green screen backdrops for corporates

[Noah Kadner]

I can’t recommend Chromaflex aka Holoset highly enough. It looks a little expensive upfront but what it will save you in terms of not needing to light your screens perfectly and not spending decades saving bad composites in post will pay for itself on your first gig. Also your clients will love that you spend only 10 minutes setting up a keying shot and not two hours.

https://store.virtualsetworks.com/detail.aspx?ID=1102

Otherwise if you simply google for greenscreen you’ll find a host of standard options.

Noah

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[Joanne Braithwaite]

Thanks for that, Noah! I’ve bookmarked the page.

What I really need at the moment, though, is the video backdrop that you’d see in the final video. The last time I worked with green screen was on a tv series and the production house took care of providing whatever we needed to make it happen, but now I have my own company and have to figure out where it all comes from.

I’ve found lots of great backgrounds for still photographers and a few for videographers on google but would appreciate some recommendations. I’m imagining a DVD with video of nice looking board rooms, cool office spaces, etc. The kind of place I’d shoot clients in their own offices for corporates but without having to travel to their offices (and maybe their offices suck, either visually or because they’re right beside train tracks).

Thanks!

[Chris Tompkins]

Have u cruz’d the stock photog sites?
Istock photo etc…

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta

[Alan Lloyd]

Get a decent digital SLR and grab several different shots of every nice setting you see if you even think it might make a decent backdrop. Card space is cheap.

And manipulate them in Photoshop so they are not perfectly sharp. Softening them and placing accent lighting with filters does wonders for such things – or stock photos you might use, as suggested above.

[Stephen Smith]

iStock Photo has worked great for me. I’ve also gotten some backgrounds with a DSLR.

Stephen Smith
Utah Video Productions

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[Mark Suszko]

A google search will turn up many synthetic background sources. However, a lot of these, to my eye, look like they were made by wannabe game designers who were playing with making new DOOM maps and levels. That is to say, unrealistic and abstract, versus highly realistic.

If you go to newteks’ video toaster pages, I think there are links to sources they suggest for additional chromakey background element vendors. but you definitely get what you pay for, and not more, usually less, with a lot of these places.

Another place to try is Turbosquid; get a high-end architectural model of a room and render out the plates you need.

[Joanne Braithwaite]

Thanks, everyone!

Joanne

[Alan Lloyd]

Just to amplify – if you use a stock backdrop (the one here came from Adobe Ultra) you can mess with it in Photoshop.

This is from the “Library” set:

It’s overly detailed and kind of bright, rather distracting for a background.

Here is the result of a very brief bit of experimentation:

Darkened, defocused, a bit of accent lighting and some shadows added.

Just an illustrative example – I’m sure there are far better Photoshoppers out there ready to pounce and thrash it.

[Joanne Braithwaite]

Hi Alan,

That’s the sort of thing I’m looking for! That shot looks like a virtual set and I’m hoping to find similar sorts of shots but real photos. A lot of what I’ve found doesn’t look like the sort of background you’d have behind a talking head. I’d like to find a boardroom, a brick-walled loft, that sort of thing.

Thanks!

[Alan Lloyd]

It is – it’s from Adobe Ultra’s virtual sets. Did the “treatment” for a client’s use.

There are places all around with good “texture” for your purposes. Just find ’em and shoot some stills. The defocusing and lighting I did to make the detail in there less distracting when someone’s keyed over it.