Almost-Zero-Cost Chroma-Key Backdrop

In this season, most of us have accumulated many hours of Online Meeting using various applications like Zoom, Google Meet, Webex etc. We have seen plenty of home office or hostel room set up in these Online Meeting. You have seen it all: the cluttered-papers-and-folders-home-office, the Instagram-worthy-home-office, the children-toys-all-over-living-room-home-office, the-1001-gadgets-kitchen-home-office and the ultra-modern-professional-home-office.

One of the common trends nowadays is to use a virtual background in online meeting application to have a more appropriate, pleasant and refreshing background in those online meeting sessions. However, virtual background feature sometimes may not work as well as desired. Hence, some has dabbled with Chroma-Key Backdrop (a.k.a. Green Screen Backdrop) to achieve a higher quality virtual background.

Chroma-Key Backdrop price can range from RM30+ to RM3000 per set. In our learning journey, Yin and I decided to set up a Almost-Zero-Cost Chroma-Key Backdrop for our work and a way to stretch our limited resources. This blog post is a documentation of the learning project.

One fine afternoon, we ransacked our home and gathered these objects:

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With these 4 objects, we assembled the Almost-Zero-Cost Chroma-Key Backdrop:

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The result of the Chroma-Key Backdrop Virtual Background are as follows:

Through this learning project, we would like to share some learning experience:

• Use a solid color cloth. Some suggested using Muslin fabric. No lace or see-through-fabric, unless you deliberately want to create some special effects during your Online Meeting.

• Use Green Color cloth. Why Green Color cloth? This is due to the algorithm used in software that will remove the green color background and replace it with the virtual background of your choice. Unless you are Hulk, then Green color might not be the best option. Other options you may consider are Purple and Blue colors. Try to avoid cloth with color that has almost the same hue as human skins.

• Avoid wearing clothing of the same color like your Chroma-Key Backdrop, unless you want to achieve the “Hollow Man/Invisible Man” special effect during the Online Meeting.

From this learning journey, we learn to stretch our resources and constraints. Not only that, we find satisfaction in finding solutions to the challenge of achieving higher quality virtual background using Almost-Zero-Cost Chroma-Key Backdrop. We hope this sharing will also inspire you to stretch your resources in finding solutions in your learning projects.