It's not essential that I chromakey, I'd just like to have a backround that doesn't look like a blue screen. As it's a fashion video it doesn't provide much interest and so I want to at least create some interest and if that means a black backround then I can live with that.

One possible solution....and I don't know how "complete" it will be or what software you have: New Blue Video Essentials II has something called "Color Swap." If you opened that and replaced the blue with black, that "might" work. Especially as there doesn't seem to be any other blue in the images, besides the background. You might have to lighten the image a bit to get some separation between the black clothing and the (hopefully) black background.

You can expand the range of blue you want converted, so shades of blue might still get picked up and changed.

Pretty sure the NewBlue has trial versions of their software, so you can see if it will work.

Thanks Len..I'll definetely give this a try

Thinking outside the box, and this may not be feasible for you, how about creating the project as a series of stills. You can create the stills in Vegas from the video clips, then crop out the backgrounds in Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc., and drop the isolated figures onto new backgrounds.

Cut the stills together with beat edits and an upbeat piece of music and you wind up with a pretty jazzy bit of advertising.

Jack

If you have access to After Effects and the Keylight keyer, you might be able to get a usable key out of it.

Keylight can pass an "inner/outer" matte from one instance of the plugin to another, allowing you to select a new area of the gradient with each instance . For example, you can garbage matte the outside edges, and select the dark blue color nearest the garbage matte, then pass that matte to another instance of Keylight and remove a lighter shade of blue, etc., etc., till you get to the color that is framing the talent. Keylight also has excellent matte tools built in for easy cleanup.

You may be able to do something similar within Vegas, but would probably take many more steps. I have keyed a very similar background with Keylight, but even with this technique you'd need to do a lot of manual matte work on that scene with the dark background.

That's an option I'll explore ,, a friend suggested I use photoshop like this but It'll mean a lot of extra work and I have to deliver soon. I will do a test run. Great idea Jack.