How do you make perfect green-screen?

C

Clarence Lohan

Carbonite Member
I'm thinking that instead of shooting actors on real locations, I could film them in my garage in front of a green-screen and then insert the background previously recorded...
Let's say I want to shoot a scene in a restaurant....
Instead of renting a restaurant for a day, and hiring extras to sit at the other tables,etc...I could shoot some footage from inside a restaurant from various angles and then I would have the actors sit at a table in front of a green-screen and mix the two footages....
There are some programs which offer virtual sets, some of them computer generated, some of them filmed on real locations however the end results I've seen are disappointing -you can clearely tell that the actors aren't really there....
So how do you do perfect green-screen, like in Sin City, 300,etc?
 
Why not make things easier on yourself by shooting the outside of your restaurant as the establishing shot and then setting up a nice living room like a restaurant. It's more physical work but I believe the results will pay.

If you are determined to go green, check out the cow and copilot for tutorials.

Check this out also.
 
Green screen is extremely difficult to get right unless you have extensive training. You have to match lighting, composition, depth of field, color etc. so the background footage would have to be spot on and the screen as well as the subject would have to be correctly lit. Few indies film get it right to the point where it seems completely natural. Even 300 I can tell it's all blue screen because of how restrictive the space around them seems. The point is by the time you managed to get it to look halfway decent you've already spent as much time and effort and you would trying to secure that location.
 
Clarence Lohan said:
So how do you do perfect green-screen, like in Sin City, 300,etc?
Click to expand...

Sin City was done by a team of experts who meticulously planned, storyboarded, and pre-visualized every shot before they shot it. Nothing was left to chance.

Rodriguez editing studio is part of his green screen studio on his ranch so he can shoot using digital elements to match what he is shooting.

If you just shoot people on green and don't figure it all out then you can't properly match move, and are pretty much stuck with just putting people in front of a background rather than integrating them into a proper shot.
 
I've come to the conclusion that green screening something to try to make it look real is nearly impossible...unless you have access to some incredible lighting gear.
 
You could also just ask permission to shoot places. If it's for a short film, people might be willing to let you use their places for free. Hell, I just shot a feature film, and we shot scenes in public places for free. We just asked, and they said "sure", told when their slow time was and never asked for a cent.
 
All the best chroma key that I've manafed to get is in this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJqYjAlQxBQ

that was filmed with an hmc and lots of light evenly distributed, and note that the camera isn't moving. Once you start moving the camera you enter in a whole new world.......that said I explained how I did a chroma key in a thread down in my sig (for a videoclip that you can also watch through the link down on my sig).
 
The Sin City green-screen was almost perfect I believe because the movie was in black and white... I downloaded some clips of not so perfect green-screen FX, and after I converted the clips and boosted the contrast they looked pretty good!

However check this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bie_Pj0AbAY
It was filmed with a Canon XL2 and it looks amazing!
However it doesn't say exactly how he did it...
 
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