Another Green Screen Video? Seriously? I was going to make this into a separate series
of short videos so it wasn't so long. Then I received a comment on one of my videos
that said, "You talk more than my grandma. Now start the f.... topic!" So this episode is not only going to be really
long, but I am dedicating it to all the grandmas out there! Actually, I wanted to keep all this info in
one place. If you're impatient, or only want to re-watch
a portion of this, I've put links in the description below. Second, due to some other comments I've received,
I feel compelled to state the following... There may be something to learn here, or,
at least refresh your memory on some basics. If you think you know all about this already,
then just go watch something else. Just sayin'. If I walked onto a set, I would let everyone
do their jobs. That's what they were hired for, and are usually
better at doing their specific jobs than me - I can't do it all. For green screen scenes, everything is set
up properly, it gets shot, then handed over to more people, who perform their jobs, and
everything looks great. Doing it by yourself is not the same as doing
it on a set with a crew of people who already know what they are doing. You are the person who buys all that crap,
sets it all up, films it, lights it, probably stars in it, edits it, does the compositing,
renders it, and posts it. And that's a lot of jobs. Now I've seen an awful lot of videos on YouTube
that were done using a green screen. Some are really excellent. Some really suck, including some of my own. So I figured, there's something that these
pro guys are doing that non-pro guys aren't. Like sound. The first point of failure for sound is bad
recording. Everything after a bad recording, is spending
a lot of time to fix it in post, which makes sound recording and editing look like a pain
in the ass, when in fact, it was the bad recording in the first place that was the fail. So my thought was: what's the FIRST point
of failure for green screen work? What makes everything after that point a pain
in the ass? So I did a lot of research, talked to some
pros, and worked it backwards to see what the first point of failure was. It isn't software tools, they use the same
ones. It isn't the cameras or lenses, I've seen
pros pull a key from DSLRs and video cameras. It isn't the green screen - I've seen some
low cost green screens and the keying was great. It can't be the lighting, I mean, you buy
a green screen kit with a couple of lights and it's supposed to work, right? Let's take one of these cheaper green screen
kits, which work fine by the way, and you normally get two or 3 lights with it. So, you set up your green screen kit, put
all your lights, and voila! Except there is no voila! You get your footage into editing, can't figure
out what the hell is going on, your keying looks like crap, you mess around with it forever,
then give up, decide green screening is just too hard, or, there's something you don't
get, or, you decide you need a better camera, lens, room, studio, watch a shit ton of green
screening videos, still don't get it, and you continue down the chute to green screen
hell. Well - it isn't your fault. This, is NOT - a green screen kit! It's a 3-point lighting system for your subject,
which happens to include a green screen. So there's the first point of failure: Lighting the green screen. Notice I didn't say "lighting", I said "lighting
the green screen." Lighting, and lighting the green screen are
NOT the same thing. They are TWO completely different lighting
steps. You've got to set up the green screen, and
light IT properly, THEN light your subject the way you normally would. Screw the actors and objects and everything
else - just light the screen properly. In other words, you need to treat your screen
and your subject separately. Now, a lot of green screen videos will go
along and then briefly say, "...and make sure you light the green screen evenly, so you
don't have any hot spots..." And then they move on. Well, what the [bleep]! If that's a major point of failure, and it
is, why not say how come, why, and how to do it? In talking with pros, 90% of problems pulling
a key, is usually improper or uneven lighting and hot spots. The other 10% is someone wearing green, shadows
on the screen, too much motion, and a few others. That 10% is easy to fix, as we'll cover later. So let's handle this 90%. Now I'm sure someone watching is saying, "But
I have lights. And they look awesome!" Well, you don't know what you don't know,
right? Well, here's a new one: You don't see, what you don't see. For example, look at the lighting here. It looks fine, right? It's not. Your eyeballs are awesome, and super accommodating. The camera is not. This screen has uneven lighting and hot spots
that make it a pain in the ass to pull a key. So let me repeat this - uneven lighting and
hot spots on a green screen are the evil devil child. And just to make sure I really drive this
point home: It's the difference between clicking an eye
dropper and making a few adjustments, having nice flowing hair, being able to see glass
that looks like glass, and being able to move freely in front of the screen. It's the difference between having fun doing
green screen work, or, spending hours, days, or weeks masking things out, and never quite
getting it right. So, how do we know we have uneven lighting
and hot spots, and more importantly how do we correct it? One simple method for seeing uneven lighting
and hot spots is by adjusting your camera's shutter speed. For example, as I adjust the shutter speed
higher and higher, it lets in less light - it makes everything darker. Now you can see the hot spots here and there,
and the lighting is uneven. It's not the best or most reliable way, by
far, but it can be used if you have to use it, as it's better than not seeing it at all. My favorite, and more trusted way, is by the
use of an app which looks at your setup like a camera does. I have one called Green Screener. Here's the app on my iPad pointing at my green
screen. Now you can really see what's going on. Even if you have those large soft boxes that
come in your "green screen kit", you're still going to have a problem. And once you see this, you'll start going
absolutely insane! These hot spots and uneven lighting is why
you have trouble, and why it gets complicated. Now, you can adjust these lights and mess
around with them and end up with something that's somewhat acceptable. But you need to just stop! You'll spend hours messing around with this
and adjusting things and you'll never get it the way you want it. Or you'll just settle with "that's good enough"
or "I'll fix it in post" and when you get there you'll hate yourself. So we've determined the first point of failure
is lighting the green screen. Well, the next point of failure, and the reason
you have hot spots and uneven lighting on your green screen... ...is because you're using the wrong lights. And that's the missing ingredient. You should be using different lights for lighting
the screen. That's also why in my last episode was those
cheap DIY bank lights, which you should go watch right now if you haven't, otherwise
you'll miss this important point. So go watch it and I'll wait. Go ahead. You can come back to this video, just go and
watch it. There's a link here - you just click on it,
and you can watch that. OK, so now you get it on bank lighting and
why. So let's set them up. On a screen like this behind me, you'd want
maybe two bank lights on each side, and a couple on top and maybe even the bottom. But to prove my point, we're going to use
just two of these DIY lights, one on each side. Place your new bank lights on either side
of your green screen. You want the middle of these lights positioned
about the middle of your frame. Get your Green Screener app up and running. Now take a look. Still hot spots and uneven lighting? Just move the banks lights forward and backward,
and adjust left to right, and you'll eventually get an evenly lit no hot spot green screen. Depending on your camera and room, it will
take some finesse, but once you are practiced with the lights and the app, it gets really
easy. And if you always shoot in this type of environment,
like I do, just lock it all down once you've nailed it. Now that WE KNOW the screen is evenly lit
with no hot spots, let's test out this one click theory. And I am going to do the worse thing possible
and that is make sure I have a glass in the shot. Even worse, I am going to use the not so awesome
UltraKey found in Premier Pro. I'm not banging on UltraKey. Its use is more of a "I want to see what my
footage and background will look like before I spend the time to do a real key." But using UltraKey will ensure anyone using
any editor can do this. So we bring in the footage to Premier Pro. We add the Ultrakey Plugin to the footage. We click on a green area around me. BAM! Let's add a background. BAM! If there's still a little black mush, select
this pull down, select advanced, and BAM! Not bad, huh? Especially for this type of talking head video,
it works nicely, and more importantly, it's quick. Now, if you want to mess around with the different
parameters in the UltraKey to refine all this, go ahead. If you want to do more precise keying, bring
this footage into After Effects and use Keylight, which is awesome, to pull the key, you can
do that too. It will only be better. As you know, trying to correct rotten footage
in post, is a royal pain in the butt - it's always better to get that footage shot well
up front in camera. Well, now that you have the best possible
lighting on your green screen, it will be as easy as hell to pull a fast key. Better yet, if you decide to mess around for
more complex keying, you won't be wondering what the hell is wrong. It should just work, because you took failure
point number one out of the mix! Neat, huh? Here's some extra tricks and tips while doing
green screen work that will make it even easier when editing. You don't need some super high end expensive
green screen. Here's that simple one I showed earlier that's
pretty cheap, comes with lights, and works. Now, I don't get why people don't smooth out
their green screen. These little bumps and folds will create shadows
and make it a pain in the butt to pull a key. You don't need to iron it. You can use clamps to pull the screen taut,
or use something like these large paper clips. You can also get a small steamer like this
if you like, but I found it's better to pull the screen taut with clips. It doesn't have to be totally taut, but at
least make sure when it hangs, there aren't any creases or bumps that will create shadows
or lines. If you stand too close to the green screen,
you'll cast a shadow, especially if you didn't pay attention and are trying to use all your
lights to light you AND the green screen. It gets near impossible to pull a key with
shadows, and you'll find yourself spending a lot of time dicking around with this. Worse yet, you will get green light spilling
onto your actor, called spill, which you won't see until you are in post editing, and that
is a pain in the butt to key. Here's a few ways to fix this. Remember, we light the green screen and get
it perfect, THEN we place the subject away from the screen, say 3-5 feet, then light
them separately. It's best to be in front of the bank lights
so they aren't hitting you with light. If you don't have enough room, it might be
better to setup in another location than try and deal with shadows. Another trick for small rooms is to make sure
your green screen isn't lit darker than your subject, as that will also cast shadows from
the subject and the lights. The best is a green screen just slightly darker
than the light on your subject. You should use a back light (or hair light),
as it really helps pull the subject off the background, and in this case, the green screen. It also sharpens the edges between you and
the green screen making the key easier to pull. I've found it's better to use a soft light,
such as this one with a diffuser, like the one that came with my cheap green screen kit. Another trick is to use a magenta gel on the
back light. That's a gel that looks somewhat pink. Magenta is what you would call a "minus" green
gel. In other words, it somewhat cancels out the
color green. This will cut down on some of the green spill
light bouncing onto your subject, making keying even easier. As already covered, you should light the green
screen first, THEN light the subject including the back light as already covered. Assuming you are doing that, keep this in
mind: There's a rule of thumb that says you should
light the subject a couple of stops higher than your green screen. If you're new to this, you'll spend a lot
of time jerking around with that, so let's make this simpler. If you blast your green screen with tons of
light, then you get a lot more green (spill) bouncing off the screen onto your subject,
which means when you pull your key, you'll end up with a mess. If you blast your talent with a light and
the green screen is really dark, then, as covered you'll get shadows. So just eyeball this. After setting up your green screen and lighting
it properly, turn the subject's lights up more, move them closer, or whatever. You just want a nice balance, or a green screen
lit a bit darker than the subject. You may think this is stupid, but don't wear
green clothes, or have green in them. I did an episode where my shirt was laced
with green. I did another episode where my Christmas hat
had a green leaf on it that I didn't notice. Two episodes ago, I didn't notice my Starbucks
cup had a green logo and a green straw. Both of these were pretty easy to fix as they
were on me or in front of me, as you'll see in a later trick. But it's best just to look in the mirror and
see if there's green. It's way easier to not have to deal with these
things. What if you have green [screen] in the shot? The just use a blue screen and pull the blue
as a key instead of the green. Everything else here applies and should be
just as simple. And note - these keyers - they don't care
what color you pull. I've used this to pull someone out of a shot
standing in front of a whiteboard. It takes a little more work, but can be done. I'll leave that to your creativity and imagination
on the multiple ways you can use this. With a wide aperture, the background goes
more out of focus, and you can use this while shooting on a green screen. Since the green screen is now out of focus,
it will help even out any inconsistencies from wrinkles or spots. If your subject is moving around a lot, you
can get motion blur, which is nearly impossible to key out. There's too much motion here, and the green
and the hand will get all mushed together. Just up your shutter speed to like 70 or 80,
and that will take out the motion blur. This will keep the green and the thing from
mushing together, and you'll get a good key. But don't set it too high, or it will look
weird and unnatural. If the footage looks better with motion blur
in it, you can always add motion blur back in later to make it look more realistic. For example, here's a shot in adobe after
effects. You don't want noise in your shot, as it makes
it hell to key, and then you're back to masking stuff. To keep the noise down, keep your ISO low,
which is done by proper lighting of the talent or object being shot in front of the green
screen. In other words, light the hell out of the
subject, light the green screen a bit darker, and adjust your ISO and exposure to the subject,
NOT the green screen. If you're above 800 ISO, you need more light.
320 and 640 will be OK. Before you shoot, just frame everything green.
No masking. Or, just frame it knowing you're going to
up scale a bit in your editor, so you don't have to mask anything. Or, frame it so the masking is really simple. Of course, you don't want to frame it and
have the person lifting their arms out of frame, and then put it in some background
as a long shot. In this case, just resize the back ground
so it looks like you meant to do that. Just remember to think about your framing
before you take the shot. Sometimes when you get your footage in, you
find that there's something in the shot that is green, like this straw and cup. I'm lucky, as the straw and cup are in from
of me, which makes it easy to fix. Just make a copy of the layer above the current
layer, mask out the area that should be green, then remove the keyer, in this case, UltraKey. If there's a lot of movement, you may have
to track the shot, or add keyframes to move the mast around as needed. These same principles work in After Effects. For this type of episode, this works really
well. I just click and key out quickly, and add in my background. I use a sort of 3-point lighting consisting
of a key light, a fill light and a back light. Now there's two methods you can use for lighting: One, you light yourself, and then find something
to put in the background that matches that general lighting or looks good. The other, is you know what the background
or footage is going to be, so you study the lighting in the shot, and light yourself to
match that. Both work, and it depends on what you are
doing. Feel free to adjust your shot, or the background
you use to match these up. I already talked about spill from standing
to close to the green screen, which you shouldn't DO. But I've had many a shot ruined as I didn't
take into account the green coming from a place I didn't realize it was coming from. The front. If you have a monitor pointed at you so you
can see what's going on, the monitor will have green shooting at your clothes, face
or glasses. If you don't know this you'll drive yourself
mad. The best solution is to turn the monitor off
while filming yourself, or change it to display in black and white so you don't get spill. You can also get spill if you have a window
behind the camera. Anything between you and everything that way,
if it reflects, like a window, monitor, reflector, etc., should be turned off, covered, or taken
away. Now, if you decide there should be a shadow
on a back wall in your background, add the shadow in afterwards. Here I shot this green screen, added myself
in so it looks like I'm close to a wall, and I wanted to cast a shadow to make it look
more legit. It's pretty easy to add it in later. Just use your editor, add in a shadow effect,
and adjust it until it looks right. There are so many ways to get or make backgrounds
for your footage I couldn't possibly list them all. Now, this video is NOT for people doing heavy
motion in large areas. Most people watching this video will be primarily
with taking a head or body shot and replacing the background. And most people watching this video are one-man
band filmmakers. If you plan on doing these more complicated
shots, then these rules will apply, but, I would highly suggest you get someone who has
experience doing these complicated shots. They know the in's and out's and usually have
the gear or know on what you need to get to pull these off. These are the basic practical concepts when
it comes to green screening. If you use a semi-permanent setup like this
for this show, it makes it really easy, as you walk in, turn on your lights, get the
camera and sound rolling, shoot, bring the footage in, pull the key, place in the background,
and you're practically done. The whole point of this video, is to make
it simple for people who are new, having problems, or who have given up on green screen work. By having the proper lights and lighting,
knowing how to see and correct hot spots and uneven lighting, and knowing a few other details,
it will save yourself a lot of time, and you'll be able to really use and enjoy this filmmaking
tool. Lastly I don't want someone walking away from
this really long video, still thinking this is difficult, complex, or hard. Si I'm going to include a short example to
show how simple this green screen process can be. From walking into the room and turning on
the lights and camera, to rendering out the video. OK, for purposes if this demonstration, I've
got the sound and camera rolling. There's one of my lights. There's my other light, bank light one-two
green screen's lit. There's my fill light, there's my key light,
and my hair light. We're good. Normally I'd have all this set up and I'd
walk up here. I would start the camera rolling. I would start the sound rolling. And then I'd either snap my fingers or use
some fancy gadget like this. BAM! That gives me a mark between my sound and
my film, so I can get them all together in post. OK. Here we go. I find my mark which is already set up. I've already set my focus. I don't change my focus, sometimes I check
it. My monitor is on. It is set to black and white. So I can see it. So everything's good, so I start my episode
and I say whatever I say. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a
pail of water. Jack fell down, and broke his crown, and Jill
came tumbling after? I don't know what the hell that means. Good. So then I say cut, juts so I know I'm
done. I would come over at this point, I would turn
off my sound, I would turn off my camera. I would turn off my lights, and I would go
and bring the footage into my computer. So, goodbye. And goodbye. And goodbye hair light, and goodbye keylight,
and goodbye fill light. And goodbye you, and we'll see you I the editor
area. Import the footage and sound files into Premier
Pro. Place the movie on the timeline. Now place the sound file on the timeline. We're going to sync the sound, so let's open
them up so we can see them. Click on the good sound file, then shift-click
on the movie file with the crappy sound. Right click and select Synchronize from the
menu. Click OK and let Premier do its thing. Now I trim the edges so everything is even. I play a couple of seconds to make sure all
sounds well. I select the crappy movie sound and unlink
it from the movie. You can also use control or command -L as
a shortcut. I select and link the good sound file to the
movie, delete the crappy camera sound and move the good sound up just to be tidy. I play a few seconds to make sure all is well. Now I find the start of my pretend episode,
trim to that point and move everything back to zero. Now I find the end of my fake episode, and
trim the clip to there. I move the movie part of the clip up one to
make room for my background, drag my background to the timeline, and line it up to the length
of the clip. Next I scale the clip to take out the edges
of the green screen. On longer episodes I scale first, then I cut,
to save time. I think 110 looks good, and a minor adjust
up. And, I think I'll adjust it left a bit. Now I go get my keyer, by finding the Ultrakey
plug-in and drag it to my movie clip. I grab the dropper and click somewhere near
me. I click on the Default drop down, and select
Aggressive. For this type of episode, it looks good enough
to me. Now this background looks a bit funny, as
it's totally in focus. Let's add some depth with a Fast Blur plugin. I drag it to the background, and make sure
"Repeat Edge Pixels" is checked. Let's try a blur of 10. That's a bit much. How about 5. Looks good to me. I scrub through and make sure it looks OK. I don't like how far away I look from the
back wall, so I'm going to mess with the background picture's scale and position. That's looks fine by me. I play it to make sure there isn't anything
weird going on. Let's render this out. Now I choose File - Export - Media, which
can also be done with control or command - M. I am rendering to H.264 for YouTube, and I
select my preset for this render. I covered all this rendering jazz in another
video and I'll place that link in the description below. Usually I would just click Queue to render
this in Media Encoder, but I'll just render it out now so you can see it. I click the export button, it renders the
audio edits, then the video. And no, that's not sped up and I apologize
for having a 24 cores, 144 gigs of memory, and really fast SSD drives. The file is rendered and ready to upload to
YouTube. Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a
pail of water. Jack fell down, and broke his crown, and Jill
came tumbling after? I don't know what the hell that means. I've also included some links in the description
below to some excellent green and blue screen work for inspiration. You may not be shooting on that level, but
I am sure you'll learn something from it, and it should spark some ideas that you can
use in your own productions. I hope that helps, and thanks for watching. In this case realize the background so it
looks like [beep]. So let me repeat this. Uneven leeting ah!
[beep]. I'm going to use the not so awesome ultrakey
found in premier pull [beep]. AS you know, trying to correct rockton footage
in post - ah. [beep]. Now the trick is to use a madenta magenta
gel [beep]. Notice I didn't say lighting - ah shit [beep]. Edits, does a compotiting, renders it and
bahh! [beep]. I use a sort of 3-point lighting system cause
of a key light - arrrgh! [beep]. I've also included some links in the description
below to some excellent...[beep]. Like sound. The first major poin point of
failure...arrrggggh!! [beep].
As someone who always gets frustrated with the "sucky" green screen videos and gets even more confused, this was a welcome video. That guy's a great teacher as well.
This tutorial really helped me out on a green screen shoot I did a few months ago. Some really great tips in here.
5 minutes in, and I already like that guy.
If there's one thing that other tutorials lack, it's mentioning that many things cannot be easily explained in detail in 3 minutes.
This video was so useful to me. Thanks for posting it!
REALLY good video.
I'm not exactly new to greenscreening and I still got a bunch of useful tips from it.
And yes, the Greenscreener app he mentions is the mutt's nuts - really good.