Gels? NLE? or in-camera?

[Brian Luce]

I need a shot wherein the skin tones are pale bluish -- something like the ghost look from Japanese ghost movies. What are the pros and cons of using gels, NLE, or in camera settting to achieve such an effect? One variable is the subject will be against a green screen, I don't know if that creates potential problems should I use a blue gel. I guess it might if it starts washing out the greenscreen with blue spill. As far as post, it's a 24mb/sec AVCHD codec, not some heavy duty Avid bomb proof container.

[Alex Pineyro]

I think the biggest drawback of doing it while shooting is that if it doesn´t look right, you will have to re-shoot it again.

I have no experience here about your avchd or greenscreen dilemmas. Just using common sense.

Cheers!

Alex

[Les Wilson]

Test shots are of great value. One idea is to light with tungsten, white balance for tungsten, then change the key or fill or both to daylight balanced lights. Another thought is to use makeup.

[Martin Catt]

Experiment. Shoot some footage and play with it. It's not like it costs you anything except time.

White balance on a pink card and see what the end result looks like. Shoot normal and hack on the footage with the 3-way color corrector. You might (and probably WILL) discover a lot of useful information along the way.

Just my opinion. I see too many people looking for a canned solution when a half-hour's playing with 60 seconds of video footage would give them an answer.

Martin

[Ken Plotin]

Brian
In your case, I would shoot a clean key first. That way, the screen will not be contaminated by any other color variable. CCing in the NLE will give you the flexibility to fine tune the subject element to your chosen BG image. An "off color" green screen can be tougher to key out, as you have indicated.

Hope this helps.
Ken

[Brian Luce]

Originally Posted by Ken Plotin

In your case, I would shoot a clean key first. That way, the screen will not be contaminated by any other color variable. CCing in the NLE will give you the flexibility to fine tune the subject element to your chosen BG image. An "off color" green screen can be tougher to key out, as you have indicated.

This seems like the best way to go, providing the most possible options.

Experimenting around is great, but it'd take a lot more than 30 minutes to test all this out. That's one reason we use these forums, to short circuit the trial and error process and access information more quickly.