Using Digital effects in Indie productions

If you gel, I'd stay away from blue or yellow especially together because it'll make green.

Purple/magenta is opposite green and would actually make for a cleaner key off you want color.

Color is easily added in post too.
 
Hey Escher,
Here's how I do it, it's not the best, but it might be the cheapest and easiest.
Get 2 of the 4ft long Home Depot (oh that dreaded name) flos. Then get some Home Depot mop handle holders, bolt two of the handle holders to each fixture, your fixtures will now clamp securely and professionally to cheap light stands (I used off brand Chinese ebay stands and they've worked well for years). Then get a roll of black cinema foil (this will mitigate some of the inherent shame of using Home Depot fixtures) and spray paint one side metallic silver (back to feeling shamed) and with a couple of magnets, you now have a barndoors for the flos. This set up will give a big flat swath of light for the screen with not much light spilling on the subject so you can light them separately. It won't use much juice so your set won't turn into a pizza oven.

Then, as others have said, try and get the subject around 8 feet from the screen to minimize spillage and also, if possible, backlight the subject, that will also wash away some spill. Supposedly an orange gel works best -- not sure why.

And if you plan any camera movement, put some motion trackers on the screen.

Dunno what software you use, but generally the keyers built in to NLE aren't the greatest. Look for a good plug in or stand alone like AE.
 
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For the record, and to assuage Brian's shame... Every piece of kit on big budget Hollywood sets started with a home depot type of solution to an immediate problem on set, then got manufactured and over priced. There's no shame in DIY, only pride - especially if you take the time to have solid manufacturing and give your projects a little polish at the end as well.
 
OK GurillaAngel and Escher, I live in Mist Oregon (near longview WA about 1/3 the way betwixt you two) tell me about it! When I first posted here, people were surprised when I said I could not get a decent exposure outside when shooting my first tests shots! Now I KNOW it inst just me! lol

I did my first "real" green screen shoot this past Monday. I used 4 tungsten 500W photo flood scoop lights (Smith Victor) to light the screen, a softbox and some bounce for the subject.

greenscreen_prekey.jpg



The spill on the shoulder is the worst part of this, but AE's keylight plugin delt with it fine, and I don't care as the final product will be rather stylized anyway.

This is one of the head to toe shots that I had to use my makeshift green screen apron on. I used some "ducked canvas" from the fabric store that I picked up that morning. I had picked up some felt earlier that LOOKED green, but when I went to key it was very yellow! As you can see from this shot, its prety close to the tubetape 5x9 flexible screen in color.

greenscreen_preke_2y.jpg


In case your wondering, I shot the full length footage with the camera on its side, this maximizes the resolution for the shot and I rotate and scale it down in post like you see up there ^.

Final tech details:
Camera GH2 (unhacked!)
Lens: cheap kit 17 - 45mm
Filming 24p, at about 1/100 of second shutter speed to reduce image blur for the motion bits..
The models name is Ari Montgomery. Great kid to work with, down to earth and easy to talk to.
Project is "undisclosed" at this time due to client requirements.
 
What codec/bitrate does the GH2 shoot at and did you run into any compression artifacts when generating your matte?
 
wheatgrinder said:
box and some bounce for the subject.

greenscreen_prekey.jpg



This is one of
greenscreen_preke_2y.jpg


In case your wondering, I shot the full length footage with the camera on its side, this maximizes the resolution for the shot and I rotate and scale it down in post like you see up there ^.

Final tech details:
Camera GH2 (unhacked!)
Lens: cheap kit 17 - 45mm
Filming 24p, at about 1/100 of second shutter speed to reduce image blur for the motion bits..
The models name is Ari Montgomery. Great kid to work with, down to earth and easy to talk to.
Project is "undisclosed" at this time due to client requirements.
Click to expand...

Heh, yeah, great kid indeed. If you want to post a few more shots of her we can help you critique it. You know, give advice and stuff.
Escher, bitrate maxes out around 24mbs in 24p mode. Hacked rates are above 175mbs.
 
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1080 at max quality 24 frames per second.

As far as I know 24 mbps is about the max for most consumer HD AVHCD cams? I think my cannon t2i is less, and my old viaxx camcorder came in under 20 mbs at the highest quality setting.

I tore into the footage by channels and see more macro blocking in the red and blue channels, surprisingly the most detail is in the green channel, which I suppose helps the key.

The only reason Iv not hacked my gh2 is that I need all new cards. I only have 8mb cards and cant even load the new firmware.

Ari has a pretty good web presence, not hard to find if you Google her.
 
Red should be the noisiest of all of those channels as far as the GH2 is concerned. THere's really nothing you can do about it aside from adding more blue before the lens. Hence why most digital systems like daylight better than tungsten. However, tungsten just looks better overall, even at the expense of noise.

High end digital acquisition systems handle tungsten light far better than those below.
 
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