[Alan Lloyd]

Consider also the slightly lower-tech, old-school approach.

Bill had it right with the overhead – or possibly a black (double?) net. And I’d look at the possibility of finding a knowledgeable gaffer/grip and the right sorts of shiny-boards. In other words, hiring a grip truck with just the grip package.

Upsides: no power concerns whatever, adaptability

Downsides: increased cost, more people involved

Just a slightly different thought here.

[Alan Lloyd]

Thanks!

How do you think I built my two kits?

[Alan Lloyd]

the majority of my videos are either interviews or creative shorts that are often shot in homes.

I’d shop carefully, look for used instruments wherever possible, make sure I had at least one softbox, and ideally, have the entire kit be able to run off a single 20-amp circuit. A couple Lowel Omnis, a Rifa perhaps (or a ring and Chimera for one of the Omni heads), maybe a couple Arri 300W Fresnels, and the very useful Lowel L-Lights (take a standard screw base, so you can put a 100W MR-16 or a regular bulb in there) and make sure you don’t skimp on modifiers (blackwrap, scrims, color, diffusion, maybe a good – shielded – dimmer or two) and a “shorty” grip arm.

Also, a couple good 20′-50′ heavy-duty power cords, a collapsible reflector, at least one suspended ceiling clip, a Cardellini or two, and good stands. Oh, and don’t forget spares fro every instrument!

If you buy used, carefully, this is possible. And you’ll learn a lot if you piece your kit together too. Like, what you really use and how useful some things can be and what you wind up not using very often.

[Alan Lloyd]

In fact, it is. A divisional VP, the guy was. Rumpled, shiny, kind of frown-y, and came in with his corporate group – including a very senior marketing person. No makeup – didn’t want any. They just wanted to get the recording done and out with his PPT slides over much of it.

They were the client of my client. I was far enough downstream to not be given a great deal of input.

[Alan Lloyd]

Yeah – OCD to be sure.

The real client piece I fussed more with, of course, and it was over a better background in the bargain.

Using regular tungsten on the greenscreen, I’ve normally put white silk on to spread the beams out and make the lighting on the BG a taste more even. Works well, and I’m generally happy with the results.

Maybe if the edge light on the subject had been just a bit more “butch” the key would have been bang-on right out of the box. And if he’d been willing to take a bit of powder to knock down those forehead pings…

See what you started?

[Alan Lloyd]

Now I’m going to want to go back and mess with a months-old project just to see if I can tweak it even closer.

Thanks Mark, enjoy YOUR weekend!

(truly evil grin)

[Alan Lloyd]

80 IRE is too hot for greenscreen, IMO.

I try to keep it in the 40-50 IRE range as a good compromise between luminance and saturation. At 80 saturation is beginning to fall off.

Here’s an empty greenscreen (with WFM trace) I shot after a client piece a while back:

Note the even WFM trace, side-to-side. The bright narrow line is the luma, the wider one is the chroma saturation. There is a tiny bit of falloff in the corners on the left, not enough to cause any key trouble. And it’s small enough and removed from the subject enough to be maskable in any case.

And here, with a subject in front of it:

Here’s the finished key, using a BG that was not part of the actual client piece, just grabbed for illustration purposes:

That was done using only the chromakeyer in Premiere Pro with a straight DV capture. No additional tricks or manipulation were used.

[Alan Lloyd]

The PD-150 is not a bad camera, presuming it’s still in good working order. (It is several “generations” old by now.)

Experiment with it. See what it does in different situations. Take notes and observe the results. Change one thing at a time.

Do set gain and shutter to manual and leave them there, so they won’t auto-shift on you when conditions change.

And put it on a decent set of legs. It can be a pretty decent camera within its comfort zone.

[Alan Lloyd]

[Matt Andrews] “What I’d really like is to drop the whole lot sequentially on one sequence, ripple edit the clips, lay over the subtitles where needed, add the watermark on top of everything and then export it wherever there is a cut.”

I just don’t see where that’s any less work. Especially since you’ll have to spend time selecting and exporting each segment instead of simply saving a standard format and dropping a new file into the middle, then renumbering it and saving it.

Besides, then you have to wade through the whole thing to fix something, rather than simply load and fix the offending file.

[Alan Lloyd]

Not sure if that exists, though I’d wonder about anything textured giving a clean key.