Playing on a loop in the gallery, which was painted that now familiar shade of
chroma-key blue, the video's brilliant, central conceit continues Perry's recent tradition of using stories from her own family to reveal the ways in which blackness can function as an adaptable technology.
For instance, British Columbia's incentives were not enough to keep Fox's "X-Men: Days of Future Past" from moving to Quebec, where the production could take advantage of the province's 25% credit on total production costs plus 20% QCASE (Quebec Computer Aided Special Effects, and animation & shooting scenes in front of
chroma-key screen).
The clips are available with a plain
chroma-key green background or pre-keyed alpha channel layer included mov file and can be downloaded instantly from the website.
For departments looking to keep ahead of the technology their students are carrying around, equipment that was once the preserve of major studios is now affordable:
chroma-key curtains for studio backdrops, laptop software as powerful as in any recording studio, HD cameras and steadicam rigs, touch-screen radio stations that pack away into flight cases, and educational licences for professional editing software.
eZedia (www.ezedia.ca) specializes in packages that allow picture-in-picture, screen mattes and even
chroma-key.
Chroma-key is the blue screen technique that helped Superman fly.
In his made-for-TV work, he uses TV's
Chroma-key device (used by forecasters reading weather maps) to step into his cartoon and comment on its subject, "making the cartoonist a personality."
Shoot offstage actors with a video camera and
chroma-key the signal via the MX-1 mixers into the virtual reality.
The orchard is backdropped by walls painted the
chroma-key blue of film sets, such that this utopia might be superimposed over another.
People, animals, and landscapes appear in a collage video (made via
chroma-key, the technique by which separate video streams are layered to form a single image) that suggests a synchronic perception of reality.
The tabletop on which the book is placed is
chroma-key green, suggesting that it could be anywhere and nowhere; however, the camera periodically pulls back from this mise-en-scene for a Brechtian reveal of a cluttered studio.