Mrs. Lollipop, Pittsburgh
Age and Occupation: 26, Computational Linguist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 26, Project Manager
Engagement Date: August 2, 2006
Wedding Date: September 2, 2007
Blogging Since: July 17, 2007
Venue: The PPG Aquarium at the Pittsburgh Zoo
About Me: I'm a Pittsburgh transplant who grew up in the deep south. I have a weakness for exotic alphabets, DIY projects, mobster movies and international travel. My fiance and I are both non-native Japanese speakers and we have a bullfrog named Skinny.
Wedding Green Screen Challenge
July 19th, 2007 @ 5:48 pm by Mrs. Lollipop
I like to think that our wedding has special effects shots. We have been using a green screen to capture silhouettes of us and the members of our bridal party. It’s been really fun getting everyone to pose, and I like the idea of our decorations as more about the people close to us rather than just about me and my fiance.
We’ll be screen printing the resulting images on our invitations, stenciling them onto lanterns and incorporating them into our other decorations. The silhouettes are simple enough to lend them well to a variety of media. The other advantage is that with the right pose, silhouette figures can make anyone look good, even if they are making a funny face or wearing a stained shirt.
We used the following improvised green screen method to get our shots. First, we bought a roll of green paper from Staples (~$7 if I recall correctly) and temporarily attached it to our dining room wall with masking tape. We left a little on the floor to stand on so our entire figures, from head to toe, would be surrounded with an easy to remove color.
Next, I imported our digital photos into Photoshop and used the magic wand tool to select all of the green area. Using the brightness/contrast controls I turned the brightness all the way up until everything faded to white. Next, I inverted our selection and turned the brightness all the way down to deepen our color to black.
Somehow, reducing our pictures to just two colors makes us seem less like unkempt ninnies and more like sophisticated ninnies. Observe:
In another shot my parents hammed it up. Unfortunately, they were a little too far off the paper to use this image without a lot of headaches:
Our lanterns will be one of the most prominent uses of our silhouettes. I made a few for an art installation in February as a test:
Three more lanterns out of the twelve:
Stay tuned for our silhouette invitations and more silhouette decorations.
21 Responses to “Wedding Green Screen Challenge”
what a cool idea!
I followed you with the brightness and contrast, but how did you get your silhouettes onto the lantern?
So cool!! 
how creative! is it a lot of work?
So clever!
how fun!!!
Yea, how do you get the silhouettes on the lanture? What are the silhouettes printed on? Tissue paper?
wow–looks great! such a cute idea
yea, how do you print it onto different media?
Woah, so very creative!!
Aww..your parents are way cute!
Love it! So cool and such a nice way to personalize everything.
those are some frickin’ cute lanterns!
your parents are adorable!
That is an ingenious idea! I love it!!!
wow! genius!
That’s such a great idea! And hey, if you don’t like the silhouettes you can always change them in Photoshop– easier to do in straight black/white than with real photos… 
That is so awesome! What materials did you use to get the silouettes from the print out onto the laterns?
I’ve done screen printing before but only using the wooden rack screens, plus it seems to me like the traditional ink would bleed all the way through the delicate rice paper. Any special steps?
That’s an awesome idea and a great way to personalize your wedding! How time consuming was it to do the pictures/editing/putting silhouettes on lanterns?
Very cool and good explanation for us. I love the lanterns.
[…] a follow-up to this entry, I wanted to add instructions for stenciling figures onto lanterns. Today’s figure came courtesy […]
[…] the cover is from the series of pictures I took of Mr. Lollipop and myself jumping in front of our green screen. The quote on the cover is from first Thessalonians, chapter 5: “Test everything. Hold on to […]
