One of the main ideas we have, although it wasn't included on the brief, was to create a virtual studio for our production. The idea was simple, design a studio on the computer and then green screen it. As for our green screen we realised that we had a lot of issues from which we are quite happy we did some training before. I have particularly used green screen before, as a matter of fact I own one, so I know that it can get to be a really tough job as there is a lot of things that need to be taken into account, which in my experience are:
- The very first thing that everyone needs to now is that no matter what you do, you need to have your green screen flat, as all the shadows that folding and bending creates, can become quite a problem when you edit.
- Second is light. No matter what you do, no matter if you have the best place, the best actor or the best graphics, no light will absolutely ruin your video. When it comes down to lights, it is not as simple as just turning the lights of a room on or letting the light that comes from a window do the job, as the objective is to give equal light to the whole area plus make sure that your anchor is very very well light but at the same time not look yellow or over lighten.
- The third and most annoying issue are shadows. Shadows might seem something obvious, but in a very well design green screen set, they are completely avoided as they become a big pain when it comes down to taking them out in post. In order to remove shadows, it is necessary to know and learn where to set up the light and work with the amount of lights you have.
Thanks to all of this possible issues and many more that anyone could find when doing green screen, we decided to have a testing day before the actual shoot. One very common mistake by amateurs, is that they don't practice all this before and expect to get the chroma key right the very first time, which is very unlikely to happen.
Our very first issue was the camera. We started using a Sony PMW as all the Sony EXs were being used for a workshop. In my opinion it was the worse choice we could have gotten as the PMW didn't really help us the way we wanted. One thing that is really important when it comes down to green screening is that the camera needs to have a very good resolution so that the computer can recognise the green screen and then the anchor and don't mix them up. When we did our very first shot with that the PMW, we ended up with a very bad resolution, which in my opinion is thanks to the distance between the camera and the person, although I am not entirely sure, but a lot if things were tried and nothing really worked. This is the outcome of the very first try:
After trying it with different people and different light angles and effects, the outcome was exactly the same and I never knew if there was something I was doing wrong, but I doubt it as I checked everything three times. Looking at the outcome we decided that this was not the best decision for us and we decided to change it and use the Cannon 7D. We borrowed one and used it form the same angle and same lights to see if there was something odd in the distance, but the Cannon helped much more with the resolution. Here is the outcome of it:
Once we say the outcome we decided that we were going to use that camera instead of the Sony PMW as it helped us more deliver what we wanted. Although in the end we decided to using more of a mid-shot for the final studio set, the Cannon was key for chroma keying. The resolution of it is so good that it allows the Keylight plugin in After Effects to identify very well the green color and separate it from our anchor. We were all happy with it and all the details with the final studio and resolution will be posted on another post.
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