Multi Camera Green Screen with 5D

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Dbldwndrew

Member
During one week this past October I invited 28 bands down to Seaside Lounge Recording Studio to film a live green screen music video with me. I ended up with 35 music videos and NEW live audio resulting in 1 terabyte of footage. I am here to share, discuss, learn, and help anybody planning on; shooting GREEN SCREEN, using CANON 5D & 7Ds, L GLASS LENSES, managing LARGE AMOUNTS of DATA, and using AFTER EFFECTS to KEY and MASK there subjects.

The music video series launched in December, two videos are up thus far. If you like it please share, and please send me your thoughts. If I could do it all again, I would do it completely different. All behind the scenes were shot on HVX 200

Video 1 - http://www.green-screening.com/dale.html

Video 2 - http://www.green-screening.com/softblack.html
 
Localfilms said:
These are great. What did you use for the 3D tracking? Any words of wisdom for doing green screen hand held? Thanks!
Click to expand...

All of my tracking thus far has been done using reverse tracking in After Effects. It has been a life saver. No 3d Tracking. You can learn how at Andrew Kramer's Demon Face tutorial http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/demon_face_warp/

If you are going to shoot hand held, the wider you go the better. As long as there are always two visible markers on your green screen you can shake the camera and move around as much as you like. Obviously smoother motion makes the job ten times easier. If I were to do this project all over again I would focus my attention, when shooting handheld, on two markers placed on my green screen instead of the subject itself. Treat the green screen as the subject and not the actual subject as the subject.
 
This is the first green screening video where I have used video footage as the background. I had to composite 8 different shots together to make the background, because I did not measure distances angles or record what lenses i used. And a composite video with 8 separate videos in it is hell on my comp. Not my favorite as of yet, but others seem to like it more than the rest.
http://www.green-screening.com/

 

Tthe last video in this series was posted in January 2011. Three years later, F"*k! (it takes forever to key out tracking markers when they are everywhere and done in white tape), This is the best one to date, though, and I am going to keep dropping them until they are done, fingers crossed 2015! Then bring on Green-Screening: Part Deux. Download the track here - http://www.green-screening.com/zacharycale.html

This video was made to the brief of an old timey ticker tape parade & all effects done in After Effects. The title was created by Adam Carter - http://instagram.com/adam.carter

Hope everyone likes.
 
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i would be doing green screen for my next project, i have few questions if you could kindly address to it:

1. i shoot on 5d mark III with zero sharpness and later on i add sharpness in the post (this is what everybody advices). For green screen, should i shoot the same way or should i shoot with some in-camera sharpness? As the footage shot with zero sharpness is very soft, is it good for keying out the green screen?

2. what aperture should i shoot with? f4 or above like f5.6 to f8?

kindly help
 
You can key with a 5d it will not be the best key in the world, but to most people they will not notice if done properly.

My tips are to keep your foreground subject in focus as much as possible, and if you are tracking plan your shot ahead of time and use as few tracking markers as possible. I suggest using a slightly different color green tape so that you can key it out instead of having to draw it out whilst still being able to track it.

Regarding sharpness, I am slightly confused. Are you using a picturestyle with less contrast and less saturation? That is good. But for green-screen, you want your subject to be sharp/clean/in-focus to get the best key. You can always add camera or gaussian blur to lower sharpness afterwards. DO NOT ADD SHARPNESS and DO NOT TAKE AWAY SHARPNESS in camera, leaving it at zero should be good

Lenses and your f-stop. All zoom lenses have a sweet spot in regards to the zoom and aperture. That sweet spot is usually somewhere in the middle of both ranges, because there is less glass distortion, etc... Honestly, unless you are shooting a table top commercial with color correct packaging and the budget is a quarter of a million dollars, do not sweat it. Get it to look nice and it will look nice.

Using a higher valued f-stop will allow more objects in your frame to be in focus, giving you a broader depth of field THIS IS GOOD. Remember, you want your subject to be in focus, and have a clean outline to get the best key!

Goodluck payal_choski
 
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