Lighting Topographic green screen shoot

H

humanimal

Member
Hey Guys,

Maybe some of you have done this before and could give some advice. I have a shoot next month where I am shooting the subjects from above and they are dancing on a greened floor. What type of lighting rig would you suggest to eliminate there shadows from the floor. Thanks for your help.

D
 
I don't know that you will be able to completely remove shadows since your subject is going to be standing on your greenscreen. Your best bet is to make the light extremely soft. Take a 8x8/12x12 and bounce a large light into it. The bigger the bounce source, the softer it will be.

Matthew
 
I agree with Macville, that you will have some shadows. But what you can do is think of two sets of light.

1st Set: light the floor. Lots of mini-lights (soft pref) and light the floor green.

2nd Set: light the actors. Use enough light to get the actors the way you want them, but not force your exposure of the green floor roo far up or down. Not use some flags and cut your second set of lights so that they don't spill shadows onto the floor. there's no need to have the bottom say 1ft of the actors perfectly lit since you won't see it anyway since you're shooting from above.

What I'd also do is shoot two small hard pink lamp across the lower half of your actors. One from each of a 180 degree angle. You don't always have to color-against your green screen, but since you're putting the actors directly on it, I don't think it'd hurt. Cut the light off the screen by use of flags/barn doors, etc.

By cutting the light, you can minimize harsh shadows from getting to the green screen. but the green glow of the ground will slightly mix with the light on the lower parts of your subject.

If you use AE, then you can use the basic key color tool to get rid of most of the shadow areas. Then use Keylight for the main key. This will minimize the shadow effect onto the new surface.

Keylight never fully removes the "green areas" what it does is that it sees the green you pick as fully transparent, but the more you get away from the green you picked, it sees them as semi transparent. So some of your shadows would just become shadows on the new floor. To minimize this, first take those away, then use the Keylight tool.
 
Ah, you will need those shadow later for your composition to make it look real, so don´t mind - or are they supposed to dance on air?

Frank
 
Hey guys Thanks so much for the great advice. I plan to insight some experimental footage underneath them. We are going for an abstract look that resembles looking into a microsope. Here is what I got planned so far. I am shooting in a balck box theatre. I planned to light the green floor form all four sides softly to minimize casting. Then I was going to hit the dancers knees up from one side with a good amount of light and then edge them from the opposite side slighty behind them with just a little light. What do you think?
 
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