Bobson,

Thanks, I appreciate the comment. I initially tried to key out the grey backing using various filters with different tolerances… I could never get a clean separation of the actors from the backdrop.

So I pulled every frame individually into photoshop and erased the background out for each…individual frame…

It really was (as far as I could manage) the only way to get the desired look. Even after all the isolation work was complete, there remain bits and pieces here and there in the footage that still bug me as I watch it play out.

That being said, there has to be a line somewhere between the time / effort I spend with that particular task, and a point of diminishing return. At the end of the day I think it works well enough.

I truly wish I could have chroma-keyed the backdrop out though… It would have saved me hours/days/weeks of work.