C200: Green screen shooting with C200

jcadge

jcadge

Active member
Hello,

I’m thinking of purchasing the C200 as a B cam with my C300ll when filming 2 camera green screen interviews for corporate web videos.

Looking forward to shooting 4K 60P for B-roll segments.

Currently I use my old C300 as B cam filming 1080P.

Have any of you guys pulled clean keys wit the C200 when filming MP4
3840 x 2160 YCC420 8-bit mode?

Can’t afford to film raw when filming 3-4 hours of interviews in a day.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff Cadge
 
You can do it but you had better NAIL the lighting, exposure, green spill on talent, relative levels of the green screen versus subject. If you mess any of those up, you'll be hosed. Also much easier when keying the UHD C200 footage into a 1080 project, harder to do if it is a 4K project. 4:2:0 8-bit doesn't give you a lot to play with. If it's 1080, I have had much better results shooting my C200 into my Atomos Ninja Blade and they are cheap, cheap, cheap now for 10-bit 4:2:2 Prores HQ.
 
Everything puredrifting said plus:

My method is to light the green screen and the talent separately. Depending on the size of the room you're shooting in - keeping a good amount of distance between the green screen and talent will help and I like to add a few kickers/hair light gelled with CC05M (magenta) to help counteract any green spill on hair or shoulders.
 
Agreed with your solutions R_Marvin. Also keep in mind your C300 MKII is recording 4:2:2 10 or 12 bit while your C200 will be recording 4:2:0 8-bit so far less latitude for pushing and pulling that footage around. ALWAYS light talent separate from green screen, it is zone lighting. You light the green screen, typically with two to four broad source lights (LEDs or Kinos work great). For interviews, I specify at least 10-12' separation beween talent and green screen. Light your talent as you want, but definitely in a different zone of the room. Use your zebras to make sure your green screen is lit perfectly evenly. You should see zebras across the entire green screen with no "holes" in the display. Check your talent, reflective surfaces like bald heads, glasses, etc. for green spill and minimize as much as possible. Refuse to shoot green screen in too small rooms, you will regret it if you end of with green spill all over your talent. I typically like at least a 25-30' long room. Trying to light green screen in a small office is asking for issue. I shoot a LOT of green screen, it's easy once you get the recipe down. Trying to improvise the recipe is not recommended.
 
puredrifting said:
Agreed with your solutions R_Marvin. Also keep in mind your C300 MKII is recording 4:2:2 10 or 12 bit while your C200 will be recording 4:2:0 8-bit so far less latitude for pushing and pulling that footage around. ALWAYS light talent separate from green screen, it is zone lighting. You light the green screen, typically with two to four broad source lights (LEDs or Kinos work great). For interviews, I specify at least 10-12' separation beween talent and green screen. Light your talent as you want, but definitely in a different zone of the room. Use your zebras to make sure your green screen is lit perfectly evenly. You should see zebras across the entire green screen with no "holes" in the display. Check your talent, reflective surfaces like bald heads, glasses, etc. for green spill and minimize as much as possible. Refuse to shoot green screen in too small rooms, you will regret it if you end of with green spill all over your talent. I typically like at least a 25-30' long room. Trying to light green screen in a small office is asking for issue. I shoot a LOT of green screen, it's easy once you get the recipe down. Trying to improvise the recipe is not recommended.
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This. I've had to go in and do re-shoots when others did this and they couldn't get a clean key. Whenever someone wants to do green screen, I tell them that there HAS TO BE ENOUGH SEPARATION, PERIOD. Otherwise you are wasting your time and money. As long as we have the proper space and control, I have no issues doing green screen. And If I don't have any issues, it means the client won't have any issues.

I actually found myself in the situation of more or less having to sell an account/project manager on green screen, on the spot, a few months ago. The space we were supposed to use(natural background, shot in it several days before then) was uncontrolled and too noisy. The producer and a few others made the call to do green screen and then shoot plates(decision made leading into the weekend). So when we show up Monday morning, the higher up was not happy and didn't want to shoot it green screen, because they had been burned on it before. The situation between the project producer manager actually got pretty uncomfortable for those of us there in the middle of it. But, I stepped in and reassured the account manager that it would be fine and explained why they had more than likely had issues in the past(based on what they told me) and why it was going to work this time(biggest reason was we were in a studio with plenty of space). After burning about 30 minutes of our set-up time, we went and set-up and shot. A few days later on another shoot, I got pulled aside and thanked by someone and was told that apparently I made a good impression on the project/account manager and really helped smooth the situation over. And it probably didn't hurt that there were no issues with the shoot or post(at least to my knowledge).

And if you are ever put in the situation that the room won't work and they won't move it, have the on-site producer acknowledge via signed paper or reply in email(you can type it up and send it from you phone on-site, if necessary) that you have told them that it won't work or there will be post problems, so that when there are problems after the fact and they try to throw you under the bus, you have proof that they were made aware of the situation and chose to move forward anyway.
 
For the record, I HATE green screen interviews, they are the worst and rarely look what I would consider as good, no matter how well you light them and how good the BGs and compositing is. I am shooting two of my own documentaries over the next year or two and there will be NO green screen interviews in them. If you are a talented DP, you can almost always make a real room look better than green screen, even if it's just some abstract color slashes on a wall. That said, I shoot a lot of content for animated shows and they always want to place the animated BGs and characters in the BG of the interviews so for that kind of stuff, it makes sense. But to me, green screen interviews are the cop out of the uncreative and untalented generally, unless you have a specific, motivated reason to shoot green screen. But typically it's a producer who is lazy or unresourceful and won't fight for good locations and BGs and just decides to "fix it in post", "we'll stick something back there". To me, green screen interviews are usually a cop out.
 
puredrifting said:
For the record, I HATE green screen interviews, they are the worst and rarely look what I would consider as good, no matter how well you light them and how good the BGs and compositing is. I am shooting two of my own documentaries over the next year or two and there will be NO green screen interviews in them. If you are a talented DP, you can almost always make a real room look better than green screen, even if it's just some abstract color slashes on a wall. That said, I shoot a lot of content for animated shows and they always want to place the animated BGs and characters in the BG of the interviews so for that kind of stuff, it makes sense. But to me, green screen interviews are the cop out of the uncreative and untalented generally, unless you have a specific, motivated reason to shoot green screen. But typically it's a producer who is lazy or unresourceful and won't fight for good locations and BGs and just decides to "fix it in post", "we'll stick something back there". To me, green screen interviews are usually a cop out.
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Everyone would rather shoot a good, natural background. And a lot of times, a good natural background shoot will be even easier to shoot/light than green screen, but sometimes there are overriding/more important factors. Like in this case audio. You can cover up bad video(or a green screen interview) with b-roll, you can't do anything with bad audio(people talking and kids running around and screaming in the audio), especially when it's a bite that they need. It was a very frustrating shoot in the regard that the shoot was for an installation exhibit in the venue/"museum"(not really, but let's call it that), but they would not close the area we were shooting in to the general public and the shoot was during operating hours. None of this was in my control and thankfully this client actually hires audio independent of camera(and it may have been one of their staffers), so i never have to worry about audio "issues" coming back on me.
 
Totally not aimed at you Run&Gun, I understand, I've been in the same position many times. Audio is MUCH more important than any picture considerations. But I have been in amazing locations all over the world where I am drooling to use the naturalistic, found locations that look really interesting and historical as BGs and the producer makes me use green screen, "because these interviews won't match all of the green stuff they shot in Vancouver". Personally I am not a fan of all interviews having perfect matching BGs either, I like to mix it up and I think the end product is usually better for it. In a way, I don't even feel like a DP when I am doing "normal" green screen interviews because it is such a formula, there is generally not a lot of creativity. I wish more of my producers would try to go for photorealistic green screen interviews, that I could dig. But when I tell them the only way to do that is to shoot or select the BGs first so I know what lighting I am trying to imitate as I light the green screen, they NEVER have their act together with BGs or lighting pre-selected so we can do that. They are always in reaction mode instead of proactive. I don't mind green screen as much if it is photorealistic. There were some good green screen scenes in the first season of "Crazy Ex Girlfriend" where Rachel Bloom's character is in Paris, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1DCoGCVUxY even though it was all shot here obviously on green screen but they had great plates of Paris. This type of green screen work is cool and I love it. But my producers never let me have fun with green screen like this.
 
I was actually thinking almost the exact same thing earlier. In "TV" interviews, we are almost never trying to match lighting on the subject to the "background" to "place them" in the environment. It's just a paint-by-numbers, strictly technical set-up. Light the screen as flat and even as possible, make sure there is separation of the subject with no spill from the screen and then usually a very simple, standard interview lighting set-up on the subject.

And I do get how frustrating it is to have a cool or interesting background and instead of adapting and using it to your advantage, you're forced to stick to the formula.

I think I remember Charles making a post about some of those green screen "Paris" set-ups. If I recall, one of them was a walking scene that they shot outside and had a couple of grips rolling a big green screen behind her.
 
Thanks for sharing your green screen tips, I will certainly buy an Atomos
if I end up buying the C200.

I think it’s safe to say no one (except maybe SFX people) went into the image making business to film green screen, but it’s a necessary evil.

I recently did a interview shot for a financial firm in NYC where client wanted to leverage their 40th floor location with great views of Manhattan.

We could have gelled the windows but with clouds in the sky that could change the sun at any time and an afternoon shoot that could easily go into sunset I knew the light was going to change and continuity most likely would be an issue when editing.

So we filmed 3-4 minute long BG plates before the interviews when light was good resulting in window views that were consistent and client got what they wanted.

I almost always shoot my own BG plates, using a stand in when composing the BG plates, the same focal length lens and distance from stand-in to lens and interviewee to lens.

So your talent will seamlessly drop into the final composite.
 
jcadge said:
Thanks for sharing your green screen tips, I will certainly buy an Atomos
if I end up buying the C200.

I think it’s safe to say no one (except maybe SFX people) went into the image making business to film green screen, but it’s a necessary evil.

I recently did a interview shot for a financial firm in NYC where client wanted to leverage their 40th floor location with great views of Manhattan.

We could have gelled the windows but with clouds in the sky that could change the sun at any time and an afternoon shoot that could easily go into sunset I knew the light was going to change and continuity most likely would be an issue when editing.

So we filmed 3-4 minute long BG plates before the interviews when light was good resulting in window views that were consistent and client got what they wanted.

I almost always shoot my own BG plates, using a stand in when composing the BG plates, the same focal length lens and distance from stand-in to lens and interviewee to lens.

So your talent will seamlessly drop into the final composite.
Click to expand...

This seems like a pretty legit reason to film green screen. Nice too because you could set a type of lighting on the stand-in that compliments the ambient light in your plates, then emulate it with the talent.
 
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