The Ultimate Small Room Greenscreen Guide

people use video rather than text when they want to make a fairly big impression in a fairly short amount of time often they use green screen because it gives them almost unlimited options for any kind of idea they'd like to express but some are a little careless with it like people can be with fire and make no mistake green screen is just like fire it can power your ideas to infinity or it can burn you to the ground and just as in building any good power source the key is in the setup when people set up a green screen they usually stand very close to it because they've chosen a room they see a small like an office or bedroom and given what else is in it like a bed a desk or bookshelves they feel a little squeezed but here's what that looks like when it's edited together this person does not look like an expert let alone an authority on anything all those crazy creepy crawlies suddenly make you feel itchy that's actually caused by seven mistakes so even if you promise never to stand too close to the screen again you could work on this for years and never solve it if you'd like to be more visible in the world to be a better communicator with video and look like a pro while you're doing it then this listen is for you [Music] in this video we're going to look at how to make an almost perfect green screen for a talking head video like this and you'll get a list of exactly what tools you'll need to make it all to come together we'll be shooting in a 3 square meter space inside an 8 by 10 foot or 5 square meter room the idea is to have plenty of room to maneuver so you can make the whole thing push-button fast simple and convenient if you click on the link above you can get the floor plan that shows how all this is setup and where to get everything I'm using here you'll also save money by not buying things you don't need oh by the way welcome to the visible Authority where people come to learn how to use their business to inspire the world and create more freedom time and resources to do what they came here for obviously a visible Authority will want to communicate in the most effective way possible often that means using a green screen so we'll look at the rules the tools and the setup we're actually seeing right now how it all works together so for a few years now I've been shooting green screen in a 13 by 11 foot space but recently I decided to see if I could make my green screen shoots better and in the process I learned that I could also cut down greatly on the space I was using from 13 by 11 foot to 8 by 10 foot that may not sound like much but what it means is that anyone can now get amazing results in almost any room in their house or office provided they pay attention to a few rules let's go through them briefly then in detail and you'll see just how well they all work together like peanut butter and jelly number one you need more light than you think you do because your camera doesn't see just like your eye it's not nearly as efficient number two the light must be even across the entire green screen or you end up with a green screen of many colors and that will drive your editing program nuts 3 you must light the subject separately from the background from the green screen or you get all kinds of strange artifacts rings and halos for the green screen must receive less light than the subject to avoid bouncing color back on the subject 5 exposed for the foreground not the background and when you light it as in rule number 4 oh that's so much easier 6 avoid shadows because they change the color of the green screen 2 & 7 keep your screen taut I mean Botox taught so it couldn't smile if it wanted to otherwise you violate rule number 6 because a wrinkly screen produces hundreds of shadows as you can see six out of seven of our rules have to do with how you treat light which brings us back to rule number one more light however much light you think you need right now you probably need more and that's because even though your lighting instrument puts out say 800 lumens which sounds like an awful lot your camera can only see so much of it because because of the size of the imaging sensor smartphones have the smallest sensors so they need the most amount of light DSLRs have the largest sensors so they need the least amount of light and many camcorders like the one we're using now for this demonstration are somewhere in the middle whatever camera you use you need enough light to get a clean green screen effect what we want to avoid is the kind of star trekky and transporter effect but like where they never quite solidified hair and clothing kind of dancing lead digital but with method as you can see everything in the frame is settled down no movement with with sharp definition including hair even white hair even while standing ridiculously close to the green screen for our camera for this camera we're going to use a total of a hundred and ninety watts of fluorescent light supplemented by 45 watts of LED LED light but how will we distribute that light that we do in rule number two the light must be even across the screen so you can just I mean you can just blast a bunch of light at the green screen from two spots but unless it's really really soft light and the surface that needs to be covered is really very narrow it's going to create hot spots and dark spots but when we set our lights evenly across the screen we get more even coverage and that's where the LEDs come in so we'll use one of our 85 watt fluorescent lamps in this softbox on the right and another on the left just far enough away from the screen so that we don't see the box in the frame and the light from each box gets all the way to the center of the screen looks like 30 or so inches now I've added three small LED lights along the bottom of the screen to even out the coverage each about 18 inches from the screen so far so good so let's go on to the third rule light your subject separately everything we've done so far has been about lighting just the green screen we now need to add a set of lights just for the subject standing in front of the green screen this gives you good separation from the background and thus less green color reflected back on the subject and to help you do that even better it's usually a good idea to add a top light that hits the subject on the back of the head and shoulders what you should see if you were looking at just that lighting would be the person in silhouette with no discernible features rule number four the lighting ratio a good rule of thumb is to light what's in front of the green screen with more than half again as much light as the background so in this case we just load up two more soft boxes with 285 watt lamps each a little less than double what we gave the green screen we place them then at 45-degree angles off the camera about five feet from our subject and we're good to go there so we're well set up to implement our fifth rule exposed for the foreground not for the background this is another way we prevent the reflection of all that green coming back on us in fact we've gone to great lengths to light the scene so that we can expose for the foreground without worrying about what the background will do to our shot this is doubly important if you want to stay closer to the background now as far as exposure use an f-stop that allows you to select zero gain or ISO setting anything over zero introduces artifacts into the picture and for green screen the last thing we need look the last thing we need to be doing is making it harder for the editing program to give us a clean result so instead try to get as low an f-stop as you can the lower the f-stop the less likely it is that the camera will try to add gain in this case it looks like the ISO setting at six has awakened are 70% zebras which means we're now exposing for the background but we don't want to do that so we can either bring the frames per second up to 90 or keep using 60 which is more the standard and lower the gain down to zero this will make the Zebras sort of run away again we'll set it there and that brings us to rule six avoid shadows because they change the colour of the green screen this can be a real problem because a green green with inconsistent colors can really mess up your key the key is what you get when you first click the button in your editing program that removes the green screen background so where do these shadows come from lighting instruments and stands that are closer in than usual as well as someone's standing so close to the background we can satisfy this rule by having our front lights high enough that any shadows from them either fall to the ground instead of the screen or other lights hitting the screen make them go away another way is not to get too too close to the screen you know the idea is to stand just in front of the light that's lighting the green screen it's it's even okay if some of it hits you from behind as long as you don't feel it on your face in this case about 40 inches from the screen should do fine the seventh and final rule is to make sure your screen is taut you don't want any wrinkles that will cause shadows which changes the color which messes up the key all by itself so use clamps or clips or ties do whatever it takes to eliminate all the wrinkles I found one of the best ways to get rid of wrinkles is not to buy a green screen that comes with wrinkles a few were designed not to wrinkle in the first place and there are links to these in the PDF and that's it now just two words of caution as I said in the opening this method creates an almost perfect green screen not a perfect one so here's a simple hack to make sure the little flaws are never detected if you key in a very light or very dark background the fine details will start to lose resolution to look a little wavy a little digitally that's just a natural result of shooting so close to the background with limited amounts of light but as long as you keep your background in the middle ranges say between 40 and 60% of white your result will look just as clean as nearly anything would can produce and ii remember this method uses the amount of light necessary to get this result with a camcorder with a one inch sensor for a DSLR you'll probably be able to cut back to as much as half the amount of light and for a smartphone you may have to double it well as video Yoda says a Jedi Knight you are ready to shoot you must be so there is the question my Jedi Knight which of these seven rules do you think will make it easiest for you to achieve the visible part of becoming a visible authority don't forget to pick up your floor plan for this setup and my recommendations on equipment and prices to make your next green screen shoot a huge success thanks for watching and we'll see you next time on the visible authority [Music]

Channel: Steven Washer

Views: 260,169

Rating: 4.8871994 out of 5

Keywords: greenscreen, better greenscreen video, ultimate greenscreen tips, greenscreen in small room, Visible Authority, Steven Washer, chroma key, green screen, tutorial, green, screen, effects, chroma

Id: GnsR3TI4LLU

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2019