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Green screen lighting
Someone recently posted a question here in this forum about what lights should they use for greenscreen work and someone replied with an assortment of Kino Flos 4 banks and 2 banks – a total of four or more lights for the shoot. Well I wanted to take that posters advice but all the rental houses in my area don’t carry Kino’s. So what should be my plan “B”? i have a 10×20 Chroma Key Green Muslin backdrops.
The only soft light that I own is 1 Lightpanel LED 1×1 which I would obviously need more to light a green screen. Would setting up a large butterfly with silk on both side of the screen work with something like a 1K or lose the butterfly and aim the lights right at the screen getting an even spread of light? I am thinking 1k Arri’s for the screen and a softer light for the talent and rim.
Side Note:
Also I do fashion photography as well. Can I get away with using my large softboxes that I would normally use for flash photography with video by turning on the modeling light on the strobe heads? (This is a general question and not meant to think I would use them for green screen work.)Thanks
Cre8tive Minds Entertainment, LLC
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2 Replies
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Is this for a permanent (or semi) installation?
You can go the ultra cheap route and hit Home Depot or Lowes and in their lighting department pick up a few 4′ fluorescent shop light fixtures… about $15 each. Real photo purists might laugh at you, but they DO work, and work well for softly lighting bit flat areas such as a greenscreen backdrop. Modern electronic ballasts no longer flicker and they work just fine. The most issue with that might be if you are shooting real film and don’t have a variable shutter you might get a little bit of phasing that lasts over several seconds, but it will really not be discernible. If you are shooting video, there were probably be no worries. If there are, and you can shoot in a clearscan mode with a 1/60.1 shutter (60.1HZ) that will solve that as well. You can tube them with the regular flo tubes from the store. Now, those tubes will probably have a green spike to them, but since you are using them only to illuminate the greenscreen, that’s no issue.
Not pretty, but it does work. And is dirt cheap.
As for your strobe softboxes, I’ve never seen any strobe modeling lights that were anywhere near bright enough to use for motion photography work, whether it be film or video. Now, you can probably use the softboxes themselves, just with different instruments in them. I say probably because some softboxes are made for strobes only and are not built to withstand the heat from continuous lighting… but most are. Check the manufacturer’s specs on whatever boxes you have. If they won’t stand up to the heat from tungsten heads, they certainly would be fine with flo instruments in them.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Todd’s solution is the best way to go. But you can also try bouncing the 1k’s off of a white reflector board on to the green. The issues that arise include the forest of grip gear that will start to accumulatea ’round the edges of the set… the ik’s the reflectors, then some stands and cutters to direct the light… you might not have room for all of it.
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