‘avid Robin and on Dow inspect the made the Batestar Gala ea which was used forthe foreground and th back blue sreenis visite inte rea. ‘was a major problem in the old days, of duping the foreground actor repeatedly onto high-contrast stock to get a dense enough matte. With the coming of better @: Ok, lunder But what about “blue travelling mattes? How does that work? We're back to my original question. ‘A: Right. | just wanted to prepare youforit. @: Fire away. A: Well, incoior, the principles the same. You have to mask the backg} with a moving matte of the a .0se him into the masked area on an op- al printer, frame by frame. You could lm the actor against black. But how, then, would you get a clean silhouett Since we're now dealing with color film andan actor wearing multicolored cloth: ing, different method is required. The blue screen system solves this problem rather ingeniously by having the actor filmed against a bright blue screen. f 3 printing steps, the lor blue is literally “filtered out” and ultimately replaced by the desired back ‘A: Well, the system is based on how black white film responds to a color scer when corresponding colorfilterisplaced in the optical printer. In a nutshell, the blue areas of the scene look transparent. ‘on black & white film when filtered through blue light. Conversely, the blue areas looks dark on black & white film when filtered through red light. Using this principle, a travelling matte of the actor in shot can Q: I'm getting lo: ‘A: Hang on. Let's take it step by step. First, a black & white print of the hot is made on this step. a blue black & white film tra transparent emulsion. We call thi E white print a "blue record’ or a "blue separation.” The terminology is not im Q: OK, I'm following you. A: The next step Is to sandwich this filtered black & white print with the color negative of the blue screen shot. If you looked at thi that the series, The original Oy strate camera Is ibe nthe black & white image of the actor “fills in the negative color image of the actor They interface. It as though they cancel each other out and create an opaque image of the Q:Go A: The sandwich Is printed onto another black & white film using red- The red light “neutralizes” the yellow: orange area on t creen negative (the color of the blue screen in negative rm), leaving it clear on this new B & W film, Atthe same time, red light increases the density of the “filled in” image of the The resulting black & white film (in negative form) showsa clear shape of the ‘actor against ablack field, and printof that shows the actor's dense silhe rounded by clear emulsion. That, at last, is our travelling matte @: Whew! know. But see what we've done! We've “pulled a matte” from the original blue screen negative. We've creeted, via filtered light, a perfect silhouette ofthe: tor without resorting to repeated high ‘contrast contact printing, as was done in the old black & white days, @: OK, we've got our trav ‘Then what? ling matte. rained on page 61) CINEMAGIC#33. 33