Conclusions based on the test footage taken on Friday 15th

The lighting was definitely too strong and it created a mulitude of problems with spill. The strong lighting was attributed to the hasty set up of the lighting due to one of the volunteers becoming impatient.

The problem was worsened by visible lighting at the top of the frame. The lighting could be easily removed by a mask but the beams of light produced by the glare of the lights added to the key difficulties.

As expected using darker backgrounds creates a better composite because it conceals matte lines and errosion in the boundaries of the subjects. The shots of Guy turned out the best despite his blue hair and this was attributed to having no external lighting in the shot and the fact he was composited against a black background.

I also contacted the E-Emedia Video Technican in regards to the vertical letter boxing issue and the response I got was this:

My best guess is that the editing software is not set up correctly. 
I.E. It is set for DV Pal square pixels and it should be non-square 
pixels. Video uses non-square pixels and stretches them to fit the 
correct aspect ratio. If that is not it, I would need to see the 
original material.