What color balanced lights to use?

[pushparaj santhosh]

Hi, 

We are planning to shoot  a green screen commercial on a small shooting floor. The length of the green screen wall is about 20x15. I just want to now how to evenly light the green screen ? And about what distance should be the artists be placed from the screen? An talent will be standing before the screen and they have to be lit with the typical commercial beauty lighting. Can I use tungsten lights and keep the cameras color temperature to 3200K and shoot or do I need to use daylight balanced lights and shoot in 5600? Will there be a difference in the quality of the look and skin tones depending on the color temperature even if it's balanced neutrally on the camera? t Or will both the setups yield the same result regardless of the type of the color temperature used? Because some say even if you use tungsten lights and balance it to 3200 you won't get a pure neutral light. Is it true? What is your take on it?

[Tyler Purcell]

I haven't tried 5600k green screen, I generally go for 3200k. You need to evenly light the green screen, outside of the talent. That's really the biggest thing new people forget. I usually use 4 bank kino's to light green screens, around 6 - 10 ft away at the closest. The further away you go, the more even the light will be, which is what you're after. Put two on top (using a speed rail rig or on c stand arms) and one on each side. That usually cuts it and will give a pretty smooth look to the green screen. You can check this by increasing and decreasing the stop and seeing if you see any dark or bright spots. Then you can use any beauty lighting rig ya want for the talent, just remember to keep their lighting and shadows away from the green screen, so there is no spill over. I generally like to put my talent as far away from the green screen as possible, so that the talent lighting has no effect. 

Edited November 27, 2019 by Tyler Purcell

[Bruce Greene]

I don't think with digital chroma key that the screen needs to be perfectly evenly lit.  What's important is that any part of the screen that intersects with the subject be lit enough and not too much.

This means that the screen doesn't need as much light as the subject in front of the screen. Just enough to expose to about 30% brightness on a waveform monitor.  The brighter the screen, the more green reflections and kicks you'll have on the actors.

But, no part of the screen intersecting the actors should either be in deep shadow, or shadowed by folds in the green screen itself.

To minimize green bouncing back on to the actors, the actors should be as far in front of the screen as you can manage.

I have shot chroma key with both 3200k and 5600k lighting successfully.  I think, if I were shooting with LED lighting, I would probably set them to 5600k as I think they are generally more color accurate when set to daylight.  But, tungsten lighting is neutral when the camera is set to 3200k as well.