Gallery

The Drew Carey Project

Click thumbnails to view larger version

The Drew Carey Project
Reason.tv
Reason.tv
PF Bentley
Plug-in(s) Used: Primatte Keyer Pro

Reason.tv Keys Drew Carey with Primatte Keyer Pro

Accomplished photographer PF Bentley heads up production at Reason.tv, home of The Drew Carey Project. The site covers compelling stories that take a hard look at the variety of threats to American liberties. Each month Drew Carey covers two new topics on everything from medical marijuana to school choice and big government.

After attending a seminar on greenscreen technology and seeing a demo of how the standard keyer in Final Cut Pro compared to the results attainable by Primatte Keyer Pro, PF Bentley knew he had found a tool that he could put to use.

About PF Bentley
Bentley is widely recognized for his domestic and international politics coverage. He has photographed every serious presidential contender since 1980. In 2001, he started making the transition from photography to television broadcast with the ABC-TV NIGHTLINE production about Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. After teaching visual journalism at Brooks Institute of Photography and named Educator of the Year for Brooks in 2005, he shot the World Cup for The Travel Channel hosted by Drew Carey in 2006. Bentley and Carey have remained close ever since.

Challenge
These days Drew Carey is busy with his day job hosting “The Price is Right” and has limited time to go on location to shoot the stories for Reason.tv that remain important to him and the loyal two million monthly viewers. To help bridge the gap, PF Bentley researched a way to bring the location to Carey via greenscreen.

Solution
“I was always interested in green screen technology. The one-hour course that I attended at NAB really opened my eyes to how I could make it work for our needs. Primatte Keyer is like having the EZ button for chroma keying. I figured if I can do it, anyone can,” said PF Bentley.

Results
Since adding Primatte Keyer to the production workflow, Bentley and his team shoot multiple programs for Reason.tv at once. All footage is recorded with a Sony EX-1 in HD. For each episode, the team runs two camera angles at all times – one full length view of Drew Carey sitting on a stool and another from just chest up.

“When Drew Carey is available, we book him for about three hours. One of the selling points of Primatte Keyer is that it only takes us 30 minutes to punch out the keys of that day’s shoot. This gives us extra time to hunt down the right background and make final edits. I would have to spend a lot more time with another keyer to produce the same professional results,” continued Bentley.