Keying video that has similar colour background, advice please-image included.

Question

Last-year I visited America, and on the last day managed to secure an interview with a WW2 Ace, which had to be done within a very short time span.
Unfortunately this left me with a situation that I couldn't really control, and so I am in a situation where I need to add a background to footage (doesn't need to be perfect, so a fringe would be acceptable), but I wonder if anyone can give me steps on how to best remove the Pilot from the plain background.
An image can be seen here from the footage:
http://www.atgo72.dsl.pipex.com/key.jpg
As you can see, his shirt and hair are very similar to the background colour, so I have had difficulty colour and chroma-keying.
I am wondering if it is possible to key him out of the background, or whether I'm chasing my own tail?
Any help would be much appreciated, cheers, Neil.

Answer 1

Here is my feeble attempt.
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/3345/keyout.png
How: create a simple travelling mask and keyframe the movement of person try avoiding too few bezier points for easier, this is helpful for keying purposes so that the keyer has less areas to key out and in the end you can additionaly adjust mask expansion and feather at your needs >> Keying: i used at least 4 instances of color key and play around with color, color tolerance and feather of each instance >> add matte choker, adjust >> ad simple choker, adjust.
NOTE: Ae does not update changes very well, means every slider adjustment must be done by little increments, so adjust a little, release, adjust, release, to get the preview done this is pretty awful but it works somehow.
COMP PREVIEW MUST BE SET @ FULL QUALITY otherwise at half resolution results vary very heavy - thats the next flaw, hopefully better in CS5
much luck.