06 / 07Green & blue screen
Keying
Pull the key. Keep the hair.
Green and blue screen extraction with spill suppression and edge treatment that survives a heavy grade.
What Keying does
Keying separates the subject from a coloured screen with the fine hair, motion blur and semi-transparent edges intact, and with the screen's colour cast removed from everything it touched. A good key is invisible. A bad one is the first thing everyone sees.
You send
Screen plates, any clean screen passes, the intended background and a note on the final look.
We extract
Multi-pass keys per region — core, edge, hair — with despill and light wrap matched to the new background.
You get
Keyed elements with premultiplied alpha, or the finished comp, colour-managed and grade-ready.
Green & blue screen
Before / After
Drag to pull
the key
Green backdrop and marker grid extracted, spill pulled off the figure's edge, then the new skyline wrapped in behind.
Core key
Solid interior, no holes
Edge key
Blur and fine detail on their own pass
Despill
Green cast removed from the silhouette
Light wrap
Background light bled into the edge
Process
Brief to
final delivery
Five stages, the same five every time. Open a stage to see what it means on a keying show.
01
Brief
What the shot has to do, what you are sending, and when it has to be back.
On a Keying show
Screen colour, lighting notes and the destination background. We ask for a clean screen pass if one exists.
02
Analysis
Plates conformed and QC'd, every shot banded by complexity and given a method before work starts.
On a Keying show
Screen evaluated per region — even areas, hotspots, shadows and wrinkles each get their own key strategy.
03
Production
One supervisor, one pipeline, daily versions on your review platform.
On a Keying show
Core and edge keys built separately, hair keyed on its own, despill and edge treatment tuned to the destination plate.
04
QC
Checked at full resolution, frame by frame, against the delivery document.
On a Keying show
Alpha checked over black, white and the destination at 200%, for chatter, holes and residual green under a grade stress test.
05
Final Delivery
Colour-managed, versioned, named to your convention and archived for the life of the show.
On a Keying show
Premultiplied EXRs per element, or the finished comp, with the key tree included for your notes.
Technical Showcase
How the work
actually gets done
- Technique01
Multi-pass keys
Core, edge and hair pulled with different keyers and combined, so no single key has to do everything.
- Technique02
Despill & edge treatment
Screen colour removed from skin, hair and cloth, then the edge re-lit to match where it is going.
- Technique03
Garbage & holdout mattes
Roto where the screen ends, so the key only ever works on the screen.
- Tools04
Keylight, IBK & Primatte in Nuke
The right keyer for each region, combined in one Nuke tree that is easy to adjust in review.
- Quality control05
Grade stress test
Every key pushed through a heavy grade before delivery, to find the green that hides at normal exposure.
- Production06
Screen-day advice
Screen distance, lighting and marker placement notes before the shoot, so the key is cheap on the day.
In the Pipeline
Where Keying
sits
Every discipline hands the next one something. Hover a stage to see what it passes on, and click through to it.
- 01RotoscopyMattes hand compositing a clean edge for light wrap, grade isolation and CG integration.
- 02Paint & PrepA clean, stable plate that lets keying, matchmove and compositing work on the shot instead of on the rig.
- 03Wire RemovalA rig-free plate that keying and compositing can treat as if the stunt was never wired.
- 04CleanupA finished plate: nothing added, nothing left that the frame did not need.
- 05KeyingA clean alpha that lets compositing wrap the new background around the subject without a halo.
- 06MatchmoveA locked camera and undistort maps that let compositing place CG, set extensions and clean-plate projections with confidence.
- 072D CompositingThe finished frame — graded, checked and delivered as EXR or DPX to spec.
- 08FinalGraded, checked frame by frame, delivered to spec and archived for the life of the show.
Why AronFX
The standard
every frame
leaves under
- 01
Precision
Nothing leaves the building without a supervisor pass at full resolution. We check the frame the way a DI theatre will, not the way a browser player will.
- 02
Consistency
One methodology per sequence, written down before work starts, so the last shot matches the first even when a dozen artists touched them.
- 03
Scalability
Departments sized for volume and staffed to the difficulty of the shot, so a 500-shot show gets a schedule you can hold us to.
- 04
Technical expertise
Nuke-native and ACES colour-managed, with lens distortion, survey alignment and multi-pass integration handled as routine rather than as a special request.
- 05
Production workflow
Plate intake and technical QC within 24 hours, shot-level bidding with complexity banding, and a named supervisor on every show.
- 06
Quality assurance
Frame-by-frame checks against the delivery document, a difference matte with every prep delivery, and final review on a calibrated display at delivery resolution.
- 07
Client collaboration
We work inside your pipeline — ftrack, Syncsketch, Aspera, your naming convention, your delivery document. You should never have to learn ours.
Next Project
Have a VFX
project in mind?
Send us a cut, a plate or a shot count. You will hear back from the supervisor who would run your show, with a breakdown, a schedule and a number.