how can I change the background color (a white wall)

[adamg]

I've got a bunch of interviews the client wants me to change the background to different colors. the backgound is a plain white wall.

I've tried keying it - but it ends up looking splotchy because the light on the wall is somewhat variant.

I tried masking it but it's a ton of work to get to line up just right whenever the person moves their head.

Am I missing any ideas or solutions?

Am I keying incorrectly?

I know I should have done it with a green screen - but the client is just now wanting this.

Thanks for any help!

[danlefeb]

A client changed their mind? Really? hehe :)

Keying it is your best bet. Unfortunately, the biggest part of keying a background is in the lighting in the shoot itself to give you a clean color when you take it into post. What you're going to have to do is play with the settings to get rid of the splotching is to play around with the settings some. You can always key most of it to get the background from right next to the person's head out of the way and then mask out the rest.

Worse comes to worse, sometimes the best results come from manually masking it out. Its incredibly time consuming but if the lighting in the shot doesn't give you a clean enough background to mask out then sometimes it takes more time to try to key it than it does to mask.

What version of After Effects are you using? Also, are you using the Pro keying abilities or are you using a plug-in for that? Let me know if you run across any other issues....

[Nojoy]

Depending on the type of material you use meaning DV betacam Hd, or whatever else you might want to look in specialized keying plugins for your program. Some plugins bring cleaner results. In most cases where the situation is similar to your current one meaning white background you might want to try a alpha key instead of a chroma key where you tend to key out green. I remember as well masking out by hand a increadible long sequence where the company at the time even considered reshooting the scene instead of masking out manually per hand for two days the entire sequence they needed. Doesn't sound incouraging but if the specialized keying plugins such as DV matte for instance do not work you might have to consider the manual way or reshooting.