Green screen and video backgrounds

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Permalink Reply by Freggie Productions on May 14, 2008 at 9:46pm

I would be careful about shooting outdoors. If it's a bright sunny day the sun will make your greenscreen appear almost like seafoam (kind of like white mixed with a little green). We shot with the greenscreen outdoors once and it was almost impossible to key. It was for a driving scene (as mentioned above) so it had to be shot outside. What we ended up doing was putting the green screen in the garage and lit the greenscreen in there then used the natural light on the actress.

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Permalink Reply by Freggie Productions on May 14, 2008 at 9:54pm

Yep. You can buy a can at www.bhPhotoVideo.com They also sell the screens that come with green on one side and blue on the other. It's definitely worth it.

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Permalink Reply by Freggie Productions on May 14, 2008 at 9:59pm

We use to use green or blue oaktag. The video I attached to my page 2 comment was shot that way. Actually when a puppet had both green and blue in it (something I've since changed) we used a different color all together. I don't recommend this though. It was hard to key out. Like 90% of my videos are keyed so I have loads of experience with this.

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Permalink Reply by Freggie Productions on May 14, 2008 at 10:01pm

Also, if you're going to shoot greenscreen buy a 3 CCD camera. You can get a nice one for about $3000 - $3500. I use the Panasonic DVX. Usually the pro or prosumer cameras come with a zebra pattern function which are crazy helpful when trying to get the lighting even. If the greenscreen has zebra pattern all over it then you have good lighting. The greenscreen color needs to be even or you're going to have a heck of a time keying.

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Permalink Reply by Clif on May 14, 2008 at 10:07pm

Thanks! You can email me at info@biblepuppet.com or call me at 772-924-2244 THANKS!

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Permalink Reply by Freggie Productions on May 15, 2008 at 10:52am

That's why I'm reworking my series to be all greenscreen with stock photos or stock film for a background. Going on location is fun (you get to see parts of the historical monuments no else gets to see) but it's a logistical nightmare and as you said, expensive.

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Permalink Reply by Gordon Smuder on February 18, 2009 at 5:25pm

Green screen, to be used properly, can be a tricky thing. The biggest problem experienced by most people is the light-spill problem. Your characters need to be far enough away from the green screen to keep from having the chromakey green "bounced" onto them. This can cause a green "halo" around your characters and make clean compositing difficult. To avoid this, make sure 1) that your green screen is big enough to put your characters about 8 to 10 feet away 2) that your lighting on the green screen is even and consistent and 3) that your characters have NO green on them. If you're using green characters, you might consider a blue screen instead. Another trick to avoid the halo effect is to hit your characters with a back light or rim light so the effect is mitigated.

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Permalink Reply by Blackwolf on February 18, 2009 at 6:41pm

Also note that you don't actually need a professional green or blue screen. You can use any color that you want. Your editing software should be able to erase any chosen color (AE or Premiere have a color picker to determine which color you want to become transparent). The reason why professionals use a particular shade of Green or Blue is because those colors are not common to any human skin color. As previously mentionned, just make sure that your puppet or your subjects do not have any shade of the screen you are using.

If you really want to spend the cash on professional screens or paint, check out www.tubetape.net. Their prices are really good for the quality.

Also, as previously mentioned, lighting is the key to a good Chroma key effect.

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Permalink Reply by Blackwolf on February 18, 2009 at 6:46pm

Oh, and I forgot, if you're interested in learning how to key properly or any other type of effects using After Effects, check out www.videocopilot.net. This guy Kramer is nothing short of an AE guru. He's got over 60 free tutorials. It also helps to buy his products to keep him doing free tutorials.

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Permalink Reply by Freggie Productions on February 19, 2009 at 2:18pm

I just want to back up everything Gordon is saying here. He's totally on the money about keeping a good distance between the puppet and the screen. I'm sorry I didn't mention this before.

I know a good trick to make sure the lighting on the screen is even. There is something called "zebra" on the 3 chip cameras that is very helpful when lighting. Turn the "zebra" function to 100 and if there are diagonal lines all across your green screen the lighting is even. Works every time.

Gordon Smuder said:

Green screen, to be used properly, can be a tricky thing. The biggest problem experienced by most people is the light-spill problem. Your characters need to be far enough away from the green screen to keep from having the chromakey green "bounced" onto them. This can cause a green "halo" around your characters and make clean compositing difficult. To avoid this, make sure 1) that your green screen is big enough to put your characters about 8 to 10 feet away 2) that your lighting on the green screen is even and consistent and 3) that your characters have NO green on them. If you're using green characters, you might consider a blue screen instead. Another trick to avoid the halo effect is to hit your characters with a back light or rim light so the effect is mitigated.

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Permalink Reply by Freggie Productions on February 19, 2009 at 2:28pm

Thanks for the tubetape web link Blackwolf. You're right, the prices are great. The link for videocopilot.net was no good though. Did they change names?

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Permalink Reply by Blackwolf on February 19, 2009 at 5:08pm

I just checked the link backwards and forwards. It seems to be working fine. Try googling for VideoCopilot. That should definetly work.

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