. I assume I can multilayer the alpha channels and then use the output from that multilayer as the final matte on the original green screen clip? One to play about with and test I suppose.

Of course I could buy the new Keylight for Shake and have no problems/workarounds for hold out mattes but that is £450+vat .... may be one day!

The test key I did was of me standing around and after some tweaking Keylight did the job with the aid of a simple garbage matte. I used an old screen grab of the hanger interior and it looked pretty good, really brings the background to life.

Just need to find the time to get cracking on it all !!

Thanks to Alexandra and Rob, the green screen shoot was a success! They made it very easy for me; along with Sam from the studio who sorted out all the lighting for us before we got there - I just had to crack out the camera and start! Brilliant.

My long suffering crew were also brilliant; and we all had a lot of fun playing the parts of 'extras' after the professionals had wrapped for the day.

Quick check of the footage and sound and all looks fine - transferred off the cards onto my Mac safe and sound.

Just 2 shots left to do. Pending weather may well try and get these next weekend.

As predicted both Alexandra and Rob made it all very easy for me. Perfect read through - and I am sure it will be even better on the day.

Can't wait for Saturday!

Now have 2 working digital props on the iPad for the shoot on the 8th. One for starting the IP Address search and one for searching, address found audio beep and webcam activation which shows dad & daughter from their webcam POV.

Tracking and rough rotoscoping done in Shake along with video conferencing low res effects and resizing. Used Motion to transition from search engine screen to webcam footage using FxFactory Pro Cube transition with audio beep applied. Using iBooks Author, applied the UI background which I did couple of days ago in InDesign, as a image background and added the videos outputted from Motion at the right dimensions to fit on top, to create an iBook which i can use on the iPad on the day.

Now ready for the shoot. Phew!