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Green Screen Setup for a Short


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I'll be shooting a sci-fi short in a week.

 

Should I stick to this setup or instead use a straight green screen dividing the room into two from the 2.2m wall?

 

The location will have 7 scenes and 11 shots. Some steady some moving shots. In some shots the whole room must be seen.

 

I also planned to add a 3d piano model behind the 2.2m and 1.75m walls.

 

Is this the best possible setup? What kind of complications could I have if I do it like this?

 

I have to use tracking markers obviously, but will it be harder to make the created parts of the room to match the real parts of the room with this?

 

I also have to create matching floor if I follow this setup when extending the room into a whole rectangle. Will that be too hard?

 

Any better ideas?

 

post-66775-0-05592500-1522077636_thumb.jpg

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One question: How will you light the green screens if they can not be back lit? I think you will also want to move those arm chairs away from the green screen!

 

But, really the lighting looks very difficult here. If this is a practical location, maybe impossible to light the set and the green screens well at the same time. It's one thing to have a green screen lit separately if it's outside a window, quite another to have them right on the walls.

 

If you can't light the screens separately from the scene, you might need to do a bit of rotoscoping to complete the fx shots if a good matte can not be pulled by chroma key methods due to poor lighting on the green screens. So be ready for this.

 

And lastly, if you can mount lights above the set, consider getting ellipsoidal lights for lighting the screens without lighting the set.

Something like this: https://www.usedlighting.com/19684/etc-source-four-leko-19-50-deg-package-of-4-?ads_cmpid=622974840&ads_adid=28514318425&ads_matchtype=&ads_network=g&ads_creative=108007453945&utm_term=&ads_targetid=pla-42886334424&utm_campaign=&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&ttv=2&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtOLVBRCZARIsADPLtJ23vg-FEvDTb3gHZgCS8U1f91ohX5rrPH2YU5m5WRhBVL2-uDrxl5waAr3VEALw_wcB

 

But, beware, when you light the green screens they will bounce all over the set with green light! Maybe better not to light them and be ready for rotoscoping work.

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I can backlight the large (5.5m) one.

 

I'll be shooting RAW on Pocket, I'm not too worried about lighting - it seems to generally work. Should still do some more tests tough.

 

Do you think the green will spill onto the armchairs? Most of the stuff, including the character's clothing, is white, btw.

 

The set is a practical location.

 

I don't have a lot of lights or budget for it - my main question is if I should do the green screen like this or some other way. Thanks for your concern tough.

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be aware that you need to have enough depth separation on the tracking markers + any "natural potential tracking points" on the native texture of the walls and floor to be able to matchmove the shots correctly to be able to add the 3d piano model seamlessly to the scene when the camera is moving.

and it is also highly dependent on the camera moves +angles+shot size etc. so it can be a bit risky to do matchmoving shots on that setup, especially if you want to do anything more than very wide shots where there is plenty of tracking points available. you may need to have more than 20 or 30 continuous markers in a shot to be able to matchmove it correctly..

 

the green will probably spill to the chairs especially if they have glossy surfaces, they are also very close to the green so it may also spill to the actors.

 

it could help the screen lighting a bit if you can round the sharp corners of the green. may be needed to just get the actors farther away from the screen to be able to light it correctly.

You can also consider adding lots of cooler overall ambience to the room which lights the greens and then light the actors with punchy hard lights which can be completely separated from the greens.

I have not shot with the Pocket though so I don't know if the camera can handle this type of high contrast setup without too much noise on the green screens but this type of high ambience high contrast setup could work if you can't light the greens any other way

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if your actors would have helmets and very simple clothing you could theoretically just rotoscope everything without using any greenscreen. if you have very very difficult matchmoving shots this may be actually much easier than to try to greenscreen everything and trying to have enough continuous trackers (when the original wall texture would have thousands of tracking points readily available)

 

it is easier to rotoscope though if the background is somewhat solid color so can't say without being on the set..

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