DIY Green Screen

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pixelated

Well-known member
Been thinking it would be nice to have a green screen "curtain" that could be pulled in place only when needed. Picked up a piece of heavy cotton 10ft by 22 ft
and a bunch of lime green dye. Planning a lengthy dye soak in a large garbage container, hoping to avoid the hippie tiedye look, then grommet and hang from pipe, figure some way to stretch out wrinkles when in use.

Anyone ever attempted anything like this (am I out of my mind????) :Drogar-Thinking(DBG

Comments/thoughts welcome.
 
hmm

hmm

I think the easiest thing would be to find a material already green. Not sure how dye soaking it would workout. If it'll come out looking even etc. Plus the material cant be too thin etc.
My 2 cents.
In the coming week or two im gonna just buy a good green fabric or something, and just light it properly it should work extremely well in my opinion. Green screen is all lighting anyway.
 
Yea, would have loved to find something all ready green, but the largest widths I could come up with were under 4' and I didn't want seams . . .

Anyone know a source for big green fabric ? ? ?
 
Seams are inevitable in most large sizes however eefx.com is the best I've worked with - yes there are seams but never had an instance where if lit correctly, they didn't just go away.

cheno
 
Usually they are seamed on the back so that there isn't an overlap on the front side and it is almost invisible. Most good green screen material also has a thin foam backing attached after it is sewn to keep the green screen from wrinkling or having different thickness at the seams. It tends to smooth the seams out so that they are less of a keying problem than your lighting fall off. Yes there are seams but they are minimal


Here is a (hotlinked) image of what you want to make. It is 4 strips sewn together. Y0u can buy the material already sewn and the proper material/color and backed for about 150-250. I would say you can't make anything nearly as good without spending almost that much on materials that are not total junk. The screen itself has tiedowns attached to it all the way around about every foot or so. This allows you to stretch it tightly on the frame and you end up with absolutely NO wrinkles. The frame to hold it should be very sturdy and not made of wood or anything unless you can make sure it doesn't flex diagonally. If you don't need it to be free standing or portable like that one then it might be easier to fasten the braces it to the floor and ceiling.

I have used the 12 foot version of this and it is a bit too small. I kept getting the edge of the screen in the camera view and occasionally the talent would move outside the screen area

Green%2020%20x%2020.jpg
 
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Hey everyone
Mega thanks for all the help/links/suggestions!

Sad Max - the chroma key link was just what I couldn't find - many thanks. I'm still a little puzzled by their padded version - does this mean I can swing the talent into it at speed??

Arson - that is some screen! Thanks for sharing. Would not want to see that puppy in the wind . . .

To all who remain curious - I've decided NOT to go ahead with this. I found a fellow indie shop with a large green screen wall, nicely lit, that I can RENT for like $25 an hour. I'll still be picking up a small unit for talking head type shots, but the rent makes trying to duplicate something like that ridiculous for the amount I'd use it.

Thanks again!
 
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