Shooting Green screen Project ( tips,pointers)

V

vision_filmz

Carbonite Member
Obviously I know the basics. Light background, light subject , create separation between the two. Outside of that though who can give e some real pointers and things to look out for?

* Shoot at an f-stop above f5
* Light your subject + background and give them separation
* Make sure subject is not wearing anything green (whatever color of background)


What about motion though? This would only be from mid waist up and only 1 back wall.
 
vision_filmz said:
Obviously I know the basics. Light background, light subject , create separation between the two. Outside of that though who can give e some real pointers and things to look out for?

* Shoot at an f-stop above f5
* Light your subject + background and give them separation
* Make sure subject is not wearing anything green (whatever color of background)


What about motion though? This would only be from mid waist up and only 1 back wall.
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I've shot dozens of things on green screen with my DSLR. Every shoot tends to be very different, though. It looks like you're on the right track with your concepts so far.

As far as raising the F-stop to 5 or higher: The idea here is to avoid any kind of blurring that could bleed the chroma color and possibly cause problems in the key (which chroma key application will you be using, btw? Some, like AE's keylight, are far more forgiving than the ones that come with most NLEs). Raising the Fstop does avoid some focus blurring, however don't forget about motion blur. If you're filming someone who is very animated or moves very quickly, the motion blur can create a far bigger problem than a low F-stop.

I personally like to turn the shutter speed up (%#@^ with the 180 shutter rule when shooting green screen!) to avoid motion blur, but then you risk turning your scene too dark (high aperture AND shutter speed). Therefore, unless you are shooting very close up, I am of the opinion that you can get away with lower Fstops. In fact, I recently shot something at F/3.5 that keyed out well enough in keylight. Then again, I was shooting a whole body, so with my camera far enough away, the depth of focus was pretty wide to begin with.

I'd say experiment with the F-stop at the focal point you intend to use. Go as high as you need to in order to keep the entire subject in focus, then use whatever remaining light you have to raise the shutter speed.

That's my advice.
 
Great tip regarding the shutter speed, I do not care for motion blur. As a matter of fact I actually like shooting at higher shutter speeds as I like the detail that is made better instead of the motion blur when shooting lower. I would be using FCP for keying, I know how to key and have keyed some very very bad projects and it came out pretty good. I guess My other question would really be regarding graphics. What is generally used for backdrops and motion graphics? I am not a graphic designer so I don't know how to create elaborate backgrounds?

This is a project for a friend so obviously there is no budget and more of a favor and some experimenting. Any ideas/suggestions where I should look at for static background pics with motion or anything like that? All I have currently is FCp, Photoshop & Apple Motion.
 
LOL- I'd love to offer suggestions but I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to achieve here.
So you don't even know what you want to replace the background with? Why are you green screening then? ;)

Someone once told me that you should use VFX when you need to, not because you want to. Otherwise, you run the risk of an excessively "cheesy" looking production. If there is a reason for the effect, the viewer is more likely to forgive the "not-quite-right" look for the end result.

That being said, I do LOVE finding appropriate places to use them. However, I try to only use chroma keying when there is no other way to do something (for example, having someone transition from being in classroom to their living room without cutting the camera on him, putting someone into a video game world, or on to top of a moving vehicle, etc). But the end result will always look better if you don't need to key at all.
 
dishe said:
LOL- I'd love to offer suggestions but I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to achieve here.
So you don't even know what you want to replace the background with? Why are you green screening then? ;)

Someone once told me that you should use VFX when you need to, not because you want to. Otherwise, you run the risk of an excessively "cheesy" looking production. If there is a reason for the effect, the viewer is more likely to forgive the "not-quite-right" look for the end result.

That being said, I do LOVE finding appropriate places to use them. However, I try to only use chroma keying when there is no other way to do something (for example, having someone transition from being in classroom to their living room without cutting the camera on him, putting someone into a video game world, or on to top of a moving vehicle, etc). But the end result will always look better if you don't need to key at all.
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The reason for the green screen is because the project that want to be done will involve flying texts and graphics. My thoughts were to key out the green screen with white and black back drops and have text wrapping around the artist and basically key framing through out the whole video.

Something like this as an example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vt0p75SYPQ
 
dishe said:
Ah. That effect is totally done in After Effects, looks like.
Click to expand...

:( Thank you for all of the help. I guess I have a lot of reading to do`. It does not need to be that crazy, just something similar is what My friend wants. Also we would use it only once in a while not that much. Finally the project is short, only 2 minutes
 
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