Our editor, Nayim Saati, spends a lot of late nights at the Depot. Whether rendering, uploading, or capturing footage, he has a lot of time on his hands, waiting for processes to complete. He uses this time for tests of cameras and postproduction processes.

Last night, he decided to recreate the invisibility cloak effect from the Harry Potter movies. He used the Sony EX1 camera and locked it in place. He shot footage of the background, and then shot himself pulling our portable green screen over his head.

On his first attempt, the shadows were too heavy to be useful in post. The second time around, he used two Arri 650 lights and that was all the lighting he needed. Using minimal lighting still left shadows on the green screen, a necessary step in order to capture the cloak texture of the invisibility cloak.

In After Effects, Nayim used the Keylight plugin to do the chroma key process. He layered the shot of himself pulling on the green screen over the empty shot of the background, keyed out the green, then dissolved to get rid of the folds.

In all, it was a productive way to spend his time waiting to render and an impressive video for an hour of work.