Separating Among Foreground Elements

by Dyske Suematsu  •  October 5, 2006

On a green screen set, you are primarily concerned with separating the background from the foreground, so it is easy to overlook elements that need to be separated within the foreground.

Exhibit A
In the scene above, the waitress is standing behind a diner counter. The man is sitting in front of it. You are not supposed to be able to see her skirt. This setup would have been fine if his hand did not overlap her skirt, but it did.

Exhibit B
Exhibit B shows the result of applying Ultimatte. In my final composite, I need to insert a diner counter between him and her. As you can see, his hand overlapping her skirt will be a problem. So, I had to manually mask his hand out (Exhibit C below).

Exhibit C
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