Blue or Green Screen?

[greeches]

Are green screens easier to remove? or Blue? I assume green since most modern productions use them, but why? and while on the subject, i've been using shirts and such to do work with them. Would a particular green or blue posterboard work well?

thanks!

[Neil Rowe]

..that entirely depends on what color your subject is. if its bluer.. then dont use blue.. if its greener then dont use green , sometimes using black or white is best. ..it all depends on what your doing, and what would make the best negative background for that particular subject.

[jmproductions13]

what neil said is true, however i have also heard that dv cameras tend to be more sensitive to the green color of the screen because it is such an extreme color.

[GenJerDan]

Everything I've read says use Green for video whenever possible.

[Scottdvx100]

With DV footage green is preferred since it's sampled more for practical purposes.

[fixitinpost]

I believe that on the DVX, the channel is also the noisiest, therefore making green a better choice when possible.

[bgundu]

DV has more information in the Luminance channel. Green has more Luminance value than Blue.

[KOVAROVA]

Please share any thoughts/experience with shooting green screen ala dvx (ntsc). Any advice on settings? Lighting? Should I shoot 24p or not? etc.. etc..

info or links that will instruct me on how to do it properly would also be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

[fixitinpost]

I recently completed a green screen shoot. It was 24pa. The biggest problem was separation from the background, no time and bad lighting.

Be sure you have plenty of time. Setting up the screen is an exacting process. I had less than five hours to set up, shoot and get out before security made me leave. By far the hardest part of screening is lighting. Make sure you have the screen evenly lit. I didn't. It took me several hours to figure out how to compensate for this in post. It caused me much grief. The lighting was so bad on some shots that I had to garbage matte them, sometimes manually tracking all of the actors motions. Don't fall victim to this. I could post some excellent examples of what NOT to do.

On the upside, Some shots (closeups) worked very well. I got a beautiful screen. I would definitely reccommend using progressive. That way you don't have to deal with interlaced fields if you have any motion and have to hand track anything. Besides, 24p looks better.

[jmproductions13]

Some tips:

Lighting: Light the screen independently from the actor. I usually use a couple lights off to the left and right side of the actor (offscreen). I then add a light for the actor.

Keying: First you want to set up a garbage matte around your actor to save the keyer some work and pull a more accurate key. Scrub through the clip and make sure that the garbage matte doesnt remove any part of the actor (if it does just set a keyframe and adjust the mask). Pull the key, composite, and enjoy!

[michaelcorvin]

if you use the keylight plugin that comes with AE 6 it does a lot of work for you. i think serious magic makes a keying program too.
the first time i ever did blue/green screen stuff i tried both a ghetto home made blue screen (store bought fabric) and actual blue screen with actors wearing black. it was a nightmare in post because my lighting wasn't great but also the black and blue seemed to blend into each other on the edges but again, that could really just be poor lighting.
i used a professional green screen next and slightly better (but definitely not even) lighting and everything worked out great. AE with keylight had no problems picking out my actors even with variations in the green screen.

[GenJerDan]

For best results, rimlight the actors, too.

IS that the right term? Sounds somehow...naughty.

Lighting them from behind, anyway, to give them more separation from the screen. And use an orange filter on that light. (Orange for greenscreen, right?)

Is any of the above correct? (He says, staring at the roll of icky green fabric standing in the corner...)

Dan

[Barry_Green]

Magenta would be the color you'd want to use to cancel out green spill, but you'd only do that if you were seeing green spill on your subject.