Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The technique of photographing or filming an actor or object against a usually blue monochrome backdrop, and replacing the backdrop with material from a different image using a color filter.
  • noun The usually blue monochrome backdrop used in this technique.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb intransitive, computing To experience a stop error and shut down to prevent damage to system hardware.
  • noun Alternative spelling of blue screen.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Not all of this flash-bang-computer generated backdrops and sets that make the actors seem lifeless because they are infront of freaggin bluescreen.

    First The Day the Earth Stood Still Remake Banner Discovered « FirstShowing.net 2008

  • Watching some recent movies, it occurred to me that the use of "bluescreen" effects -- having characters play their scenes in front of a blank screen and then adding in the background digitally -- may prove to be to today's movies what rear projection was to movies from the '30s through the '60s: something that almost instantly dates a movie and makes it look kind of cheesy.

    Archive 2006-03-01 Jaime J. Weinman 2006

  • Robert's laptop has a "bluescreen" issue, which is not good.

    Wild Top Stories 2008

  • I had a crash to bluescreen on my Win7 64-bit Lenovo Laptop a couple of minutes after starting this. helge

    Granola Scales Your CPU For Energy Savings | Lifehacker Australia 2010

  • Anyway, the bluescreen took me by complete surprise and I didn't catch any info.

    Lifehacker’s Guide To Upgrading To Windows 7 RC | Lifehacker Australia 2009

  • Put the disc in, installed, windows 7 booted up, logged in ..... crash ... bluescreen. wtf?

    Lifehacker’s Guide To Upgrading To Windows 7 RC | Lifehacker Australia 2009

  • Here I've completely re-made the first few shots using the original bluescreen footage - took a few nights but the clip you are now watching is closer to how the film appeared in my head.

    Archive 2010-05-01 Sci-Fi Gene 2010

  • The initial plan was to use a friend's urban jungle as a location but unfortunately at quite short notice this wasn't possible so I came up with an utterly foolhardy alternative - shoot the whole thing on bluescreen and leave myself to post-produce everything Sky Captain style for the rest of the weekend, so it's been a race against the clock, particularly with the render time required for every scene.

    The Day Before The Day After Tomorrow Sci-Fi Gene 2010

  • The results were shockingly poor - looking back the decision to shoot everything on bluescreen & model all the locations in Blender within the 48 hours was a bit ambitious and should have rung a few alarm bells, and although the live shoot went smoothly post-production was completely rushed.

    Half A Million intro [remake] Sci-Fi Gene 2010

  • Over the course of two months, Feiner shot them on a bluescreen studio in his basement and enhanced them with CGI effects for running, jumping or facial expressions.

    The Gremlins Are Back and Taking Over Fan Films | Fan Cinema Today 2008

Comments

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  • Also known as chroma-key, is filming against a blue or green background so that the background can then be replaced by another image.

    May 13, 2008