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Blue Screened Backgrounds
Hi,
I am currently in pre-production for my next film. Basically I am looking to shoot my exteriors inside my school’s sound stage. I want to have a very large Farm Yard set, that is somewhat magical in a Wizard of Oz way. I considered doing painted backgrounds, but it would cost too much money to make murals for the set. So, I want to blue screen the background. I want this set to be very large and I want to do very long tracking shots. Now, I have been looking into motion tracking and tracking markers, but I am still unsure on many things.
I do not want to create a CGI 3d world, I will have the set designed with props and things like that, it is just the background. I would want this blue screen to cover 3 large walls. Now, If i am tracking, how will I put in the background? Should I have a very large high quality still image and do tracking on it, or should I have a video file? Should I have a blue screen that CURVES around the whole set?
If you have any information to help me it would be greatly appreciated.
Mike
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5 Replies
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First I would use a green screen. If your subjects will be walking on the screen, you should use curves like you said. If you’ve never done chromakeying before, I would read up on it first. Lighting, camera angle, camera distance and lighting and lighting are very important in making a convincing key. After Effects 7 and up I believe has Keylight which does a great job as long as the screen is lit evenly and there are minimal shadows. Here’s youtube link of a video I did and won a national CMT green screen contest with. I used Ultra and Vegas, not After Effects. I think I could have done it better with AF now that I’ve played with it a little.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4Eb0xhzslM
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Oh yea, You can use video or hi rez pics as your background.
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this website is very good for green screen tips and checklists.
https://generalspecialist.com/2006/10/greenscreen-and-bluescreen-checklist.asp
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Howdy Mike,
Okay find the largest TV screens you can find and… just kidding
If you’re dealing with a flat surface, then blue screen and add tape markers strategically around the screen. I’ve done this in the past (on green screen) when I’ve had to use camera movements (to simulate handheld or dolly). The set was not 3D – actually had props and such on the set, much like your production – just needed a background. Put the tape in spots where actors won’t cover up often but the camera will see, that way it will be easier to track and roto out later.
Now if you’ve got curves in your screen, you might be in trouble and need to do some 3D compositing, but you can probably get by with the above method if you have a two or multi camera set-up (though it might be more tracking and chroma-keying than you initially wanted).
Also… try compositing the background layer far back in z-space and add a camera in AE… makes for a little more believable background than one that’s just sitting right up there with the actor.
But please experiment before you do this so you can see where your problem spots are going to be and how much work you’re looking at doing – if you’re doing this all yourself, it’s going to be ALOT of work.
Hope this helps
Mike Browning
Vision Quest Media -
Think about using high rez stills from a stock house or shot yourself for free at a farm, and doing 2.5D compositing of the flat images in 3-d space. You get to tweak their relative depth and perspective and scale this way, and move them globally to simulate tracking shots later, without as much 3D cgi rendering drama. Could be photorealistic or abstract, up to you and how many layers deep you go.
If you look at Rodriguez’ chromakey work and shots for Sky Captain or whatever that recent retro SF movie was, and the recent French SF “Renaissance” one done all in B&W, the actual green walls are small generally, just big enough to be seen around the actor’s bodies,the rest is masked in post, and the neat thing about it is, you may not need three large walls worth of screen, just use a rotating platform or have the actors turn their bodies, and you get the same effect as if you had the camera on a long curved dolly track. You also save a lot of tiome changing and movong lights for more setups. Use one setup in multiple angles, with subtle light shifts to sell the change in angles. The oldsters will remember Fankie and Annette on that slow treadmill against the rear projected beach scenes…:-)
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