Green Screen Basics

in response to viewer requests we've put together a basic tutorial on how to light a green screen and some tips for working with one let's get started hi I'm Nia let's go over some green-screen basics I'm going to use two setups to cover those of you looking for an affordable way to get started shooting on a green screen and a green psych wall for those of you hoping to create a more professional video environment first off why do we use green as the color to key out for the background technically we could use red or blue green and blue are considered farthest from human skin tone and the easiest to pull a clean key from but blue tends to be a very common clothing color so Green is just a little easier to work with just to make sure none of your talent is actually wearing green so if you're new to green screen work and you're looking for an affordable setup for something like a home studio try an all-inclusive kit Wescott offers one called the illusions you like green screen video lighting kit that I'm using to demonstrate with it has a green 9 by 10 foot cloth background that you can hang pretty much on any flat wall it's wrinkle resistant green screen cloth which is important because you want to make sure that the background is completely flat with no variations in the fabric inside the kit you'll find 2 500 watt photo flood light bulbs with stands and collapsible soft boxes to light the background and it also comes with some software backgrounds and graphics that you can use in post-production if you want so once you hang the fabric background you'll want to setup your 500 watt floods and attach the soft boxes the light stands that come with this kit are very lightweight and they can feel a little top-heavy especially if you raise them all the way up I just throw a sandbag or two over the base to make sure that they're secure the reason for including the soft boxes is to diffuse the light our goal is to create nice even light across the background ideally the fabric should be lit edge to edge and one way to check that is to use the zebra feature on your camera zebra helps show you where areas of your image are brighter or overexposed when you increase your iris if you notice the zebra stripes pop up in one area of the screen first then you know that the lights are too bright there and you can adjust them what you're looking for is the zebra to pop up evenly across the entire screen now of course you don't want to record your video this way or everything will be overexposed it's just one way to check for even lighting you might feel more comfortable with the light meter waveform or histogram which will work similarly if your camera has one of those that's the key point the more even and uniform everything is lit the more realistic it'll look to the viewer once you have the background lit evenly you'll need to light your subject pull your subject or stand in far enough away from the background to get them out of its lighting you don't want to cast any shadows on the green background and sometimes that background can cast a green glow on your talent called spill pulling the subject away from the background will reduce that the two important lights you'll need for your subject are a key and a hair or backlight that backlight is essential to create some separation between your subject in the background the key should be angled off somewhere between 20 and 40 degrees from your camera then you can add in a fill light to brighten the shadows on the other side to create a true 3-point lighting setup or you can just as easily use a reflector to bounce the light back on the opposite side of your subjects face we have a full tutorial on three-point lighting already up on the website this is a nice setup if you're shooting from the waist or knees up but if you want to capture an entire subject from head to foot or if you're planning to film some action sequences with a lot of movement then you'll need something a little bigger that extends out to the floor this is a green psych wall here at our kalbi training studio you'll notice that there are no corners so you have a nice smooth surface to light this is the perfect spot to shoot action or a scene where you need to see the subjects entire body see how the green floor extends beneath my feet so let's say you wanted to have a couple dancing on a street in Paris without sending a crew to Paris all you need a wall like this to do it to light this wall we're going to use the more powerful westcott spider light td6 this is a high output light capable of producing 1200 watts of continuous daylight or tungsten light using compact fluorescent lamps or CFLs think about the lighting in the background that you'll be keying in behind your subject then decide on color temperature bulbs to match if you're keying in video shot someplace like outside on a street in Paris then daylight bulbs will be your best choice one really nice feature about these lights is that you can adjust your light output without changing the color temperature which means you only have to set your white balance once each switch on the back controls two lights so if you're working in a confined space and you need a little less output these lights can easily accommodate you but you'll definitely want to add soft boxes to get that nice diffused even light a side note here the light head can be rotated 180 degrees which can be helpful depending on the size and shape of the green screen that you're working with and the softbox that you're using a wall like this requires a more extensive lighting setup even if you're only shooting a standing subject that's not really moving you'll need at least two lights on either side and at least two lights angled down to illuminate the area near your subjects feet again you're looking to create even lighting across the entire frame that you're shooting in if you plan to use the entire psyche wall area then that requires a more professional setup like you see here I'll CFLs are not the only lights that will work fluorescent tubes or LEDs are also good choices to light a green screen again here pull your talent out away from the wall to get rid of any green spill created by it besides lighting another key component to recording on a green screen is the color sampling capabilities of your camera for two two color sampling is what you're aiming to capture when you plan to key out green screen backgrounds in post without getting into the boring explanation of how chroma subsampling works just know that if you're working on a green screen you want the least amount of compression for the clearest picture you want edges of your subject to look sharp and you'll need four to two luminance to color ratio to achieve that if you're working with a DSLR or a semi-pro camcorder which typically records at four to zero or a mini DV camera which records at four one one then I suggest you look into getting an external recording device that records at four to two we used the Blackmagic Design hyperduck shuttle to SSD video recorder you will notice a difference in quality strands of hair will stand out details will be clearer and of course you'll need software that allows you to key in backgrounds the Westcott kit that I mentioned earlier comes with its own here at kalbi training we use Adobe Premiere Pro for our chroma key work now at least you have a basic foundation of how to get started with a green-screen like anything else the more you work with it the more comfortable you'll become I hope you had fun thanks for watching whether you're a hobbyist or a professional bnh has the answers to your questions experience a world of technology at our new york city superstore connect with us online or give us a call our staff of experts is happy to help Scott Kelby here and welcome to this quick tour of our online training we have hundreds of online classes for you covering everything from lighting to landscape photography from portrait photography to sports we have classes on wedding automotive photography shooting food fashion travel you name it the most incredible part of this is the price you get all of this with just one hundred and ninety nine dollars a year or you can pay monthly for just 24.95 twenty four hours a day seven day a week access from anywhere in the world I invite you to join with us today and start learning right now

Channel: B&H Photo Video

Views: 808,025

Rating: 4.831708 out of 5

Keywords: 3-point lighting, Spiderlite TD6, bhvideos, SSD Video Recorder, Illusions uLite Green Screen, Wescott, B&H, bh photo, CFL, pro video, Blackmagic Design Hyperdeck Shuttle 2, cyclorama wall, 4-2-2 color sampling, pro audio, video, luminance to color, zebra, lighting, photo, BH Photo, BH Photo Video, bh, soft boxes

Id: oxjlKc8ms1c

Length: 8min 24sec (504 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2013