Last night there was an episode of Perry Mason with a scene filmed Dragnet-style in front of a rear screen projection. Perry talks to a football coach with players practicing in the background. They dubbed in some background noise of the players. It was obvious but it looked good enough. With black and white lighting, you underexpose or overexpose the background to make the subjects of the shot stand out and they did that.
Anybody can do it now with a camcorder and a green screen. And why not? They used rear screen projection in film for years---it never fooled anybody but no one complained.
On Dragnet, they would film a master shot on location with no sound then film all the dialog in the studio with a rear screen projection and maybe a car parked there. It usually worked pretty well. I was disappointed when they recorded dialog on location. It didn't happen often, but when it did, it stood out like a sore thumb.
On the other hand, it was a really bad Perry Mason. I said this before. I watched old episodes of that show for years and it was great. But I had seen every episode.
Then they started showing it on this other channel. They show all these episodes I've never seen before and they were all terrible. It turns out they only had the best episodes in syndication all these years. Now they're showing the dregs.
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