How Bayka Magendans used green fabric to shrink down in his winning video

Like so many of us, Bayka Magendans, a native New Zealander now living in Cape Town, turned to gardening during the pandemic. But to tell the story of all the Swiss chard and chili peppers he grew, Bayka got extra creative. Inspired by the 1989 Disney film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Magendans used some green screen cleverness and unusual camera angles to create one of our five winning Pandemic Project videos. 

“I thought, instead of just doing a selfie video and pointing to the garden, it'd be cool to shrink myself down. That's the really cool thing about mmhmm, you can shrink yourself down and float around the screen. I thought I could get the green screen to cover my whole body, then shrink myself to look like I'm walking in the garden,” Magendans explained.

As an occasional videographer, Magendans knows the post-production required with standard green screen work. “What I love about mmhmm is that you can have that green screen effect in real time,” he said.

When not in his garden, Magendans typically works from his home studio as a language teacher, adapting to distance learning years before the pandemic forced everyone else into it. “I got into online teaching probably five or six years ago, teaching Chinese people English online from all over the world,” he said. 

Thanks for sharing your Pandemic Project with us, Bayka, and congratulations!

Watch his green screen wizardry below, and check out our Green screen best practices for ideas on how to bring a little shrinking magic to your next video call, too.