Green Screen Complete Studio

[Rich Steel]

Hi Folks,

 

I've been asked to do a green screen shoot in June with motion control. I've done green/blue screen before but not on this scale. The production wants to paint the whole studio green, including the floor.

 

My question is what lights would one recommend to minimise multiple shadows on the floor. I was looking at a couple of BAG O LIGHTS but not sure if this would work. I've used kino's in the past for 3/4 length shots but as previously mentioned haven't done studio green screen.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Oh! forgot to mention I have a limited budget of £1000 per day for renting lights.

 

cheers

 

Rich Steel

[Mitch Gross]

Nothing cheaper or easier than using a bunch of cyc lights with some diffusion to wash the walls and floor. I'd say to do the talent with some big soft sources, perhaps a 12x gridcloth with some 10k behind it, or at least a few 5k with Chimeras. These days I often see people bring laptops running FCP or some other simple edit program to pull a quick DV feed of the room and test how even the exposure is for pulling decent comps. I always like my green screen at about 1 stop under key for a nice solid matte, and try not to vary the exposure in the green by more than +/- half a stop.

[Michael Nash]

I always like my green screen at about 1 stop under key for a nice solid matte, and try not to vary the exposure in the green by more than +/- half a stop.

Of course that depends on the software (and person) doing the compositing. I always try to ask the VFX supervisor ahead of time or even on set if they have a preference. Most of the time they say they don't care how bright it is, just that it's even and has good saturation. I ocassionally do some stuff that gets comped in Ultimatte, and the editor asks for a "1:1" luminance ratio, meaning the green screen is at the same level as the foreground exposure (shooting video, I put it right at 50 IRE in this case).

 

But regarding lighting, as Mitch said cyc lights and diffusion are quick and easy for the green screen. But lighting your FOREGROUND is totally dependent on how it needs to look in the final composite. Again as Mitch said softlighting will help avoid distinct shadows on the floor, which could cause problems in post. But you may need to go beyond that for your composite, in which case you'll need to be careful to flag as much foreground light off the floor and wall as possible. Sometimes strategic hardlight is easier to flag off more precisely.

[TJ Williams]

You may have more success with the cyc lights quite a bit lower than the talent light as the matte is cut thru color not luminance.

 

If the green areas are lower then the reflections onto the foreground persons skin and costumes will be much reduced which will probably be a major problem with so much green paint so close to the talent. Best to run tests here the idea of cheap keying in a laptop and a DV feed is a good one. Also worth looking into the new Bogan system

which would go a ways toward eliminating some of the problems of so much green

so close in. (The new glass bead and led's around the lens system distributed in US by

http://www.manfrotto.com contact them.

[Nate Downes]

A good piece of software for this would be Cinamette from Nova Design. it is a plugin for photoshop, and gives excellent results.