I need to get a proper green screen set with proper lighting.


What lights, and which green screen has been the most successful from past experience.

Thanks for your help, being as I have NEVER done anything like that.


nearsightedproductions.com

Hi Joseph,

First off I posted this same question last year and there a a stack of answers if you search... these helped me get going...From what I learned here's what I do and it gives really nice results... (I shoot with a Z1 in HDV)

Basically I use a green roll of photo backdrop paper hung on brackets.. (its cheap and easy to use) this I light with a pair of Lowell Tota 800w lights with umbrellas to get a nice evenly lit background...lights at 45° each side of the background.

I then light myself (or whoever) with a classic three point light set up, consisting of a 500w Rifa light box, a 500w V light and a 250w Pro light as a kicker.... I set my subject about 8 feet from the backdrop and the camera about 10 feet further back.... I use the zebras to check how even my back ground is lit... Set up like this the camera is on medium telephoto for a headshot giving a reasonably shallow DoF wide open.

Once filmed I import the HDV clips into Premiere and edit my sequences.... once complete I export to uncompressed HD avi before importing into After Effects. I use the Keylight plug in to key my sequence, applying the relevant background..this is then downscaled and exported to avi from AE as an SD file. I can encode this in either Premiere, TMPGenc or what ever to my required format...ie.Mpeg2, wmv, flv, mov, H264 etc.....

Hope this helps...
Gareth

Lowel has a tutorial on their site for lighting the traditional way.
http://lowel.com/edu/lesson_green_screen.html

And although this is going to be a pricey recommendation, you can't beat the speed and the ease of use of the Reflecmedia system.

Here's a video on it:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid275887224/bclid184432313/bctid878819693

I also put some footage up if you want to experiment with a few HDV files shot with a camera like yours. This was shot with the Sony FX1.

http://www.dvcreators.net/media/chromakeying/

By the way, the bloopers from the shoot are pretty hilarious too:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=O4zU2LU_g5s

the bloopers

Thank goodness for that... Glad to see most shoots follow a similar pattern!

BTW, I noticed you've shot the talent in landscape - nothing unusual with that, but I've also used the camera tilted 90 degrees so 'standing talent' fills the frame better. After all, scaling a big HDV image down inside a 4:2:2 or uncompressed timeline helps the perceived resolution and sharpness, and the hit on the NLE is negligible in these days of SD/Web resolutions.

And yes, Chromaflex rocks - just keep the talent close to the background!

When I worked for a TV station, we did tons of GS work. Most of the time, we set up two arri 1000w lights at 45deg. angles to the GS and set the focus to wide. Then we stepped the talent about 6-10 feet in front of the GS and set two Arri 650w lights at 45deg angles of the talent. This insures that the talent is lit and that shadows from the 650's don't hit the GS.