Green Screen was originally invented as a film technique to separate the actors and composite them over another background. There are Blue and Green Screen formats. But why these two colours? Blue and Green may have been chosen because they are least prominent in skin tone.

This style has gradually crept into the music scene and has taken the standard of visual music to another level. Most video shooting companies have resorted to upgrading their styles and formats to achieve this high quality standard. Gambian-born Yankuba Jarju aka Yanks, a Telford based music video expert and web-designer, is lifting African underground music acts in the United Kingdom into the upmarket visual class with his exclusive Green Screen video shooting. “The standard of music videos have gone so high that an artist must strive to meet that accepted quality before aspiring for broadcast in big television names,” explains Yanks. “I do Green-Screen, which is actually one of the reigning styles of music video today. Whilst editing you get the effects and the cut-scenes involved in the perfect form. The final edited version gives an entirely different background to what one had originally, and some interwoven effects depending on the editor’s skills.”

Yanks latest video was ‘Rise’, a traditional reggae tune from Gambia’s Nu-Chilly. The video could be found on www.czonex.com

“That video was shot in one studio and it took just one day,” says Yanks. “It’s gone to big television stations and the feedback has been excellent. My main aim is to help as many African artists to shoot their music videos in this classic standard and so push them to the big screens. Most African songs tell stories that need to be visualised. I know it will cost a lot of time and money to capture the appropriate scenes in African lyrics but after shooting on the Green Screen I can research and get the scenes that would suit the story been told. It depends on how the cut-scenes or pictures would portray the meaning of the song and that has to be decided during the editing stage. The basic point is to give African artists quality and internationally accepted video clips at almost free cost.”

Yankuba Jarju, who went through a two-year video shooting course in London, spent time studying the directions of African lyrics; the aims and meanings. He learnt that some artists lean on the folk tales while others expand the problems on the continent. Some trail the Caribbean genre, Reggae, and others dwell in hiphop world. Listening to a song he swiftly sketches a shooting guide in his head. “As I listen I feel the music and imagine how best it could be presented visually to put it in the heart of the people. I draw a shooting guide or story board and just work with it.”

Beside his Green-Screen video shooting skills, Yanks is a web-designer and script-writer. He is presently working on a script of a movie to be shot through Telford, Birmingham, Manchester, London and some part of Africa.    

By Eric Orji