Does anyone know how the green wall works? I don't think that the weather maps are really behind them.

Wow! I'm surprised that no one knows this answer....asked the question a while ago too. I think that I've seen other meteorologist using monitors now. I personally don't care for that. I guess it's the new technology thing to do.

The green or blue wall is where the weather map is superimposed. The computer puts the map over anything of those colors.

Personally I think that the green wall thing will go by the wayside. It seems to me that the new technology is the wall in the background like the cable stations use. CNN, Fox news, and the weather channel use those.

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The Ninja Sword

Using a chroma key has its advantages. You might notice the maps on The Weather Channel look quite dark and faded sometimes as opposed to the green screen. Must make it loads easier though for the OCMs

In case the original poster still wants an explanation of how "the green wall" (more properly "chroma key") works, the Chroma Key article on Wikipedia should be helpful. For weather sets in analog TV studios, the key wall was usually painted a color called Dark Blue Aquamarine.


Alan G

Hi Alan,
It sounds like you are an engineer or one of those smart tech guys. Did you work with the green walls in some way?

Alan was one of the geniuses who started the weather channel. He knows about all of the technical stuff.

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Rich Johnson
Tropicalweather.net
Certified Broadcast Meteorologist - Hurricane Expert

Hi, Kit Kat. Not withstanding Rich's kind words, a lot of what I know about the television engineering aspect of the business I learned from the TV engineers at The Weather Channel.

My education was in electrical engineering, but prior to TWC my work and my passion was the analysis and design of computer based systems. Most of the innovative technical work at TWC was at the intersection of television technology and computer technology. I also had been fascinated by TV technology since my early teen years. (I worked in a TV repair shop the summer between my junior year and senior year in highschool.) So I learned the TV stuff on the job from some very sharp people.

I was never directly involved with the green wall. But I was involved with digital keying in the design of The Weather STAR which had to be able to "key" local weather information in the form of text (and later, weather icons) over TWC video to show local sensor / observation data at the bottom of the screen during network programming.


Alan G

I believe Alan was one the people directly responsible for the weather channel's success. If it wasn't for his contibutions, in technology, TWC well may never have made it.

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Rich Johnson
Tropicalweather.net
Certified Broadcast Meteorologist - Hurricane Expert

I was watching the movie even almighty and they used a huge blue wall to film the movie!

Wow so you were part of the group that worked on the 4000 and lower models? I am still amazed by how you all did that considering the times. Its really amazing!! I picked up an old 4000 for fun to see the design. Quite remarkable!

Local pawn shop?

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Rich Johnson
Tropicalweather.net
Certified Broadcast Meteorologist - Hurricane Expert

I suppose that you can find just about anything on ebay!