green screen backdrops for corporates

[Mark Suszko]

One of the “tricks” that goes with what Alan is doing, is to make one version much more blurred and magnified than the other; you swap that BG in when your green screen cuts to a tighter shot. The natural depth of field illusion sort of insists on it, and if the background always stayed sharp, it would look more fake. We had a talk show set made with a sort of duratrans backdrop window, ands I sent the first version back to the photo printer because it was too sharp. people look at the set in real life and notice the blur immediately and comment on it… then comment AGAIN when they see the TV monitor with them in the shot. THEN they get it:-)

[Joanne Braithwaite]

So Mark, if I find a stock photo and want to use just a small portion of it, I’m assuming that, as I push into the photo, it will naturally lose some of its sharpness.

Do you know whether that looks like a depth of field thing (good and desirable) or if it looks like a pixilated thing (bad and inappropriate)?

Or could there be a third option – I push into the photo, it loses some of its sharpness (so far, so good), it looks pixilated (not good) but then I soften all the edges and voila, it I’ve got depth of field. Pixilation is softened and it looks like the on-camera person is actually sitting in that room.

Am I on the right track?

I don’t want to use any virtual sets – they’d have to be real photos. And although I’m happy to start shooting my own photos, it’s going to take some time to build up a collection, so stock photos will have to do for a while.

[Mark Suszko]

Yup.

[Alan Lloyd]

I use simple Gaussian blurring in Photoshop.

The biggest pain in the pix I put up was doing the ladder shadow.

My client was happy with the results, though.

[Joanne Braithwaite]

I’m thinking that, if I am using real photos instead of virtual sets, I can just knock the whole thing out of focus. Is that correct?

Thanks!

[Alan Lloyd]

You can. Photoshop is your friend.

(I’d shoot the original plate sharp, you just never know and varying degrees of defocus are easy to do!)

[Joanne Braithwaite]

Thanks! Now all I have to do is find the appropriate photos… onwards!