Using simple tools found around the home and some basic video editing equipment on your home pc, creating a little Hollywood magic at home can be easy.

Chroma key is a movie technique of combining two video tracks, then removing the color from one video track (making it transparent) to reveal another video or image behind it. This technique is also referred to as color keying, colour-separation overlay greenscreen, and bluescreen.

You will see it mostly used for weather forecast broadcasts on the nightly news or in big budget Hollywood movies that combine computer generated images and animations with actors in a studio standing in front of large blue or green backgrounds.

The coulors blue and green are chosen because they are the furthest away in color from that of skin tone. It doesnt generally have to be these colors, but they seem to work best on film and digital video.

You want your actor to wear contrasting colors to the screen material used (unless you deliberatley want parts of them to disappear).

And it is important that you get even light on the background as shadows will make it difficult to extract the full image and will appear in the final scene.

Here's what it can look like with a few basic materials from around the home :