Jump to content

Lighting shiny obejcts for greenscreen


Patrick Casey

Recommended Posts

  • Premium Member

Hey there people,

 

 

We're in the process of shooting a couple of pick-ups and since the outdoor location is no longer available (it's the wrong season and there has been a heavy storm since the original d.o.s so all the trees are lying down...) the producers have decided that we're doing it on a sound stage against a green screen.

 

I've got good backplates and references, it's just that one of the scenes is a fight scene where one of the characters is wearing a fairly shiny suit of armour. I've shot tons of green screen before but I've never been confronted with anything this shiny before. It's even to the point where you can sometimes distinguish the features of characters surrounding the person wearing the armour. So not only will the armour pick up every speck of green on set (which I have no idea how to handle) but I'm also struggling with how I will comp in believable reflections in the armour.

 

I thought about possibly hitting the armour with magenta to get rid of the green and then CC:ing it, but then I'm struggling to get the surroundings into the reflections. I though that I could maybe first pull a key to get the main alpha and then use the colourinfo in the reflections to somehow get the reflections on there.

 

Any ideas? Or should I just tell them that it's not going to happen without some serious compositing efforts (the frame by frame roto adventure)?

 

Thanks in advance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
back projection? not necessarily for the main plate but on the sides for believable reflections. just a thought. i haven't done it myself but i've seen it done with windshields on car process shots.

 

/matt

 

 

You know what? That's not a bad idea. I might actually have to try that. Good call man.

 

 

 

Hi,

 

Are you shooting film or video. FWIW Green spills far more than blue!

 

It will be a pig if recording on a camcorder.

 

Stephen

 

Well, the rest of the material was shot on Varicam, but I guess there's no reason for not shooting film for these sequences. Is there any reason apart from added colour info. to shoot on film for this scene?

 

I didn't know that green spills more than blue. Since this shot will be a comp. extravaganza anyway I might be able to do just this actor (and the poor lad that he bashes over the head) on blue and then do the rest on green. The original reason for shooting on green was that there's a lot of blue banners, clothes and other stuff around.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Hi,

 

I think you'll find it's going to be murder. Back projection, frame tight, use a lot of aerial effects (dust, leaves, smoke, etc) and wave the camera around a lot. You may need to put other projections (possibly just slides) at the sides and front to give the armour something to reflect.

 

Phil

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Seems like this is just a case where you need some good efx compositors who can remove the chroma key reflections in the suit of armor, that's all. Some software can handle that better than others I assume. It would be like shooting a chroma key over a water tank, for example, and having the screen reflect in the water.

 

I'm not sure what would be reflected in real life, not knowing the scene, but some offscreen painted backdrops or large diffusion frames with camo net in front might simulate the reflection of a bright sky with a tree canopy in front of it, for example. You probably want some large diffused lights to be reflected rather than a bunch of hard studio lights.

 

You could look at "Revenge of the Sith" which had to do a lot of compositing with a shiny C3PO.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
You could look at "Revenge of the Sith" which had to do a lot of compositing with a shiny C3PO.

 

From memory I think they keep them pretty diffuse, which is what I would choose to do if I didn't have the previous material to match it with. But I'll have a look at it just in case. If nothing else I get to re-experience "Noooooooooooo!".

Edited by Patrick Casey
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...