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ASAP-Please advise me on lighting, you need to be fond of post production tricks

C

Claude

Hi guys, what's going is that in A COUPLE of days I will have a shoot as follows:

Premise:

One actor doing his thing in front of a green screen that is placed outside, in a garden.
This footage is to be taken and replaced on the face of a building, as if I can see him, through the window, doing his thing in one of the apartments in that building.
In the final scene, the timing is night-time, so imagine seeing inside apartments at night, that's the result we're looking for in terms of lighting and composition. Also a good idea to keep in mind that..on a 1920x1080 picture, the actors would fill up ~100pixels in height, so it's an extreme wide shot in that sense.

Possible pull-offs:

1 - We actually shoot the green screen at night, lit as best as possible by myself, not having much experience to improve the set lighting, but having an understanding of what I need to get the good results for that green screen. (don't forget, green screen is placed outside, we do this in the garden for space). This pull-off gives me the advantage of actual artificial light to simulate the apartment, but the disadvantage of messing it up entirely as I can't know all the variables in advance, and there isn't time to test things out and see how they turn out to work, and the advantages I am mentioning are only advantages I presume and believe to be following reason (questionable reason that is).

and 2 - We shoot the green screen towards sunset, in non-direct sunlight, we get much more even lighting for better results in keying and the advantage of not needing lights at all in the end. The problem with this one is that I don't know how this would grade for the needs of the final scene, making the actors look like they are lit by the lighting in an apartment, whereas the original footage is (indirectly, in the shadow) sunlit.

I hope I could make you get the picture right, as I need to know what you guys advise me to do? 1 or 2?
 
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Shooting during magic hour is going to help you with the chroma key as you'll get very even, diffused light. You can often get most of the benefits while shooting while overcast or with a big (what's it called?) diffusion sail?

As for the grade, you shift the color from what you have to what you need. If you need more direct light so you can match the scene, then bring that light in and use a gel to ensure you have the same color otherwise your grader will hate you (or love you if you're paying by the hour).

You're best option is for you to talk to your compositor. They'll ask you the appropriate questions and guide you in the right direction.

Good luck with your shoot.
 
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Thank you very much Sweetie, I am my compositor and colorist though. I haven't done compositing before (well only in photography) - but I feel I get a grasp of how things are done in the VFX world in general, I have watched hundreds of GB of VFX tutorials so far, precisely for this reason.

"As for the grade, you shift the color from what you have to what you need." - BUT are you sure it's so easy? This is the whole reason I started this thread. Would it feel natural to take two so different mediums and put them together and still be able to pull it off naturally?

SkyCopeland, I am doing it outside because I need space to work with, if not, I have to rent a BIG studio apartment (hum-hum, in Paris), and once you go by the philosophy that "it"s ok to rent" and you start renting x, and y, and z...well, the wallet thins down pretty damn fast. And that wallet is noone else's but mine. Speaking about this, I actually tried renting, and the moment the guys found out it's for a shoot, they sky-rocketed the prices as if filmmakers have nothing but milk and honey.
 
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This is a complicated question, mostly because, as you stated yourself, you lack experience. Shooting green screen is complex by itself, but trying to pass on a decade of cinematography knowledge in a single post is even more difficult. My advice to you is simple: Hire a cinematographer who has experience shooting green screen and hire a VFX supervisor who knows how to do what you need done and let them do the hard work. Otherwise I would suggest you spend about 2 months practicing lighting, shooting, editing and compositing green screen shots so you at least have somewhat of an idea of how to pull off what you want. Hiring people costs money, yes. But they know what they're doing and that will save you massive amounts of time and headaches in the end.
 
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I am my compositor and colorist though
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No disrespect, but no, you're not. You're doing the task, but if you're asking these questions, you're not those people.

"As for the grade, you shift the color from what you have to what you need." - BUT are you sure it's so easy? This is the whole reason I started this thread. Would it feel natural to take two so different mediums and put them together and still be able to pull it off naturally?
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"It's easy" has an assumption that you know what you're doing and everyone does their job right. Color grading isn't difficult. There are particular skills you need to learn, pieces of equipment and environment issues that are necessary to get yourself to a starting point. If you have a question about any of these topics, then no, matching may not be an easy task for you.

It's still easy, but you don't know what to do, you're going to be trying to learn without a teacher. Just like driving a car is easy, but not if you've never done it before. It's even more daunting if you don't have an instructor. Just a perspective.

That all being said, even the professionals get it wrong (as you see time and time again on TV).

My suggestion is to find someone in your local area who is willing to teach you. Alternatively, test, test, test before you go to shoot. Test, even if you get that teacher. That way you've ironed out all the kinks before you're wasting the time of the talent and crew.

what's going is that in A COUPLE of days
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Oh, that's right. Yeah, you're underprepared. You're going to have to hope for the best and cross your fingers that you don't screw it up too much. Don't feel too bad about it. I screwed up pretty bad on my first Sci-Fi green screen gig.

Just remember, you can fix almost everything in post production - Given sufficient resources (skills and time - without either of those, you better have lots of money available).

You always have reshoots as an option.
 
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Are there not green screen stages in Paris that have it completely pre-painted? I can't imagine the price is too high for one day.

The public library near me has it free to residents lol. Do you guys have major libraries in Paris?
 
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Green Screen 101:

Shoot your background plates first, then light your actors on the green screen to match
Lit the green screen as evenly as possible, with enough exposure on it to get you a nice key (there's a point you should get it to sit on the WFM monitor; I'm going to assume you won't have a WFM monitor).
Have a large distance between the screen and the actor so as to avoid spill. Light your actor according to match the background plate.

What are you shooting on? It's going to be much easier to key, composite and colour on a raw camera versus a DSLR.

You could shoot your actor with totally flat lighting in addition to your green screen, but I personally wouldn't shoot it that way (even though my colourist can essentially re-light scenes I shoot)
 
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jax_rox said:
(even though my colourist can essentially re-light scenes I shoot)
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This is very encouraging.

Shooting on BMCC jax, raw.
Sweetie, thanks again for chiming in, I did not say I am professional a colorist and compositor, no need to contradict an inexistent statement. I said I am MY colorist and compositor which is ireffutably true. Also, you are making a lot of assumptions on my being prepared enough or not. Also knuckles I do have an idea of how to pull it off, merely looking for other people's thoughts on the shoot. So, back to cinematography, my initial dilemma was lighting though, I have been asking all these questions to figure out which way to go in order to get the widest leeway possible in post, and it all depends on this lighting.

Guys, some solid advice however so thank you very much, I'll keep it in mind. Jax, after this discussion, I am actually aiming for as flat as possible, gives me the desired leeway both for re-lighting and different compositions.
So the way I'll do it is I'll set the green screen in front of the sunset in the end, or at least, a little bit to the side for better edges on talent.

Generally, if it's possible, I'll do it, by trying and succeeding/failing myself, in which case I will hire somebody else to do it. What's most likely going to happen in this particular scenario is I'll do 80% of it and get somebody to fine tune the rest, but this is not set in stone.

I'll keep you posted on progress and thanks again guys, but it will take about a month as there's other production stuff needed to be taken care of alongside.
 
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Claude said:
This is very encouraging.
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Keep in mind that basically re-lighting scenes the way colourists can do is not necessarily simple. I find it difficult to get those sorts of results when I'm grading my own work - but I light the way I want it to look so I don't need to spend time and money 're-lighting' in post. My colourist can do it because they are a professional and their full time job is colour.

I can't do it because I'm not a colourist - I'm a Cinematographer, and whilst I have enough knowledge to be able to do basic grades that I'm quite happy with on my own work, I cannot get down to those minuite details.
 
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UPDATE: Shooting was a wrap, it went well overall. Definitely have all the footage I need. I said overall because the green screen area (2.8m by 3m) was a little bit too small for the needs, therefore about 25% of the footage is outside of the green screen area and will have to be rotoscoped.

As for lighting, we placed everything in the shadow at sunset, there was no direct light and everything came out EVEN and homogenous

As for testing the footage, I am waiting to get a new computer soon so all I did was some Photoshop tests. These photoshop tests confirmed the footage is good to go, albeit in some few circumstances (roughly 20% of the footage), we will need to do what jax mentioned above, re-light it. Not much however, more like, "down-light" from torso downwards "gradiently" - hope the idea comes across.

As for me doing VFX, I need to learn how to switch from green screen into rotoscoping during the same footage (when talent goes out of the screen area) and basically play a lot with fine-tuning details along the way. I guess in summary, I am very lucky the "product" is not pretentious to extremely fine tweaks which would, implicitly, require the fine experience of dedicated people in the particular field.

On a last note, I am all for supporting the role of colorists and VFX people, but in this case it means hiring dedicated people for the job with money I don't have (voluntary work, a.k.a slavery in modern terms) - therefore the better option is to do it myself as far as I can rather than helping at the bad habit of unpaid work for VFX artists and Digital Colorists.
 
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