Creating the School of Athens with Green Screen

I love my job as an Educational Technology Specialist! I am fortunate to collaborate with teachers in my district and provide unique learning experiences for students.

Recently, I had a blast recreating the famous painting the School of Athens with two AP European History classes using green screen photography.

As part of Grady High School's homecoming week activities, it is a tradition for seniors to wear togas on Friday.  For several years, Ms. Looman, an AP European History teacher has worked with her students to create a tableaux of the famous painting. 

One of Grady's Instructional Coaches, Ms. Hollis, suggested I might be able to help and use green screen to recreate the painting.

I was thrilled at the challenge and was eager to support the project. I met with Ms. Looman and she shared her vision for the tableaux. We began brainstorming how to get more that 20 students in the famous image, with only a 10x10 green screen.

With such a large group, I decided the most effective way would be to photograph each student separately in front of a pop up screen. It was a more time consuming process but the final product was worth it. 

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Green Screen by Doink has three layers you can use to create your green screen image or video. I used the bottom two layers. The bottom layer is the backround image and the middle layer is the camera. The app allows you to resize and move the layer to anywhere on the background image. 

Students were eager to learn the green screen process.

Ms. Looman coordinates student poses.

Final Photos

I have had a number of questions regarding the process of recreating the School of Athens using green screen. I used Green Screen by Doink so I could manipulate the placement and scale of the students. Each picture captured created the new background layer.
​For those interested, here is a video.