or, just shoot the man against a blue or green screen, and drop out the background color. then, he can walk all over the place. all you should have to do is adjust the transparency on the one video track with the man.

I will want camera movement, slight at least. And also the background will have non transparent people in it (that will be moving). This will be hard I know, but I believe it is within my reach. I figured that chroma key will be used but I'm not sure as to what capacity. Chroma key is easy when masking a 2d background but what is needed to key in a person to interact in a 3D realm?

Sr_C: it should make no difference; it's still just an image being placed on top of another image. If you were compositing the masked person in at 100% then of course he would always be "in front" from the camera's view. Even when ghosted, he won't be able to walk behind anything else without some very complicated masking.

Does the ghost have to interact with the other actors? If so, then you'll have to take timing and positioning into account very carefully.

I should be more specific. Here is the shot. A guy is walking down the center eisle of a church. The camera is facing him moving back as he moves forward, keeping the depth of the guy constant. There are people in the pews to the right and left of the eisle that you will see as the guy slowly moves forward. The guy walking is what I want to be ghosted.

That shouldn't be too difficult. Actually the guy doesn't even have to move then; you can have him walk in place in front of the green/blue screen.

You can still use the (simpler to shoot) dual shot (empty room, man walking) method and simulate the camera zooming / panning / tilting by using pan/crop or track motion. Just shoot it as wide as your widest shot with a locked down camera and add the zoom/pan/tilt in post. Green/blue screen is a good option, too, though.
///d@

You might not need to chromakey this either. If he wears grey scale clothes, shoot with a black wall behind him. Then play some with a luminance key. It might be interesting if he is B&W with everyone else in color.

Either way, I would recommend some tests before you get to the shooting point. There are a lot of variables involved.

DaveT2,
That's funny, I was planning on making the ghost B&W and the "real world" color. Thought that would add to the shot.

Chienworks,
Your line of thought is the same as mine, I was thinking of using a tredmill in front of bluescreen.

So, I could film the guy walking on the tredmill in front of a bluescreen. Then film the church with the camera in motion moving down the eisle. Then bring the transparency level to the desired setting on the guy walking, add in the B&W plugin and overlay with the church eisle footage. Then tweak to desired blend. Sound right?

Sr_C: sounds like it should do it. I'd love to see it when you're done :) Maybe you could post that part of it to my video upload/sharing site.

After reading all these......and how it might be accomplished, I would love to see it too.

thanks

I will certainly share when I'm done. Might be awhile though.

Speaking of: is their a forum out there that you guys goto that is designed for filming advice? Ranging from effects, lighting, cameras, angles, etc...

I seek out all the advice I can get but I hate to clutter this forum with non Vegas specific questions (or at least non NLE specific)

I use this forum though specifically because of the people that are always here, would be nice if we could have another made for production topics.

CreativeCow is a good place to start. They have some production oriented forums.

John