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At this April’s NAB 2008 convention in Las Vegas, greenlayers.com launches the world's largest green screen film library available on the web.

 Green screen is the film technique used in Hollywood blockbusters for action sequences, grand landscape vistas and occasions where sets would otherwise add millions to a film budget.

 The backgrounds are incorporated by the eye popping CGI digital computer graphics which nowadays have become familiar to movie goers and the advertising industry.

 With Greenlayers green screen actor clips starting at US$10, the producers of these clips claim they’re set to break all known price barriers for studio quality clips of actors shot in green screen.

 Greenlayers estimates the online green screen video clip market is expected to be worth in excess of $500 million within 48 months.

 Greenlayers.com clips will revolutionize the use of low cost quality video in banner ads on the web and in CGI animations.

 The fast increasing penetration of broadband to homes in developed nations means more video is set to appear on the web as users become accustomed to media rich websites containing professional content.

 For this to happen, the price of content production needs to drop and this is where Greenlayers comes in.

 With the popularity of YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, the producers of Greenlayers clips say the user generated content market is set to see creative young artists produce eye popping videos using their Greenlayers clips.

 Low cost popular applications such as Adobe’s After Affects, Apple’s Shake and other compositing and CGI programs now allow anyone to create Hollywood style videos. The use of these popular programs being taught in schools in multi media courses. Until now, all that was missing was low cost green screen technology to get the best out of these applications when it comes to having real actors appear on screen.

 Other uses for the Greenlayers clips are said to include; architectural animations, film, TV/Cable, documentaries, TV ads, Indi films, corporate PowerPoint, educational multi media plus mobile video telephony and emerging web distributed media.

 With Greenlayers library currently claiming to be in the tens of thousands of clips, and growing exponentially weekly, Greenlayers.com claims their website library will be the world’s biggest green screen project ever undertaken.

 NAB 2008 attendees in Las Vegas will have the opportunity to become online subscribers to the library. At NAB introductory price of just US$199 per month new subscribers will receive up to $60,000 of downloads in the 1^st year. Greenlayers can be found at Booth C550 in Central Halls at NAB 2008 in Las Vegas.

 Each Greenlayers clip has up to 30 seconds of runtime. There is no dialogue as the actors are generally used in connection with product endorsements, as extras, in film action sequences, as actors in documentaries or as eye candy by architects in architectural animations. The clips can even be used to create instant crowds.

 The library features an exhaustive range of human movements, emotions and conditions in close up, long shots plus stationary and travel shots.

 The ubiquities web banner ad on the web is about to be given a major make over with inexpensive video of actors gracing your web page ads in silent animation. In future, expect to see Google’s type banner ads as mini movies employing green screen actors marketing everything from credit cards to University enrollments.

 All Greenlayers video clips are shot in High Definition. Backgrounds and special effects are added to contextualize the actors in the scenes or ads. The video sequences or ads are created by motion graphic artists, videographers, directors or business and educational users.

 Greenlayers.com clips are downloadable in four Quick Time alpha channel formats at: 1920x1080p (1080 HD), (720 HD), 1280x720p, (Big Web) 640x360 and (Small Web) 320X190. Alpha channel means there is no background to the clips. It’s transparent to show through whatever is put behind the actor in the clip. Most popular editing programs such are Apple’s Final Cut and Adobe’s Premier can accept alpha channel video. So can also Flash, which is used to produce many of the banner ads seen on the web.

 Free downloadable ‘positioning clips’ are available prior to purchasing any Greenlayers clip. The ‘positioning clips’ permit users to assess if the clip’s actors move appropriately, within the user’s proposed background frame. The background can either be an image or video.

 A revolutionary online browser application called Green Room has been developed by Greenlayers. It’s a quick position referencing application running in the user’s internet browser from the Greenlayers.com website.

 Users upload their own backgrounds into the ingenious online Green Room application. Not only can backgrounds and images be uploaded, but users can also upload logos and text from their own computers. It’s a quick ‘view before you buy’ tool, set to be popular with users who want to show others their work before they buy a clip.

 Greenlayers’ clips are presently shot in the soundstages of Orion Media in Melbourne Australia, where Steven Spielberg is currently shooting the WW11 epic drama series – ‘Pacific’.

 The Orion soundstages are the most advanced purpose built green screen soundstages of their type in the southern hemisphere. Orion Studios is headed by a youthful Kristian Curcio, who at age 22 must surely be the youngest head of a major film studio.

 Curcio heads a large creative team of directors, producers, writers, DOPs and technical support staff.

His studios are abuzz with crews shooting until midnight each and every night. He said, “Hollywood studio chiefs would be envious of the shoot schedules and pace we maintain. The cameras are constantly rolling. We line up the actors one after the other for their shoots. The lighting grids barely go cold during the few hours we don’t shoot in the middle of the night.”

 Curcio’s Orion Studios is the prototype for other Orion studios he proposes to open in Hollywood and New York - with others to follow in East Berlin, London, Cairo, Mumbai, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, Jakarta, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos, Buenos Aires, Moscow, Paris, Rome and Istanbul.

 A private equity fund is backing his ambitious studio expansion program to meet Greenlayers appetite for content.

 Curcio said, “the need for thousands of clips to be added to the greenlayers.com library each week demands a global network of studios to meet Greenlayers mission statement of: capturing the look and diversity of the global village for today and posterity”.

 Curcio says he and his team are well on the way to achieving their first target of 2,000,000 green screen clips within 48 months. With tens of thousands of clips already in the library and thousands added each week, Curcio says he’s maintaining a formable shooting schedule to meet his target.

 The Greenlayers eCommerce website will be available for commercial downloads as of April 2008. You can view samples of their clips now at www.greenlayers.com

 Kristian Curcio will be at NAB 2008.

 

 

Keywords : Video Production, Video, Editing & Special Effects, Post Production, Editing, Video Archive, Video Editing, Films, Stock Footage & Media