Lighting a green screen on a tight budget

L

LaurenceFBC

New member
Hi Guys,

I'm new to this forum so please bear with me.

I'm shooting on a green screen for the first time this weekend and i have some queries on how to light it on a low budget.

I'm trying to re-create a weather forecast, so one subject off centre, moving mainly their hands over the green screen.

I have two Bowens Silver Mono lights that have a modelling light function that provides a pretty good output of light, my question is though, will two lights be enough to create an even spread on a green screen? the shot won't be very wide, it will include 1 subject from the mid upwards. i'll also need to light the subject as well...

My thoughts on it currently are;

hire 2 kino flo's and place them either side with diffusers on each.
hire a set of Dedo's, have 1 on either side and 1 over the top.

Please bear in mind i know VERY little about lighting, i have no formal education in lighting so o apologise if this seems ridiculous.

Any help would be massively appreciated!

Laurence
 
Good news is, with today's technology it's pretty easy to adequately do green screen for a low budget. For simple low-budget "weatherman" type stuff, don't overthink it. Just light it as flat as you can with as few shadows as possible (make sure you're lighting the greenscreen separately from the subject). Keep the subject as far away from the screen as possible and position your subject lights so it's not creating shadows-- lighting from above usually works best . Beyond that, the most important areas to keep lit evenly is the area right around the talent-- if the sides or top, the part away from the talent, has a little vignetting, you can usually just garbage mask it out. (e.g. cut around it in post)
 
I really prefer daylight balance for green screen, since modern digital cameras are just applying blue gain for tungsten settings.

All those super-cheap biax flo knockoffs out there are awesome for green screens. A couple of duals do a killer job. Even the big spiral bulbs in a china ball deliver a lot of light for the money, some of them are 300+ watts equivalent - test 'em, some need a touch of minus green (not pointed at a screen but for talent). You can use the china ball holders to rig up some cheap fixtures as well (see below). I use the big daylight soft sources for stuff like this, quad flos or those Alzo HID lights on the talent - if I need a hard light in the mix, I'll use a 1k fresnel with 1/2 CTB (or a fresnel with a 150 watt HID bulb and a ballast - that's like a 650... or close to a 2k with full CTB). You can mod a fresnel with the Alzo ballast, but skip their soft bulb and use one of cool lights' 150 HID bulbs and a G12 lamp base.

Way-cheap: I made three of these for a 20' green screen project, hung them from the ceiling to balance out flos on the sides. Worked great.

diy-flo.jpg
 
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