Lighting our new and larger green screen

[Mark Suszko]

Curious why you didn’t go ahead and make a 90 degree corner while you were building this?

[Laurens De groot]

Hi Mark,

The setup already is bigger than what we need atm, so didn’t see the benefits.
One correction, I’ve leaned that we don’t want the GamFloor, but we going to use the more permanent Vinyl floor from rosco.

Perhaps a side question, but what about lighting vertically? So lights left and right from the green screen in an angle of 45 degrees inwards.

[Mark Suszko]

The benefit of the corner/side is the ability to do dolly and jib moves around three sides of an object/set/talent, and use multiple camera angles that match, without resorting to complicated rotating platforms.

[Bill Davis]

I’ve come to believe that the success or failure of any greenscreen setup is less about perfection than it used to be and much more about balance. Today’s cameras are WAY more sensitive than cameras of even a few years ago. So lighting a modern greenscreen as you would have a TV station “weatherman” green screen is silly.

Yes, you want “even” lighting. But if you get fall off on the sides or an uneven field in part of the shot, you can often just use a garbage matte to fix that.

So now, I look at these things. A) How good is the camera. Or, what’s the lighting I need to use in order to get my shot properly exposed for THIS camera. B) what’s the subject? If it’s a single person just need to make the GS as even as possible AROUND the subject, and I don’t sweat the sides or any area where I can use a matte.) Related to that is: C) Is the subject going to move? And D) Can I get by with less light overall, so that I can keep electricity and HVAC costs down.

The balance thing is that if I can light my subject with lower levels and still get a clean, noise free exposure, then I can use less light on the GS and avoid too much reflective spill. Win/win.

Basically, you might have shots where two Fluors on stands flanking but behind a standup subject is ALL you need to pull a great key. But for wider multiple subject shots, you’ll need 5 lights flown in an arc.

BTW, if you paint the wall properly, I’d forget about using green tubes. I’d rather have pure white light spilling on the talent if they happen to walk into a direct line to the tubes, rather than green. But that’s all about the angle of the lights and the depth of the stage.

Good luck.

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[Laurens De groot]

Hi Mark,

As we haven’t painted it yet, we can also attach a side wall as I am liking your idea.
I was thinking of the following:

Regarding the lighting, the main subject. I’m thinking in lowering the hight of the lights as I want one row of lights from top to bottom (curve). Would you say that a Kino Flo 4 or 2 Bank-Fixture would be able to go from 4.5m to ground? In an angle of 45 degrees and have an even light?

[Laurens De groot]

Thanks Bill for the remark of the Green Tubes, I’ve read contradicting things on this subject, but am stepping away from the Green tubes as we are using the Rosco Ultimatte Green paint which should be good to start with.

Regarding to the difference in a one or multiple person setup, I understand this, only light for what you need. But I need to be able to light the whole setup, hence the question.

I am not sure how fast this light type falls off. I do understand that we need to be approx. 50% of the hight of the wall in distance. So a 4.5m high wall setup would result in a light hanging approx. 2.25m away in an angle of 45 degrees downwards.

My new questions remains, for an evenly flow, using a kino or similar, could I hang a X-number of them side-by-side and light 4.5m to the ground?

[Mark Suszko]

Regarding your mock-up image of the second side wall, looks good to me, but be sure before you build it on that side, that you’re ok with the fire marshal and fire codes, regarding that exit door near the corner (now obscured by the second wall on that side)

[Craig Alan]

You can’t have a big enough CYC. Make it as wide as you can afford. We often shoot into the depth of where the corner is. I’ve seen several 3 wall CYC set ups where the sound is ruined due to the parallel walls. So avoid that. We use banks of LEDs to a lighting board to flood it evenly with green or any b.g. color. The wall is painted a flat white. It functions as giant projection screen as well for gobos and the like. We use diffusion on the LED banks to even out the spread.

But Bill is right there is spill in front of the CYC so you need enough room to place your talent away from the spill. That is only true for keying however. Other times we put the talent in the spill if we are just creating an atmosphere like sunset. And in another thread someone questioned the limitations of using a CYC as opposed to being able to bring in sets.
That’s why I like white or other colors. Its just a matt white wall so it can be an office, living room etc. With LEDs you can dial in the color.

Bill is also right that keying has gotten so much easier to pull off.

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