This video is brought to you
by Storyblocks Video Chromakeying in Hollywood films
has always intrigued me. Every time I see one of those
“behind the scenes” videos I keep wondering: how the hell
did they pulled off that green key? For what I've learned, you should always
avoid wrinkles in your green screen, make sure it's evenly lit and that your talent
is definitely not wearing any green. And then you see these behind
the scenes of big Hollywood films where it seems that they don’t
care about those things. I mean, look at these guys
from the Godzilla film! Green soldiers, one of them
is holding a green bazooka in front of a green screen! Still, they're able to pull off
a perfect key from that. Or this shot here which comes from
an incredible music video by Leningrad, Did they simply throw that
green-screen there from a distance? I mean, how many shades
of green can you have? So then, what's the secret? At this point I still don't know
and I want to figure it out. And the fact that you’re
watching this video means that I did found some really
useful tips, so let's see what they are! [Cinecom's intro music] Hey folks, Jordy here for cinecom.net
and welcome to Creative Tuesday. But today I want to figure out
how to pull the perfect key, so, to do that we got Yannick
in a green army suit, he’s also gonna wear a blonde wig
and, of course, hold a gun to make it look real. The idea is to pull a key with
one simple click in post-production and maybe do some minor
adjustments, but that's it. You want to focus on the stuff
that we can do during the shoot to make the keying go easier. Before we start with that, I'd first
like to make a big shout out to our sponsor Storyblocks Video. Their incredible library is packed with
After Effects templates, transitions, effects like explosions, muzzle
flashes and so much more. And if you're gonna pull a green key then
you're gonna need a background for that. Storyblocks got you covered again
with their high quality 4k stock clips and backgrounds. So make sure to click the first link
in the description below to learn more on how you can
download unlimited video assets from their incredible library. Tip number 1, let's go over
all the basics first. To start off you want to make sure
that your green screen is tight, that means no wrinkles
that will only create shadows. And yes, big productions don't always
seem to care about that, but we'll get into that later. Next up is lighting, don't make
hot spots or gradients. Do your best to add the same intensity
of lighting across the entire green-screen. Tools like false color or even the
simple waveforms can help with that. A curved line means that
you have a hot spot, so move your lights around until you
have a straight line on your waveform. Your green screen should be
considered as a zone and your subject should not
come in that zone. Or else the green will spill on your talent. We talk about creating two zones, one for the green screen and
one for the other lighting setup that is for your talent. And finally is the shutter speed. Motion blur is very hard to key,
so by setting a faster shutter speed you can reduce that motion blur. So, of course you do have to understand that that will also change
the look and feel of your shots. So those were the basics,
when you got those things right you're starting off with a solid setup. Tip number 2! This one and the next step is something
that I got from KINETEK. Probably the most underrated
channel here on YouTube, if you actually want to learn
something from cinematography, just stop watching us and
check out this channel. No, please don’t. Mathew, the guy behind KINETEK
talked about the luminance of the green. Every color has a specific luminance value, like yellow sits above 60%,
red a little bit above 20 and green is about 45%. That is true green and will give you
the least interference with other colors or even other tints of green. Here you can see Yannick
with his green suit. Currently on the waveform we can see that the background and the suit
come in each others luminance value. So when making the background brighter
we can lift that green to above 40%. After that, we decrease the intensity
of the lights on the talent which, as you can see, separates
the two greens. At the same time we'll also have
a better green from the green screen. Now, there are a few exceptions
that we found through some tests where you could make your green
screen darker or maybe brighter. Hair is always the hardest to key
definitely blond here is a nightmare. So the idea is to make a big contrast between the blond hair
and the green screen. We can't change much about the colors
but we can change the luminance value. So I'm dropping the green to 30%,
making it darker. Against a brighter blonde hair,
this actually worked out pretty good. Tip number 3! Again, your green screen
should be green. This time I'm opening up the vectorscope. Many DSLRs like the GH5, or external
monitors like the one from SmallHD have these tools built-in. If you don't have that, you could
always film a short clip and to look at the vectorscope
in Premiere or something. There’s also an app called Green Screener
which gives you a ton of different tools to help set up a green screen. I haven't used it myself yet
but it has some good reviews. You want to make sure that
the highlight on your vectorscope leans towards the green. If it's not the case, then
check your white balance. If it's not set according to the type
of lights that you're using, you will capture a different mix of green. You can also change the
tint value if necessary. Just be careful that
you don't overdo this, as you still want your subject
to look natural. And if you keep having trouble
getting the highlight into green, then you might need to look
for a different green screen. But that's why I would always
suggest you purchase a green screen that is specifically meant for video, don’t just buy a fabric at
a carpet store or something. The next tip is gonna be post related, but I want to show you exactly
how easy the keying will go once you got the shooting right. We did several tests using
the Ultra Key effect from Premiere Pro, then we tried out two paid plugins,
one was $300 and the other one $500, which I've requested
a refund from, because I was getting the best results
with Key Light from After Effects. This is a built-in effect,
so everyone has it. If you search for the key light effect,
you will actually find a preset for it. Applying this to your clip will also add
a key cleaner and a spill suppression to it. I always thought that it didn't really matter
where you clicked with the color picker. But apparently it is pretty important. This is a tip that I got from Jason
Levine who also worked at Adobe. What you want to do is locate
your composition and layer window. Drag them so that they
lay next to each other. Then change the view in your layer
window to Anchor Point Path. And then change the view in
your Key Light effect to ‘Status’. When your now hold down your Alt key
while moving the color picker around you can see in real time what
the key light effect is selecting. And even by moving one pixel you can
see how different each selection is. You want to try to get as much
black to cover the green and then you click. And this will give you a very solid key. You can then fine tune a bit more
using the clip black and white, but I would suggest to stay off
the Shrink and Softness settings. These are settings that you should only
use when the keying doesn't work so well, because in the end it will
only mess up your edge, so it's best to stay off from that. Finally, we have the key cleaner, which is gonna add a transparent
stroke over the edge and this one works great with blond hair. And finally is the Spill Suppressor which
is gonna remove any unwanted green. We didn't even have to touch those, but you can dial into the details
if you like so. And here we did again the exact
same thing on the shot with Yannick wearing the green suit and
waving his blond hair. Now it's definitely not perfect,
we're still kind of learning ourselves, but considering this is a very hard key
to pull, I think that we did a pretty good job. And that brings me to the last tip. Whenever you're gonna work with
tracking marks on your green screen I see many bigger productions
use something like red. I still really haven't figured out why that
color in particular is gonna be more helpful, probably because of the contrast,
which will make the tracking go easier, but you can't really key it out,
since red comes back in the skin tones. So we did the test, we used green tape
that has a different tint of green than the backdrop. We added a few dots and
did a camera movement. Then in After Effects I simply clicked on
the 3D Camera Tracker and it worked! This allowed me to link my
new background to one of the points. And there we have it, Yannick
enjoying his vacation in his green suit and blonde hair. So that was it again for today,
I learned a ton of new things and I really hope that you did too. Thank you so much for watching, thank
you Storyblocks Video for the support. And as always: Stay Creative! We tried out 2 paid plug-ins,
one was 300 ducks… 300 Ducks! When you want to say buck and dollar
at the same time, you get duck. -Jordy, we can’t pay our bills with ducks! It has to stop Jordy!
