AE CS4 - tips for getting green screen to sit nicely?

Question

Hey, guys.
I'm about to start on a project that's largely green screen. Have a nice screen & lighting and the results are keying well. With that in mind, I'm working to improve on making the talent sit nicely in the backgrounds, which are typically stills of rooms or other physical locations. Here are the things that are on my radar at present, would appreciate any thoughts you might have on improving the results.
Make sure lighting of green screen shot matches that of set / background as closely as possible, e.g. light source direction, color temperature, etc.
Measure sets & use this information to properly scale talent when placing
Apply slight blur to background to emulate depth of field
Along the lines of 3), I find that a lot of green screen stuff I see doesn't really sell in part because there are very distinct and hard boundaries between the talent and the background. I'm also wondering if it's worth making a couple of passes at blur, one on the background, and the second by slightly enlarging the inverted mask from Keylight and applying a blur to that (a rather vague statement as I haven't experimented with this yet). The general idea to blur from the edges of the talent outwards just a bit, with a lighter blur, and blend that into that of the background.
On the surface, green screen stuff is supposed to be easy. Get a clean shot that keys well, drop it into your comp and you're done. However, seems to me that getting the clean footage to place is only the beginning in order to have something that truly looks natural.
What other tips and tricks do you guys use?

Answer 1

bogiesan wrote:
What you're asking about is the art of filmmaking.
Yep. Anything worth doing is worth doing to extremes!
While I'm not making a living with the visual arts at present, I've paid the bills as a musician, written a couple of books and these days work as a software developer. Whatever art I pursue, I want to achieve the highest production values possible.
And that's the cool thing about technology these days. Tools like Adobe are relatively inexpensive. Combined with a decent computer, you can absolutely create Hollywood quality material. It's not like the old days where a musician couldn't afford to buy that million dollar Neve console, let alone a recording studio. With the power that PCs give us, the limitations aren't physical or monetary. It's all down to talent and skill.
I don't have much of either of those at present, but that's a problem I can solve.