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shooting greenscreen…troubleshooting with video…
hello, i’m embarking on a green screen shoot, i don’t if exact camera information is necessarily an area of expertise here, but i wanted to make sure that i can ensure myself (as much as possible) the least hectic/agonizing composite job.
i’ll be shooting with two cameras the XL-1 and the DVX-100. both will be shooting at 29.97 fps, and i while i know that either of these cameras don’t have the best resolution, i wanted to know that if i could count on my lighting being pretty exact (even, no spill), if i will have any problems with keying stuff out in post? Is it in an issue of interlaced frames that makes a camera with higher-resolution more green-screen-friendly?anyways, if anyone has any tips for the shoot that will make my life easier in post, i’d greatly appreciate it.
hope all is well,ignacio
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9 Replies
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Hi Ignatio,
Is there any particular reason your shooting with green rather than blue screens? blue is generaly accepted as giving better results with video. Since you’re shooting on DV which is far from ideal (because of the 4:1:1 colour compression) you’ll really want to get the DVmatte keyer from DVgarage to get the best possible results. DVmatte has been designed from the ground up to work with DV material. Dv matte can be purchased for AE or FCP.
Apart from that, its the usual green/bluescreen rules, which I gather from your post you are, at least, reasonably well aquainted with
HTH
Angus
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Hold the phone! My research indicates that green is best for video and blue for photography. I recal something about the sensors in video cameras being more (or was it less?) sensitive to green.
I recently shot the same scene with both a blue and green background. The blue was easier to key, but the forground item was a yellow LEGO creation. The green spill from the reflection on the shiny plastic bricks on the yellow foreground was nearly impossible to key sharp. This due to the closeness of yellow and green in the color spectrum. With a blue background is was easier.
I was lead to believe that when dealing with an organic foreground green was the color of choice. (Unless the organism is a green Martian.)
HELP!
-Skye Sweeney
FLL Freak Productions
https://www.fll-freak.com -
I think Skye is on to something here!
The background used, whether blue, green or even red, is usually determined by the subject matter. I recently did some compositing where the videographer shot everything in front of a green screen. Blue would have really been better on the brown and yellow turkey puppet. Because this was shot with a HDCam and edited on smoke’s big brother fire, the Master Keyer was able to pull the key with a few added garbage masks. But a blue screen would have involved seconds rather than some long minutes. So find out what the talent/subject is wearing and get a background that doesn’t have any of those colors in it.
This doesn’t address the lesser resolution of DV but if you do a good separation and a slightly heavier back light as you said you would then the keying should be OK.
My 5 cents (adjusted for inflation).
Del -
i’ll be shooting two dancers that are wearing pretty elaborate costumes (no green in them). they’re each in full body paint as well. one white, one blue (that’s why i didn’t want to do a blue screen). That dvgarage plugin seems great, i also have the foundry’s keylight plugin for ae. part of the the costume has yellow in it however. in terms of the lighting, if i can count a flat even light around the subject will this yellow still key out with the green? or is it only a matter of spill?
thanks for all your input.
ignacio
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i feared i was being idealistic thinking i could just run keylight over it and proceed. what exactly is dv’s “artifacting”, it’s too late for me to use a different camera at this point, but i would like to understand all the limitations and downfalls. thanks for your time,
ignacio
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Hello Dave,
After following this thread, I thought that I might add here that the Boris Keyer (for those with BorisFX) is a great keyer when working with DV25 files. Somehow, the algorithm they are using seems to understand DV and works accordingly (though no DV-based keyer is going to be perfect). At least that’s been my experience.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
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One more point…if you have dancers moving around you will probably want to use a manual iris setting versus any easy mode setup in the camera.
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is an NLE sequence and exporting it out to quicktime to AE by REFERENCE something that i would be able to do from final cut’s export using quicktime conversion? thanks for all the info by the way.
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learning costs much! do any cuts count as a transition? indeed, there will be many jump cuts, very quickly, so i fear i would have to piece these together in ae. thanks for the info…
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