Robert Rock

As far as outdoor, a large number of features do this. Peter Jackson had numerous outdoor blue/greenscreen shots in the LOTR films. As far as the blue vs. green debate. most of the compressed formats have much more information in the green channel, which allows for better keys. In uncompressed workflows, blue or green work equally well. It mostly depends on foreground and costumes as to which is better for any given shot.

I don't know how or why it actually works, but on the Red, the blue channel is already a little noisy. Balanced under tungsten, it's more so. The 85 actually reduces the noise in the blue channel a lot. Thing is, for students, tungsten is usually whats around, not to mention cheap compared to most Kino's and HMI's. Adding an 85 to help with tungsten is a much more cost effective fix for those in this type of situation.

Looks to me like the camera was pointed at a sphere, then the video was "straightened out" in post. I use a similar technique to do spherical reflections in lightwave

Also, FCP has a filter that can simulate distortion, and the settings are fully keyframable. Playing with the saturation, gamma, and color balance can do the trick too. Sheesh, in the eighties when I started shooting video, we tried to avoid this look at all costs.... Kind of ironc to me that someone would find this enjoyable....lol