Light Suggestions (Grab)

V

VIOLENTX

Member
Shooting on green screen and need some lighting suggestions.

willgreen.jpg


Shot that over the weekend in my garage using three work lights from Home Depot.

elights_1857_2364155.jpg


The green screen was lit from the left and the right sides, and then the third light was bounced onto the cieling from behind the green screen. Any suggestions on how to better light my green screen?

- Austin -
 
I've seen some excellent green screen done on location... so the lighting is identical... then the shots are really believable... otherwise I'd try to light the green screen with flos and somehow light the real action with flos.. basically try to copy the same lighting style either way.

If you can get your green screen outdoors on an overcast day and shoot your other action in similar light you'll be t*ts... but if you're plugging this guy into some other action the try to light the screen independent of him... again with flos.

BTW I can already tell your zombie flick is gonna' look good... bass turd.
 
Get flat black wrap, and direct the light, so the green screen isn't getting inconsistent light... or spread the light out over the screen... keying will be much easier.
 
Dude, pay attention to these notes:

1. The green screen must be stretched taught, no wrinckles.
2. the green screen needs even soft lighting throughout.
3. the subjects need to be away from the greenscreen and lit independently of the greenscreen so no shadows from subjects hit the greenscreen.

a. you don't the right lights
b. you don't have enough lights
c. you may not have enough space.

possible solutions:
use flags, even cardbaord id need be to keep the lighting seperate from green screen and subjects. add anothe rlight so you have 4, (6 would be even better) 2 on back ground and 2 on subject. use heavy diffusion like 216 clipped onto the floods and back them off as much as possible. If you don't have diffusion, bounce the lights of white foamcore from home depot.

If I were lighting it I'd be using at least 10 grand worth of lighting and grip equipment.

good luck with it
 
First off you only need to light around the guy not five feet around him. Make a smaller area to light. i have an article on my site about green screen that might help
 
Icarus is giving you good advice. You need to light the entire screen that will be in frame evenly. Lighting just around the subject means you'll be doing maskiing in post which means either more of your time or more of your money, so light the entire screen thats in frame.

Secondly I don't like work lights, there's lots of people saying they're a cheap alternative, but its just not true. What you get is eactly whats killing you, an uneven, uncontrollable light. With those type of lights your going to have to bounce the light into the green screen to get it even close to even lighting. You'll probably need at least two more from the looks of it.
 
Austin,

I might be able to help since I used the same work lights and the same type of cheap green fabric. To get the remaining wrinkles out use clothing de-wrinkle spay. It's cheap and works great. Also if you are filming anything with your actor’s feet in the shot pull the fabric away from the wall to create a radius instead of a 90 degree angle where the wall meets the floor. I used (4) 500watt Home Depot lights and bounced them off four separate white foam boards back onto the sheet. I had the bounce boards too close to the hot lights and by the end of the 2 hour shoot 3 of the 4 boards are now brown and white. I also used 2 cheap 250 watt Home Depot lights to light my subject separately. I noticed some light behind the sheet in your grab; try to get rid of that. With a little tweaking in Premiere I was pretty satisfied with my results. This was my very first project with the DVX and I only owned the camera 2 days before I shot the video so there is a lot to be desired, but here it is in all its glory: Extremely compressed... 7MB I think:

Right click the image and chose “save target as”
http://www.anitabath.com/gallery/album153/Codie_Sorry

Note: the green screen footage is almost to the end of the video. Also the images behind the actress are still pictures taken 1 week before the shoot when I was scouting locations. I've been meaning to get the real footage to replace the stills with but other more important projects have come about.

One more thing you might want to try if you have green still bleeding through is to try some color correction using the color curves or do multiple color passes in After Effects.

Codie1.jpg


-Kevin
 
I gotta' side with Walter on this one... have you played around with cropping your green screen in your NLE? It is SUPER EASY... no extra time at all... it takes 2 seconds to put a square directly around your subject... then you'd have perhaps a third of the screen to evenly light.

It's nuts to worry about evenly lighting a part of the screen that can so easily be clipped out in post. We're talking a process that's exactly as hard as doing a dissolve transition... and I hope you don't think that's very hard.

To light a green screen really evenly means no wrinkles and even light... the suggestion of using bounce cards if you have hard light is a good one... the other option is flos... but either way you can cut your challenge down to 1/3 easily unless that guy is moving a lot in front of the screen.

If he runs from the right edge over to the left edge then forget the cropping advice... if he just stands there then embrace it.
 
Well Matt call me nuts, but I have never had to crop a green screen in post. Time is money and if its faster to crop in post, do it. I find it easier to light the screen, one less step in post and no worry of the image being resized.

Secondly if you only light around your subject how do you know where your drop off is that's going to effect the key? Do you have a contrast viewing glass, or are you depending on the camera to tell you? I understand a limited budget and the frustration of working with instruments that aren't intended for what they're doing. My real advice to this is lose the work lights and get some soft boxes or flos
 
I think Icarus suggestions are correct for proper techniques in green screening, but I think Walters is also a practical approach. I'm not an expert but was always told to light evenly, keep subject away from back ground, light subject. But Walter's approach is new to me and (as I'm always learning) will have to check that out. The one thing I don't agree with is work lights. I think you would have to diffuse the work lights to get an even spread. On the gorrilla tip, put a white sheet in front of the lights (not on the lights) or bounce it from foamcore.
 
Gopher_Greene said:
Lighting just around the subject means you'll be doing maskiing in post which means either more of your time or more of your money, so light the entire screen thats in frame.
Click to expand...

You don't know what you are saying. The way we light professionally for green screen is to light the talent and simply mask in post areas that we don't need. Cost? Zero, any edit software any of you use can mask a greenscreen. Time, no more than ti takes to add a crop to the mask. It costs a heck of a lot more and a hell of long time to try to light a 20 foot green screen where a guy is standing as opposed to lighting the area necessary around him. I have lit hundreds of greenscreens professionally for twenty years on every format from 35mm to DV. In the example above, he is trying to light too much and should concentrate on even lighting behind and around the talent. Never put a light behind a green-screen only in front on the same side as the talent.
 
A quick leson in green screen

1. Green screen is not about bright or dark, but about color. If the screen you start out with is green, then it should remain relatively the same hue of green when you are done, just illuminated so that it reads a bit better.

2. lighting a green screen is about evenness. The more even the area around your talent the easier you are going to be able to cut the key. In the example above, the lighting is not even. Below is me enhancing the lighting to show you where it is uneven

http://bluesky-web.com/junk/g5.jpg

Notice the bright spots. When I try to key that green, here is the problem revealed:

http://bluesky-web.com/junk/g4.jpg

Notice the green parts that don't key easily. That is because the lighting is not even. I can try to smooth it out but then I start to affect the talent himself:

http://bluesky-web.com/junk/g3.jpg

The solution is first to start with an evenly lit background. Not bright, but even so that the color you see in the screen is simply enhanced with light. Another thing that would have helped is what we call rim lights. A spot light from each back corner of the green screen illuminating the talent from each side would have separated him better and allowed me more manipulation without affecting his body. See diagram below:

http://bluesky-web.com/junk/g10.jpg


The other thing to know about greenscreen is that is is like light two unrelated shoots. FIrst light the greenscreen as I did above (even). Then turn the greenscreen lights off and light the talent not for how he looks in front of the green-screen but how he looks in the picture he is going to be superposed in. So if I was lighting him for this:

http://bluesky-web.com/junk/g7.jpg

The lighting you used might not be right cause the pigs are lit flat and he is very modeled. But if he was lit that way and put in this shot:

http://bluesky-web.com/junk/g12.jpg

Notice how he fits better because the lighitng on him is more like the lighitng in the background I put behind hime.

ANd I noticed you had him all the way to the right in your shot. I guess that is because you want him to be in the frame with someone else later. Here's a secret. you don't need to put him in the corner. In fact we shoot all of our stuff like this with him centered. Not only centered but as big as you can make him in the frame. Why? because once you cut him, you can put him anywhere you want on your background. Notice above in the cop shot that I reduced him and put him where I wanted to. Shooting him full frame allows you to record more info that you can shrink later.

And finally, what happens when you can't a light stand or something else out of a shot? It does not matter. As long as you can see your talent with noting you don't want crossing in front or in back of him, you are fine. WHen you cut the key it is very easy to mask the key channel like you are doing wipes and eliminate anything outside of the talent that might be in the studio you are shooting the green screen in (or basement). So this:

http://bluesky-web.com/junk/g8.jpg

Would not be a problem if a desk was on the greenscreen next to him. In post, you simply use a vertical mask (ask me if you don't know how to do that on a particular edit system) and in seconds you have eliminated a problem.

So now I have not only masked the chair by cropping the chair out of hte key but also moved him to the right side of the screen after he has been keyed:

http://bluesky-web.com/junk/g9.jpg

And finally, light the area around him but don't worrry if the levels well outside of his body on the screen are not even. Just like having a lamp in greenscreeen that yo don't want, you can crop the key signal of the greenscreen to eliminate all the stuff around him. This is a lot easier than spending hours trying to light a 15 foot screen when all you are going to do is use four feet of it. Light the four feet well and don't worry abut the rest. Remember shoot your talent as big in the frame as possible and reduce him where you want him later in post in a matter of seconds.
 
Walter has some really great rules of thumb here.

But you'd still be surprised at what you can do even when you don't know what you're doing. Listen to their advice and keep shooting.

Picture 1. Just ask Mr. White what he thinks of the lights you used

Pictures 2 and 3 are done OUTSIDE with GREEN SCREEN FABRIC (Cheap green fabric from the fabric store) draped over an SUV in the driveway.

examplegreen3mj.jpg
 
Walter_Graff said:
You don't know what you are saying. The way we light professionally for green screen is to light the talent and simply mask in post areas that we don't need. Cost? Zero, any edit software any of you use can mask a greenscreen. Time, no more than ti takes to add a crop to the mask. It costs a heck of a lot more and a hell of long time to try to light a 20 foot green screen where a guy is standing as opposed to lighting the area necessary around him. I have lit hundreds of greenscreens professionally for twenty years on every format from 35mm to DV. In the example above, he is trying to light too much and should concentrate on even lighting behind and around the talent. Never put a light behind a green-screen only in front on the same side as the talent.
Click to expand...

Walter, I'm not going to sit and mince words with you or anyone else here. I earn my living on film and video and have worked two feature films this year and just hired for another shooting in october. The last film we used green screen from 80' x 80' so NYC could be laid in the back ground down to a mirror frame size. Every time the screen was completly lit. You do what you want, If I were editing I'd perfer not to have to key and crop the same frame. I definitly would not want to judge where the light drop off would effect the key. Yes, the light can effect the color of the screen, thats why including you, everyone says light the screen evenly. if you want to light just part of the screen have at it. For me I'll take the extra minute, oh wait I'm already lighting the screen, so it won't really take me any extra time, to light the entire screen.

JMHO
Gopher
 
John_Hudson said:
Walter has some really great rules of thumb here.

But you'd still be surprised at what you can do even when you don't know what you're doing. Listen to their advice and keep shooting.

Picture 1. Just ask Mr. White what he thinks of the lights you used

Pictures 2 and 3 are done OUTSIDE with GREEN SCREEN FABRIC (Cheap green fabric from the fabric store) draped over an SUV in the driveway.

examplegreen3mj.jpg
Click to expand...


Thanks for posting these, John

these are some good examples of what can go wrong when doing green screen. Even if you manage to do the green screen right, you still need to know how the light is working in the scene you intend to transfer to.

In the 1st pic, the added character clearly isn't lit correctly for the scene. The light comes from the wrong directions and is too blue and the tone is off.

the 2nd and 3rd pics are much better, but even there it appears, based on the background that the sun hitting the trees and the sun hitting the characters in the car is in different places in the sky, i.e. different time of day. Most people won't notice that and it's still a great way to use greenscreen. One doesn't always have the luxury of shooting at the time they would like.

So the thing to remember is that you must know what you will compositing into and match up the lighting and tone because there's a limit to what they can do in post.
 
Maybe I should have put the following disclaimer: :huh:

These are the worst you can do even when you don't know what the hell you're doing.

(Him not knowing how to light properly and mine being literally 'thrown together and draped over an SUV in the driveway)

------------------------------

:shocked: :cheesy: :beer:
 
Walter, great info, thanks

John, jokes on me, I'm so stupid i didn't even realize at first the first photo was pulled from the original post :)

yes, for being just thrown together it's great, and shows the wonderful potentials behind using green screen.
 
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