Alter dinner rehearsal background?

[Bill Rankin]

Does anyone know of a technique for altering or covering up the background of the speakers?

At the dinner rehearsal, the podium was positioned with a background that is 1/2 brick with a TV placed in front, and the other half is an open kitchen (see photo).

Does anyone have an idea of how can I 'fix' this?

[Don Bloom]

Well for sure you can't key it so the only other option I can think of is to mask it out and drop something else in. The problem with masking is 1) it is a long and tedious process...2) if the speaker moves at all it becomes an even longer and more tedious process and 3) it's a long and tedious process.

I don't know of any other way to do it.

[Bill Rankin]

Thanks Don...
I was hoping for a magic trick without the labor intensive side to it...Imight try to blurr 1/5 or 1/4 of the screen on each side and see how that looks.

[Adrian Tan]

Have you tried the roto tool in After Effects (I think it was introduced in CS5)? Works surprisingly well.

If that doesn't work, maybe just a crude mask with the mask tool isn't out of the question, if he's more or less in the same position. And then feather it, and fast blur what's outside the mask as much as reasonable, for a selective focus or vignette effect.

Keying can work on luminance as well as colour (extract tool in AE). But there is sometimes a magic trick you can do that's an alternative to keying (but I doubt you can do it here). Check out one of Andrew Kramer's first After Effects tutorials, on blemish removal of brides. Basically involves isolating the red channel with an effect (can't remember which one; perhaps colorama), turning the image black and white, and then using that as a track matte. You can then apply effects to just the skin (like a blur to smooth out skin imperfections) without affecting the eyes or other areas. I imagine plugins like Magic Bullet Cosmo and Beauty Box do more or less the same thing. So, this sort of technique MIGHT be possible for isolating someone, but I think the colours of the speaker in your image are too similar to the background.

[Bill Rankin]

thanks Adrian...I'll have to look into that...that might just left me to diminish the background enough so that it doesn't compete with the subject.

[Adrian Tan]

Hey Bill, another thought -- after you've got your mask (and it doesn't have to be precise, because of the feathering), blur isn't the only option to de-emphasise the background. You know, can also darken it (and at the same time brighten the foreground), and can even subtly desaturate it. And desaturation isn't really that unnatural (since our eyes have more colour receptors in the middle than on the sides; and I think memories and dreams are sometimes like this as well -- the main subject is sharp and vivid, and the environment around is kind of faded out and blurred).

[Bill Rankin]

Thanks... I was thinking the same thing. Just something to de-emphasize the background.