Green screens

[JerryPH]

I've been working with green screens for a few years now and every time it is in some way a struggle, it's never just how I really want it.

Today I actually sat down and went through the 3 main ways that my software can do it, took an old video that was just really badly lit, and had at it.


This has to be the WORST lit green screen in existence... lol Rule one of green screening is to light your backdrop properly, something that back then I guess that I badly missed on. Today I do it better, but the challenge was to learn, and its not hard to get a perfect green screen if you have a perfectly even background.

So does that mean you cannot do anything with this kind of result? No, surprisingly software today is improved so much and the results are pleasantly surprising. It's not perfect... but considering what I was working with it came out better than I thought I could do.

If you feel you *really* want to challenge yourself and your green screen skills, do it with something that has a lot of "pure white" in it. Dark screens are really good at hiding bad technique. I played with something like this:


With this much white in your video, you are guaranteed to clearly see any and all issues/mistakes.

So after futzing for a couple hours, what did I manage to do? Glad you asked! (lol)

I managed to eek this video out, and in the process also work on different techniques that increase the resolution of a 1080P file to 4K (something else that I wanted to play with). The results... well, if you'd like to, tell me what you feel the results are... good or bad, please feel free to share.



Thanks for your input, and if you have any ideas on how to further improve the technical sides, I am all ears!

 

[Dingo40]

Excellent !

 

[Tom]

Super nice! Don't see any artifacts from the green screen at all.

 

[JerryPH]

Thanks gents! Hair artifacts are the hardest and I often found myself moving up to 275% zoom levels and tweaking a lot of the settings over and over. I'm sure I could find more, thats the nature of this beast, especially on the close-ups.

For best results, you're supposed to have a set of lights on the green screen and a separate set of lights for the "talent" and the rear lights are supposed to be super even from side to side (and front to back in my case since I am also green screening the floor!) and 1.5 stops lower than the main lights, but I'm doing everything with 2 photography umbrellas and an overhead garage light as the hair light, if you can believe that.

Pro studios have 2-3 people for the setups, 2-3 people for the cameras and 1-2 people for the post production, I'm doing that all myself. Some may call this massive overkill or waste of time, I just call it fun to learn and sometimes the results are nice enough to share.

I've got a few more "tricks" coming for the new year!

 

[Tom]

Thanks gents! Hair artifacts are the hardest and I often found myself moving up to 275% zoom levels and tweaking a lot of the settings over and over. I'm sure I could find more, thats the nature of this beast, especially on the close-ups.

For best results, you're supposed to have a set of lights on the green screen and a separate set of lights for the "talent" and the rear lights are supposed to be super even from side to side (and front to back in my case since I am also green screening the floor!) and 1.5 stops lower than the main lights, but I'm doing everything with 2 photography umbrellas and an overhead garage light as the hair light, if you can believe that.

Pro studios have 2-3 people for the setups, 2-3 people for the cameras and 1-2 people for the post production, I'm doing that all myself. Some may call this massive overkill or waste of time, I just call it fun to learn and sometimes the results are nice enough to share.

I've got a few more "tricks" coming for the new year!

2 people for the playing too, but you did it with one!

 

[Pipemajor]

Thanks gents! Hair artifacts are the hardest and I often found myself moving up to 275% zoom levels and tweaking a lot of the settings over and over. I'm sure I could find more, thats the nature of this beast, especially on the close-ups.

For best results, you're supposed to have a set of lights on the green screen and a separate set of lights for the "talent" and the rear lights are supposed to be super even from side to side (and front to back in my case since I am also green screening the floor!) and 1.5 stops lower than the main lights, but I'm doing everything with 2 photography umbrellas and an overhead garage light as the hair light, if you can believe that.

Pro studios have 2-3 people for the setups, 2-3 people for the cameras and 1-2 people for the post production, I'm doing that all myself. Some may call this massive overkill or waste of time, I just call it fun to learn and sometimes the results are nice enough to share.

I've got a few more "tricks" coming for the new year!

Think yourself lucky you've still got hair to light . I would need something to stop the reflections!!

 

[JerryPH]

Think yourself lucky you've still got hair to light . I would need something to stop the reflections!!

LOL... It's happening to me too... slowly but surely!

What we are talking is not so much reflections but what they call "specular highlights". With a good editor, you can kind of pick them out and lower those easily enough.

 

[jozz]

well, if you'd like to, tell me what you feel the results are... good or bad, please feel free to share.

I think it looks great! and certainly for social sharing