Chroma keying has become the basis of photography these days. Almost every photographer has tried his/her hands on it. This technique has helped many creative shutterbugs to come up with unbelievable pictures and videos that would not have been possible otherwise. Although we have been involved in this in our day to day life, very few of us actually know how it all started. The initial experimentation started in 1930’s by Linwood Dunn, a pioneer of visual special effects. He used travelling mattes to create wipes for the movie ‘Flying down to Rio’. Later, in 1040s, Larry Butler used Dunn’s principles and along with blue screen backgrounds and technology for making the movie ‘The thief of Bagdad’ for which had won an Academy award. After this, the entire film industry began experimenting with this new technique. Among all of them, Arthur Widmer, a Warner Brother employee and ex-researcher of Kodak, came up with extremely useful techniques that helped him in making ‘The old man and the sea’. Arthur developed the ultraviolet travelling matte process.The Chroma keying industry kept using their blue screen kit until the late 1970s when the keying color was finally changed to green from blue. However, the process was still under experimentation. From weather report to film footage, the Chroma keying effects were not accurate but the industry leaders didn’t give up. They kept polishing this technique till it became the future of photography.
After 8 decades, the background replacement technique has got a wider acceptance and is frequently used to create amazing pictures and videos without even moving out of your studio. The keying process has become so accurate that it’s difficult to judge if it’s a real picture or a Chroma keyed one.
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