I did want to use a back light but I did not have time to get it set up. The talent had a plane to catch and that whole story...I had to rush through the whole shoot.

The contrast difference is OK since I will key out the background. I wanted to shoot a second take with a green screen but again, no time. I would have shot green screen only but I did not have enough experience with green screen and wanted to make sure that I had a "safe" background just in case the chroma keying did not go well in post.

You might want to check out Digital Film Tools Composite Suite Plug-in for After Effects (and Final Cut Pro ?). One of the effects allows you to apply a pattern on the background.

here is a quick sample I did with the demo version.

http://www.mindspring.com/~schleicher/images/sampleCSLight.jpg

Cheers

Hey, that looks awesome! I really was not sure if I could actually composite anything very well over that graduated white. I'll check try it out. I've got AE 6 pro. BTW, I read your preview of AE 6.5 and it looks great. A lot of people are complaining about a .5 release and being charged, etc. But I'm fully on board with it.

There is so much new stuff in 6.5, that a 99 fee isn't that big of a deal...

Cheers

I've already pre-ordered AE6.5. I can't wait.

I tried the DFT Composite Suite demo with PPro, and the Light! plug-in appears to work great in Premiere Pro once I figured out to use "multiply" mode. This package is really promising in its ability to create dynamic masks w/o a green/blue screen.

Stephen, I ended up using a combination of DFT matte generator with AE's matte choker to remove the background entirely. I had to add a new matte here and there to remove some spots, but after I figured out how to use these tools in AE, it was surprisingly easy to do this.

You may view the work in progress at the following URL. http:\\www.bigdigital.us\bodyblocks