First time shooting blue screen w/ HD

[Chris Fyan]

I will be shooting blue screen for the first time with the Sony HD900. What are the differences between shooting blue screen with SD and HD?

[Landon D. Parks]

:ph34r: In my opinion.... Nothing. Just the added resolution.

 

It is possible to tweek the HD Cams' more than SD... However, you should not have to do to much more than you would in SD....

 

Landon D. Parks

[Mark Allen]

I work with blue screen as a visual effects supervisor at least 20% of my time. I've done it with SD a lot before. The difference is.... HD is better and the problems you find in SD are less in HD.

 

That said, here are a few points in no particular order:

 

1. You do still have to watch for high contrasts that will end up creating borders. (Thenk "detail" in betacam terms where the plan was always to "turn detailing off").

 

2. On the post side move to D5 from HDCAM as soon as possible because HDCAM is more lossy and that hurts for screenwork.

 

3. It's always easier to key progressive frames, but that might not be your choice (frame rate).

[David Mullen ASC]

You should turn off Detail and turn off the Color Matrix as both can create false edges and contours around objects. It's best to light the blue or green screen correctly rather than tweak the colors in the camera's matrix to make the screen the correct color.

[Mike Brennan]

"I will be shooting blue screen for the first time with the Sony HD900. What are the differences between shooting blue screen with SD and HD?"

 

If you ar enew to HD, make sure you are in focus!

Shutter on. If there is a lot of movement consider a slightly faster shutter speed.

Warm/cool the subject with gels on lights not via camera matrix.

Record 4:2:2 if you can it helps the key a little.

There are many keying plugins, some work better than others.

 

 

 

Mike Brennan