EX1 & Green Screen

[Joel Brooks]

What would be an overall great camera setting to use the EX1 for chroma key work? Frame rates, bitrate, etc....

Thanks for any suggestions.

Joel Brooks
Moments in Time

[Ned Soltz]

Definitely shoot progressive, not interlaced. I would personally shoot 1080p.

[Noah Kadner]

1080/24p at XDCAM EX. Bottom line with shooting green screen is proper lighting. Get that right and even DV can be properly keyed.

Green Screen Lighting

BlueSky - Lighting examples-Green Screen

Well you also of course need a good keyer in post- sometimes this means plugins. I get a lot of love with DV Garage and also G-Nicer.

dvGarage - Training and Tools for the Next Generation

Nattress: Film Effects: G Nicer 4:1:1

Assuming you're on Mac of course.

Also, Ultimatte if you can afford it:

http://www.ultimatte.com/

-Noah

[Sean Seah]

My First Chromakey Attempt on Vimeo

This is wat I shot at home with simple equipment. setting was 720-50p. Held out quite well to my liking. If I had proper lighting I think it would be even better. The green screen caused me USD11 or so. It was edited in Vegas.

[Alister Chapman]

Basically as has been said above. Shoot progressive, turn the detail down or off (gives smother edges) and light it well. Use a subtle backlight to add separation between the foreground and background. The background should be uniformly lit with a luminance level somewhere between 60 and 75 ire. for a head and shoulders shot I normally use a pair of Arri 650's on full flood to light the background with some green or blue (for blue screen) gels. Try to keep the background lights to the rear of the subject to minimise spill. The gels help prevent low saturation highlights. Then I light the subject with a soft key light (Arri 300 with soft box or 4 tube fluorescent), a further Arri 300 or Arri 150 as fill and another 150 as backlight. Get as much distance as you can between the subject and background so you can throw the background as far out of focus as possible to smooth out any creases, marks or other flaws.

[Dean Sensui]

Here's an example:

http://www.hawaiigoesfishing.com/vid...t_2009_psa.mov

Cine 4 setting used.

Two lights on an EEFX.com green screen. Exposed at 50 IRE.

One light on the subject.

No backlight

Detail turned off.

Primatte used for keying.

[Alister Chapman]

Good clean keying Dean 10/10 :)

[Dean Sensui]

Thanks, Alister.

Here's another sample.

http://www.hawaiigoesfishing.com/vid...erey_intro.mov

Note Cindy's hair.

Same setup. Two lights to illuminate the green screen. The keylight had a slight diffusion to simulate the slightly diffused sunlight due to the volcanic haze that's dominating the skies in Kailua-Kona lately.

By the way, these are all shot at 1080p30.

[Alister Chapman]

I applaud your use of single point lighting. Looks so much more natural than my old school setup. Had a very long discussion with a good DP on the way home from a shoot about the need to use fewer lights to get a more natural look. Many of my clients like to have shots that deliberately look "lit", which makes them un-natural. With camera like the EX capable of producing natural, un-processed images a like the lit look less and less.

[Dean Sensui]

I'm trying for as much realism as possible, making it look like it was shot in the field.

One of the typical comments I've had here from other professionals who are in the business said they were wondering how we shot it to make it look so good. They thought it was in the field and we brought a reflector or supplementary lighting, etc.

In some of the early morning "standups", I faced a problem where the light matched the background yet things didn't look right. Wasn't the direction, quality or quantity of light. After pondering it for a few minutes I realized it was a matter of the color of the shadows.

With early morning light from a cloudless sky, the light source can be somewhat warm. But it's warm compared to the color of the shadows which are being filled by that big blue sky. To simulate that, I placed a large blue reflector opposite of the key light and the end result was a lot more realistic.

[Charles Papert]

Dean's approach is a good one, I think. For years the look of a keyed stand-up has been linked with studio lighting and strong backlight and I'm not really sure why that has to be the case. There isn't a technical need for backlight when keying, in fact it will make it harder sometimes to key out hair as you can really see the edges get crispy. Of course you have to watch for green contamination on your subject, but that's why it's important to have a big enough backing to be able to move your subject far enough away to avoid this when possible, and also have a good set of keying tools. Consider all of the CGI shots that we don't notice in movies--the main trick is that the lighting matches the background as completely as possible.

If I need to match a foreground element to be keyed into a daylight scene, I'd rather opt to shoot the foreground outside, adding whatever lighting I would have if we were shooting the whole thing practically. Even the sound will be more accurate as long as you are in the right environment (freeway traffic might spoil the effect of Dean's video!) Otherwise if I had to create a daylight look in the studio, I'd want to have a large overhead bounce for sky blue ambience.

When I made a little short last year that required a couple of greenscreen elements, I had barely enough to make it work (my girlfriend and I made the film together and one of her trips to the garment district to find wardrobe I asked her to bring back a hunk of bright green material, which she did--it was just barely big enough to cover her for the required shots). For the "Fargo" shot, it was much easier and more effective to shoot in my yard--I waited until late afternoon when we were in shadow and the light closely matched the Minnesota "gloom". No additional lighting required, and a near-perfect match (plus judicious color correction). The "When Harry Met Sally" clip required an bright 80's rom-com look with a fat backlight, while "Office Space" was somewhat flat and desaturated to match the source material. The rest of the clips are practical. I should point out that I am just above hack level when it comes to keying but I was happy enough with the results with this film.

[Bill Ward]

What a fun short!

Nicely done...especially the Benny Hill-esque continuity issue with the croissant and the coffee.

[Dean Sensui]

That was fun stuff, Charles.

You managed to match the look quite nicely throughout! Best of all, although I watched it for technical reasons, I found myself enjoying the story even more.

[Michael Maier]

Originally Posted by Noah Kadner

1080/24p at XDCAM EX. Bottom line with shooting green screen is proper lighting. Get that right and even DV can be properly keyed.

Green Screen Lighting

BlueSky - Lighting examples-Green Screen

Well you also of course need a good keyer in post- sometimes this means plugins. I get a lot of love with DV Garage and also G-Nicer.

dvGarage - Training and Tools for the Next Generation

Nattress: Film Effects: G Nicer 4:1:1

Assuming you're on Mac of course.

Also, Ultimatte if you can afford it:

http://www.ultimatte.com/

-Noah

All those are good keyers, but for the price, especially when compared to Ultimate, you can't go wrong with Shake. The keyers are great and you get so much more with the package on the top of that.

[Wes Thomas Greene]

Originally Posted by Dean Sensui

Thanks, Alister.

Here's another sample.

http://www.hawaiigoesfishing.com/vid...erey_intro.mov

Note Cindy's hair.

Same setup. Two lights to illuminate the green screen. The keylight had a slight diffusion to simulate the slightly diffused sunlight due to the volcanic haze that's dominating the skies in Kailua-Kona lately.

By the way, these are all shot at 1080p30.

Hi Dean,

Great natural looking key - could you provide more info on your lighting set-ups in the studio and out in the field???

cheers