Hi, Terri -

Just to throw in my 2 cents here...

You are facing a long road here, and I can say why in just 1 word: HAIR. Even if you were able to get the set, the lighting, the textures and the models just right (a BIG IF - and tons of work besides) duplicating your friends' frizzy hair as she moves around in a fight scene is just never going to work in Poser.

I'm wondering if you aren't looking at this as a "nail" problem just because you have a Poser "hammer." In clearer words, is CG really your best option here? Have you considered doing it with conventional video? Buy a long roll of bright green fabric, grab your friends (or some drama students from the local community college - they work for pizza!) and set up some work lights in a garage, with the green fabric as a backdrop. Position the camera on a tripod as close as possible to the original angle, approximate the original costumes as best you can, and re-shoot the fight sequence (with better choreography this time! ;-)

Then you can take your home-made green screen footage into a video application and match the original. You can spend hundreds on a project like this (and if that's OK, check out Ultra green screen software from Serious Magic. Their cheaper Visual Communicator might fit the bill as well.) You can also spend much less - check out Zwei-Stein from Thugs@Bay which is FREE and can handle the software end of such a shot all by itself.

Finally, if you're dead set on using Poser, I'd say don't even attempt to re-create the VHS look within Poser. That's a post-processing type of effect that would be better done in your video editor/compositor.  Depending on what app you use for this, you might even be able to find a plugin that will handle much of the grunt work for you.

• Jimdoria  ~@>@