Benefits:

More and more, the majority of work for cinematographers/videographers involves the use of a blue or green chroma screen. You may not realize it, but you probably see the results every day... the local news weathercasts, major motion pictures, music videos, corporate videos, broadcast commercials and, of course, "cheesy YouTube spoofs", are all beginning to rely heavily on this technology. Even simply combining a quality chroma key setup with either stock footage or a photo-realistic "Virtual Set" can offer clients an avenue that allows you to be both creative, and competitive, and the results are spectacular. This can increase business in a big way, especially through referrals in the corporate realm.

History:

Reflective fabrics have been around since the 1930's, and using a ring of light around the camera lens has been around for decades, especially for still, microscopic, dental, and technological quality control applications. Even the process of camera-mounted lights used in conjunction with a reflective backdrop has been utilized in different capacities, for many years, even prior to the advent of "chroma key". In the late 1990's, to my knowledge, the pursued development on a highly specialized fabric that offered better functionality for chroma key applications. This fabric, created through their own patented process, was initially called "TrueMatte", and later deemed "Chromatte TM". It was subsequently combined with the LED lens ring and marketed as the "Holoset" system by Play, later becoming "Reflecmedia", who is still active in producing an amazing product. Their system can be found in network and broadcast studios around the world. Recently, Datavideo began to market a slightly more economical version of this approach, also using a ring of LED's, but with a different, yet highly effective fabric. Both are great systems and I highly recommend them.

Why My Own System?:

Since one of my gigs is a video production company with the need for a quality chroma key setup, I bought one of the above systems and was immediately and forever spoiled--I can't imagine going back to the old way of doing it. The existing, standard packages come with roughly an 8ftx8ft retro-reflective backdrop, as did mine. An upcoming project this summer, however, mandates having much more than the 8ftx8ft backdrop material on hand, and the price of the highly specialized reflective material ($32 per square foot at BH) would make it non cost-effective for the size I need, which is well over 20ft x 20ft. After an arduous search through industry contacts, having samples sent from all over the world and thoroughly testing each, I found an alternate fabric that worked very well for this purpose (and, man, it ain't cheap!!!!). Since it is only available in extremely large quantities, a bit of contemplation ensued: By pulling in these monster rolls of wholesome goodness, "What does one do with the rest of it?" Fortunately, one of my other gigs is a music product manufacturing company, and I am very familiar with the ins & outs of developing a quality product. To couple with the extra material, I decided to produce a handful of unique LED rigs within this principle, allowing me to, hopefully, recoup some of my material costs, and maybe provide an avenue for this type of system to those who might not otherwise be able to afford it, since these are priced at about 1/4 to 1/3 the price of what it presently available.

"Okay... why the weird design?"

Some of the initial enclosure tests were die cast aluminum. That, combined with the aesthetics of the silvery machined knob and the glowing, circular LED's, made it look a bit "otherworldly" to me. Even after switching to an ABS enclosure to avoid grounding loops, I felt the initial motif still applied, especially with the amber indicator. Something had to go on top to avoid an odd blankness, so I had it silk-screened with a silver powder, in a design that is a slight variation on the infamous 1990 Alton Barnes crop circle, entirely because I thought the shape and balance really worked well with the knob, without losing the "found buried in the deserts of New Mexico" vibe. I hope my modifying it doesn't spur an intergalactic incident by insulting some omnipotent leader, somewhere? It's not like much other info needs to go on top: "Lefter dimmer, Righter brighter", so I had a bit of freedom to just concentrate on the aesthetics.