suitable for green/blue screen shooting?

[Mike Barber]

I was wondering if anyone has yet had the chance to shoot and green or blue screen footage. If so I would love to hear thoughts, or better yet get my hands on source clip to run some test key pulls.

[Jon Fairhurst]

I shot some video a couple weeks ago with green paper on computer and phone screens and put in the user interface after the fact. It worked great. I had no codec related problems. The biggest problem was motion tracking as the screens were often obscured and sometimes went off the screen.

The only issues that I had were the typical chroma key issues - splash, uneven lighting, that sort of thing.

I used AE CS3 for keying and motion tracking. For the keys, I just slapped in a number of standard chroma key effect layers to deal with the various color ranges present on our crummy paper job. Growing and softening the edge a bit made it really forgiving.

I wasn't doing anything tough like smoke or hair, though I did have a number of wine glasses in front of one screen. The glasses moved quickly, so I could be a bit sloppy.

Of course, the camera shoots 4:2:0, so it won't be great for fine detail, and it has aliasing, which could be an issue in some cases. If you can soften the key edge a bit, aliasing won't be a problem.

[Robert Turchick]

I will be testing this out in the following weeks. Wondering how shallow DOF would affect the keying being able to blur the BG and keep really sharp edges on the subject...we'll see! I'll do a comparo with my 150 which works wonderfully well.

[Mike Barber]

Originally Posted by Jon Fairhurst

I wasn't doing anything tough like smoke or hair, though I did have a number of wine glasses in front of one screen. The glasses moved quickly, so I could be a bit sloppy.

Of course, the camera shoots 4:2:0, so it won't be great for fine detail, and it has aliasing, which could be an issue in some cases. If you can soften the key edge a bit, aliasing won't be a problem.

Ah, that's where my main concern is: hair. The bulk of the work I intended for a camera would be talking heads against green screen, where aliasing around the hair would likely be very problematic. I wonder, with the right lighting (backlighting and hair light) would these issues be resolved?

[Jon Fairhurst]

Fortunately (or unfortunately), I haven't had to shoot hair over a greenscreen with the 5D2 yet.

[Mike Barber]

Originally Posted by Robert Turchick

I will be testing this out in the following weeks. Wondering how shallow DOF would affect the keying being able to blur the BG and keep really sharp edges on the subject

I'll be very interested to hear your thoughts afterwards, Robert. The ability to pull good keys (and by good, I mean as near flawless as practically possible) is a make/break point for me. If it means investing in more lighting, the price of the cam can justify that... but the key has to be good.

[Robert Turchick]

let me share one secret that I use with my 150 and will use with the T2i...and this works for most of what I do which is an actor talking at the camera not moving...I turn the camera portrait so the actor fills most of the screen. I always shoot progressive. Bigger I can get them in the 16x9 window, better resolution and keyability once I get to post. Then I can flip them back to normal and scale it to my needs. Had to build a mount for my camera to be able to do this but I rarely have to touch the fine adjust parameters in post. Also I have the actor about 8-10 feet in front of the screen so there's not a chance of bleed.

[Mike Barber]

hate to break it to you Robert, but that technique isn't much of a secret. ;-)

I have seen some instances where talent was a good 10-12 feet from the screen but still managed to have some green reflection on the shoulders. They thought distance made backlighting the subject unnecessary; it didn't.

[Robert Turchick]

I knew I wasn't the first. Just wanted to bring it up so more people can produce better quality work!

Don't have time to play too much today but T2i is in my hands and I took this as my 2nd picture...50mm f1.4 on full auto. Can't wait to shoot some vid!

[Jad Meouchy]

Not much you can do about spill but it's easy to manage in the compositing app. I've been using the 550D the last few days on an all-greenscreen shoot and it appears to be holding up very well. I've attached a photo framegrab from the 550D video and then a picture of the behind-the-scenes setting. As you can see, conditions are far from ideal, but the camera doesn't seem to mind!

Robert, from a compositing perspective, I always try to leave extra room around the actors to allow for a little flexibility in post. You can always zoom in on a shot but it's a little difficult to zoom out.

[Bryan McCullough]

Would love to see some finals from these greenscreen shoots.

[Michael Liebergot]

Originally Posted by Jad Meouchy

Not much you can do about spill but it's easy to manage in the compositing app. I've been using the 550D the last few days on an all-greenscreen shoot and it appears to be holding up very well. I've attached a photo framegrab from the 550D video and then a picture of the behind-the-scenes setting. As you can see, conditions are far from ideal, but the camera doesn't seem to mind!

Robert, from a compositing perspective, I always try to leave extra room around the actors to allow for a little flexibility in post. You can always zoom in on a shot but it's a little difficult to zoom out.

Jan interesting lighting.
I take it that since it's such a small space that you didn't light the green screen.
So was your solution to use china balls to light both talent and green screen evenly?

[Jad Meouchy]

Originally Posted by Bryan McCullough

Would love to see some finals from these greenscreen shoots.

Will have a pre-trailer in about 6 weeks with most of the cool shots and backplates.

Originally Posted by Michael Liebergot

Jan interesting lighting.
I take it that since it's such a small space that you didn't light the green screen.
So was your solution to use china balls to light both talent and green screen evenly?

I lit it in such a way to raise the ambient light in the entire room. The greenscreen was at about the same fstop as the subjects, and I added a bunch of kickers as needed to create the environmental highlights for each scene. Above all, the intention was to create even, neutral lighting so that there wouldn't be any changes in exposure when walking around the space. In that regard, the setup did succeed. Low-budget doesn't always mean cheap!

[Robert Turchick]

Originally Posted by Jad Meouchy

Robert, from a compositing perspective, I always try to leave extra room around the actors to allow for a little flexibility in post. You can always zoom in on a shot but it's a little difficult to zoom out.

Most of the stuff I do is just talking heads with no real movement. Just have to watch their hands which can easily get lopped off if they go out of frame. I have the actor hold their arms out to set framing (yes with some wiggle room) and never lost a hand doing that! Only done a few shoots where I needed the actor to move around and of course you have to frame it accordingly.

[Bryan McCullough]

So has anyone shot anything on greenscreen with these cameras yet? I've got a green screen shoot next week and am going to do some tests with the T2i but wanted to see if there's any feedback on the subject yet.