In the quest to get a more pure green greenscreen, I've been testing lighting gels from Rosco and Lee... The theory is, if you throw green light at the greenscreen, it has no choice but to reflect a greener green for the camera.

Since filters are subtractive, a good green filter will hold back most of the red and blue light, but allow most (but not all) of the green light to pass through. So for a relatively small decrease in exposure, you can almost eliminate the red and blue light which is corrupting your greenscreen.

I tested by gelling a flash unit and photographing a professional greenscreen from Composite Components. The winning gel was... (drumroll)... Lee #738 ("JAS Green").

Without the gel, the greenscreen is reading at:
R:31% G:92% B:36% (sampling the screen to the left of the "brown patch" on Macbeth)

The difference between our G channel and the R&B channel is 58.5%... This means our core color difference matte will only have 58.5% of the values between 0-255 to work with. This is the best we can do without help from the lighting. You literally can't buy a better greenscreen material than the CC Digital Green.

With the 738 on, we lose roughly 1/2 stop of light. Compensating by opening up the aperture, our reading is:
R:1% G:95% B:5%

(!!!) The difference jumps from 58.5% to 92%! Our matte can now utilize 92% of the values between 0-255.

I instantly ordered a bunch of T12 sleeves of 738 for my cheap fluorescents when I saw this.

If you only have access to Rosco, #86 ("Pea Green") is the closest to Lee 738, but not quite as nice. The reading from #86 was:
R:1% G:88% B:3%

Which gives an 86% difference between G and R&B. Still a great reading, but if you can get your hands on the 738, it has the edge. BTW, avoid Rosco's "Chroma Green." It's too blue, and too dark. You would have to play a lot of games with your white balance to get it to photograph as pure green.

I also tested a more subtle green gel, Lee 138 ("Pale Green"). It's nice because you don't have to compensate exposure at all. And if you're in close quarters and can't avoid having your greenscreen lights hit the subject, it wouldn't be a total disaster, because it isn't so insanely green. (Although you should always flag off your GS lights so they don't interact with the subject. Foamcore works well...) The 138 gave:
R:7% G:88% B:17%

..for a difference of 76%. Not too shabby, considering you don't have to compensate the exposure at all. Definitely a step up compared to not gelling the lights. Then again, if you have even half a stop to spare, the 738 blows it away.

I'm going to test more of these subtle gels in the near future. In particular, Rosco 388 ("Gaslight Green") looks good. Other contenders are Rosco 3304 & 88, and Lee 88...

I've attached three images -- one "clean" with no gel, one with Lee 738, and one with Lee 138. Notice how dark the Red and Blue patches are on the Macbeth in the 738 image! Crazy...

- ben

I should post the link to Composite Components... Their greenscreen material is incredible!

http://www.digitalgreenscreen.com/

Great info! Thanks for sharing.

Interesting... keep in mind though, its not as much about how "green" the background is, but much more about how evenly it is lit.

Ideally, it's about both...

Ideally, it's about both...

Not really. By adding green gels to the lights that you're lighting the green screen with, you're trying to drive the color towards a certain tone of green. This could be solved simply by changing the background to that color, which is really moot, because that's the whole point of "Chroma Key Green" and "Chroma Key Blue", is that they are colors that are ideally as far away from skin tone as possible. Like I say, if the shade of green you're achieving by using gels is better, then they would just make chroma key backgrounds that color. No matter what kind of gels you use, if the lighting is uneven the key will not pull as cleanly. Check out this video, it explains it all:

http://www.digitaljuice.com/djtv/segment_detail.asp?sid=194&sortby=&page=3&kwid=0&show=all_videos

I write keying software for a living, and have been writing keyers for over 10 years now... So you may want to keep that in mind when reading my posts about greenscreen. :)

The greenscreen you see in the test shots I took is called Digital Green, and it comes from a great company called Composite Components. Jon Erland, the co-founder of CC, has written 15 papers for the SMPTE journal on the subject of traveling mattes. Their stuff is the gold standard in Hollywood, and they were rewarded with an Oscar for their screens in 1996.

So believe me when I tell you: this is quite literally the best greenscreen material you can buy. You should see it in real life -- it looks electric. In order to be any better, it would have to BE electric!

The reason why it doesn't photograph as absolutely pure green is that there is simply no material, dye or pigment that absorbs 100% of the red and blue in white light, while reflecting only green light.

That's why Composite Components also sells Digital Green (and Blue, and Red) fluorescent bulbs to illuminate their screens with.

Of course it's important to light your screen extremely evenly. Even lighting will improve your composites more than anything else -- if you're not using a live video analysis tool with scopes (particularly the RGB Parade) on-set to adjust your lighting, you should.

But once you master that, you'll start wanting a more pure green background. That's where the colored lighting comes in. If you have the cash, you can just buy the Digital Green tubes, which are purpose-made. But I'm always trying to figure out how to do things on a budget, because a lot of my customers are independent filmmakers, small video production shops, etc...

So that's why I'm testing all these gels. It's a way to go from a good screen to an amazing screen for about 6 bucks...

Of course it's important to light your screen extremely evenly. Even lighting will improve your composites more than anything else

Whoa! Easy there big fella. What I quoted above was the only point I was trying to make. No matter what gels you put on the lights, that won't make up for uneven lighting. Just like you said "even lighting will improve your composites more than anything else". That's all I was saying. You need to relax a little bit, no one's attacking your expertise. I've shot plenty of chroma keys myself, there's no need for bragging about our credentials. Just a friendly forum and no one person here knows everything about a certain subject.

Cheers!

Sorry, I certainly didn't mean to come off as defensive, just wanted to place my comments in context... I even added a smiley! :)

Anyway, no worries -- I'm just trying to add to the knowledge collected here at dvinfo.net.

No problem, I think I misinterpreted your response and appreciate all the info you're putting up, its very detailed.

With the new chroma key material that you're talking about, are there any problems with it kicking back on the talent?

You're obviously on the right track since they sell lights that are green (or blue or red) to light key backgrounds. Thanks for sharing, and please continue!

Ha, that's the internet for ya, everyone sounds bitchy. :)

In terms of the screen kicking back light... It's still reflecting the same amount of light, but now that light is much more pure green, so it can cause problems. The key is keeping some distance between the subject and the screen, and being diligent about flagging off the screen lights to keep them off the subject.

Software can remove even high levels of spill and color casts very easily these days, but it can't handle full strength reflections, so it's always best to keep reflective materials in the subject from nearing a perpendicular plane with respect to the screen -- because of the Fresnel effect, reflections increase in intensity at those points. (Think of a reflective black sphere, where the reflections get brighter and brighter as they reach the edge.)

Hmm, that last paragraph would probably make sense with a graphic... I'll try to photoshop something up.

Do you have anything to do with Keylight? I was playing with your posted color chart image in After Effects, and the Keylight plugin worked great. I was watching the DV Creators video, and they talked about doing a Luma Key, so I convinced my wife to play along so I could give it a try. We were experimenting in my garage with a lighter green sheet and work lights, shooting with my XL2. Its a lot tougher in a small space like that. The other chroma key stuff I've done was in front of a very large screen in a huge room, so getting the talent away from the background was easy. Still, this one pulled really well as a Luma Key. The yellowy halo around her is actually something we added in post, as we were trying to imitate a little on-line ad that had the same effect. The spill is actually light green, as you can probably tell. Not too bad though for a bed sheet and a couple of work lights (she was light with an Arri 650w softbox and a 150w fresnel).

Hey Bert,

Cool! Nice shot!

I don't work on Keylight, but it's a nice little keyer. My keyer is called dvmatte.

If you wouldn't mind, could you post (or email) a frame from the greenscreen shot, and the background? I'd like to give it a whirl in dvmatte. If you also have a frame of just the greenscreen without your lovely wife in it, that would be a bonus, as I can use it to correct the screen.

As a filter company, for once I will tell you not to use an on camera filter. In my experience with green screen, I have found it most beneficial to use a back light with a 1/8 magenta LEE gel on it. This eliminates green fringing and artifacts that come about.

Otherwise, Kino Flo makes some really handi green bulbs.

Ryan Avery
Schneider Optics

Hi Ryan!

Yeah, I should be extra-clear in case there's any confusion. I'm suggesting Lee 738 as a lighting filter for the screen only, not as an on-camera filter... On the camera, unfiltered is definitely best -- unless you aren't able to get your in-camera sharpening low enough, in which case it might make sense to test a 1/4 or 1/2 Black Pro Mist or similar.

My experience with magenta backlighting hasn't been very promising -- I wind up having to struggle to remove the magenta cast in my edges. Can you elaborate about that technique a little bit, or even better, post an example frame?

Kino does make green bulbs... Hmm, maybe a Composite Components Digital Green vs Kino green shootout is in order. :)

If you wouldn't mind, could you post (or email) a frame from the greenscreen shot, and the background? I'd like to give it a whirl in dvmatte.

I don't have a shot of her out of frame. But here's a screen grab without the Luma Key applied. I intentionally tried to get the background as hot as possible. When I shot, the whole background showed on the zebras as over 100IRE. The only problem with this is that you can see the background is kicking back on her. Let me know how it works with Dv matte.

Thanks to Ben and everyone who's contributed.

Questions:

1. What suggestions would you give to those of us who can't get the required distance between talent and screen?

2. Is it advantageous to underllight the screen so it's darker than the talent? My thoery is that this will reduce spill. If so by how much?

3. Another theory -- Do you recommend the screen be perpendicular to the floor, or is a slight tilt better to change the angle of reflection?

Thanks

Paul, if you're in tight quarters, the main thing you have to be aware of is how much the chroma background is kicking back onto the talent. You can compensate for this by trying to ad a backlight to your talent. You don't need to light your background really bright, but you must light evenly. That's the most important element. But understand what Ben is getting at is one and the same. He's talking about using filters so the green coming back to the camera is "pure" which will really help in the keying, but that's in addtion to a very evenly lit background. The idea of good chroma backgrounds is that they don't reflect back a lot of light. Still, if the talent gets too close, you're going to have a problem.

One thing you could try is something like the luma key I did. You can still run into the same problem, but you can use your zebra bars in the viewfinder to see where that might occur. The idea is to light your background so that as you open up your iris, in one step, your entire background goes all zebras. If one section goes zebras, and another doesn't, then your background isn't lit evenly. What I shot for was opening up my iris so the background went zebras in one step, and then reset the zebras for 90 and tried to make sure that the brightest part of my talent wasn't over, reset to 80 and made sure that's what my talents face was at. The luma key worked really well, and it was fairly tight. Before you try all this you'll want to make sure you have a software program that has a Luma Key that can pull out the lighter. I used After Effects.

Ben will probably have some great advice with the Chroma/green screen stuff, as well as post production tips.

1. What suggestions would you give to those of us who can't get the required distance between talent and screen?
Hi Paul! If you can't get much distance, you'll have to do a good job of flagging your source lights. You want to avoid having those screen lights hit the back of your subject, especially if they're gelled.

More distance will give you less wrap-around spill, but obviously you've gotta work with what you've got! I wouldn't sweat it too much, just make sure your screen and subject lighting is happening on two separate planes. If you turn off your screen lights, you should strive to have a well-lit subject against a VERY dark green BG, and if you turn off your subj lights and turn on the screen lights, you should have a VERY dark silhouette against a nice bright green.

2. Is it advantageous to underllight the screen so it's darker than the talent? My thoery is that this will reduce spill. If so by how much?
Given how easy it is to remove spill, there's no point (IMO) in doing backflips to reduce it. The optimal Green level for the background will vary a little depending on whether you're compositing into a dark or bright scene/background. If the scene is bright, you'll want your Green level at 80-90%. If the scene is dark, the screen can come down as low as 70%. I wouldn't go too much lower. If the background is super dark, maybe 60%.

Color purity is also crucial to the quality of the key -- if you aren't gelling your lights, you wouldn't want your Green level go under 70-80% unless you absolutely had to, because you're already losing fidelity by having an impure screen.

3. Another theory -- Do you recommend the screen be perpendicular to the floor, or is a slight tilt better to change the angle of reflection?
Unless you have a very shiny screen, this shouldn't be too important. Screens are more or less matte, so they're going to reflect in all directions no matter what you do... Especially if you're using soft lights on your screen (which is a good idea).

Bert's idea of using a luma key is also an option. The problem with luma keys is that your matte is only as strong as the difference between the darkest point of the screen and the brightest part of the subject. Sometimes it's so low that you have to squelch the life out of your key. Sometimes it's so low it's a negative number, which means you have holes in your matte. Highlights in the eyes or reflections on buttons will do this every time. In this case, even a terrible greenscreen will give you better separation...

The problem with luma keys is that your matte is only as strong as the difference between the darkest point of the screen and the brightest part of the subject. In this case, even a terrible greenscreen will give you better separation...

Ben, thanks so much for all your info, this has been a very educational thread. Paul, just to make it clear, while I've done chroma keys where there was lots of room, in this case we were messing around in my garage experimenting with different types of keys, and were able to pull a sucessful Luma key, mainly because we didn't have a good color for a Chroma Key. But even with that, we're actually going to be setting up a green chroma screen, for exactly the reason Ben said. When our talent would smile, her white teeth would get included by the luma key. I totally agree, a Luma key is really "walking a fine line", and I think the better choice for professional shoots is to try and nail down a successful green or blue screen, because you don't want to go into post and realize that the luma key is taking our your talents hand or something.

Ben, thanks again for sharing, that's such good advice about the talent/background light/dark!

I'm have short, dark hair and an olive complexion. Will I be less prone to spill issues than the good ole' beautiful Susie of the Ultra tutorials?

Does wearing dark clothes help? Anything else?

I'm have short, dark hair and an olive complexion. Will I be less prone to spill issues than the good ole' beautiful Susie of the Ultra tutorials?

Does wearing dark clothes help? Anything else?

Dark colors will technically reflect less green, only because they reflect less of everything. The percentage of green reflected by a dark gray surface is the same percentage reflected by a light gray surface. But the surface quality of the subject will affect the percentage of light reflected -- in other words, shiny surfaces will show more spill than matte surfaces. So subject brightness won't affect the amount of spill suppression you will need to apply, but surface/finish will.

That said, I have to reiterate that people make too big a deal about spill. Modern software is extremely good at removing spill. Reflections are far more problematic than spill. So if your subject is sweaty, shiny, etc, you may have some issues. But a little green spill is a non-issue.

I've attached an example. It's a quick and dirty test shot I did in my apartment. The background is green posterboard from CVS lit with daylight. I'm literally right up against the screen, and the screen is very bright.

The first image is the raw capture (note: all of these were resized from a random 804 x 603 image I had on-hand, so they don't represent the HV20's image quality, which is much, much better)

The second image is a neutral-ish spill removal. Notice how completely the green has been corrected out. This is not a composite -- just a spill correction.

The third image shows that I can correct to any arbitrary color -- here, orange. This would help if you were compositing against a bright orange graphic like Bert was with his luma key example.

The fourth image shows that we can get all the way to blue.

The fifth image shows that we don't have to limit ourselves to correcting to a single color -- here, I'm correcting the green to the color of the background, on a per-pixel level. Again, this is not a full composite, just a spill removal. If we were to use a nice matte to composite this against the background, we'd be getting somewhere.

Hi Ryan!

Yeah, I should be extra-clear in case there's any confusion. I'm suggesting Lee 738 as a lighting filter for the screen only, not as an on-camera filter... On the camera, unfiltered is definitely best -- unless you aren't able to get your in-camera sharpening low enough, in which case it might make sense to test a 1/4 or 1/2 Black Pro Mist or similar.

My experience with magenta backlighting hasn't been very promising -- I wind up having to struggle to remove the magenta cast in my edges. Can you elaborate about that technique a little bit, or even better, post an example frame?

Kino does make green bulbs... Hmm, maybe a Composite Components Digital Green vs Kino green shootout is in order. :)

Magenta backlighting should only be used if you are experiencing a great amount of green artifacts or fringing or what ever green screen experts (not me) are calling it. Either way, I have used the lightest possible magenta from LEE and it fixed the problem.

I can't imagine using a camera filter for this application that would be shameless promotion of my product (which is not above me). We do make cc Green filters but obviously wrong application.

The Kino bulbs work very well. I prefer them to other solutions if nothing else for the ease of use. 1/2 hiegth of the screen back from the screen on a ceiling track and shooting down at a 45 degree angle with a white screen and I was able to get excellent results using the Kino green bulbs on a couple of Diva lights.

Awesome! Thanks for sharing, Ryan!

Ben - I just ordered the 738 JAS Green filters - can't wait to try them out.

I notice that you use a MacBeth ColorChecker.

I shot a subject against my green screen last night, and the color of her sweater was different going out from FCP thru HDMI to a Samsung 245T.

So, I'm definitely going to have to calibrate the monitor (and possibly the HV20 with my fluorescents).

Unfortunately, I can't use my Gretag MacBeth Eye One Display - as the output to the HDMI is only thru FCP (no way for it to detect where on the screen it is).

One suggestion was to shoot the ColorChecker with my HV20, and adjust the monitor's picture to match it.

Other folks on the FCP forum said that would create problems.

I thought I might rip a calibration DVD and play that thru FCP to the HDMI.

Any ideas? Trying not to spring for an MXO (that has calibration) right now - and am trying to talk Black Magic into adding some calibration tools to their Intensity card.

Thanks!

Les, can you use the monitor as a second display through HDMI? (ie, can you throw a Finder window onto it?) If you can, you can use SuperCal ( http://www.bergdesign.com/supercal/ ) to calibrate the monitor manually. It won't be as perfect a calibration as you can get with the Eye One, but at least it will be calibrated.

I only use the Color Checker to check white balance, and as a sanity check on exposure. I wouldn't try to profile or calibrate anything based on it -- there are just too few swatches to sample from to build up a whole profile...

Ben,

Applications like Ultra2 (which I use and love) assert that the background color is not so important. Your illustration of the importance of the color has me thinking very differently. From your tests I would venture that the chroma screen itself will have a lot to do with the results? After all, all chroma screens are not created equal. Being in the biz of writing this kind of software, do you find this to be true? That you get what you pay for and cheap green/blue screens give you lesser results?

I currently use a blue backdrop that matches chroma blue and get really good results because I light the thing perfectly. It is not a real blue screen, just a fabric that, to my eye, exactly matches. I wonder if I used a real one I would not get "good" results but "great" results?

Jim

Not to speak for Ben, but figured I'd chime in with my own opinion....

The exact shade really doesn't matter too much for "pulling a key". You can do it, even with wrinkles and shadows. What I've seen of Ultra looks really really good, but mostly (just my opinion) mainly for glossy corporate video/tv ad keying where you're shooting a person with a stationary camera as they talk about whatever it is they need to talk about for the video.

Nothing wrong with that. Great, very productive, lightning fast, and great looking quality with virtually nominal expense. Optimizing screen color is big-time overkill for this type of content.

There's a level of compositing that strives to go quite a bit further that though.
Where extracting as much detail from frizzy hair and semi transparent objects and cloth as possible, without any hint of chatter, and combining it with a touch of subtle light from the new background wrapping the edges of the subject, and bright lights from the new background glow around greenscreened objects that pass in front of them.

At this level, ever little bit of optimization on set can directly improve the detail and quality in the final comp.

Now ... in big budget films, you pretty much never get this kind of optimization. Heck, these days you're even lucky to have a bluescreen or greenscreen at all. Issues of poorly lit, non optimized screens with wrinkles and seams (or no screen at all) are addressed by armies of effects artists that will literally trace a matte around people and objects ... frame by frame for pretty much the whole film. (if you're unfamiliar with this, have a look at this behind-the-scenes video from Peter Jackson's Kong production diary that covers the subject: http://www.kongisking.net/perl/newsview/15/1125073579)

Of course, independent producers and directors really don't have the kind of budgets to be able to pay for such an effort ... so this is where optimization of the screen (down to color) can really pay off in helping produce a very high-end finished look, with much less effort and work than gets put into multi-million-dollar movies.

Hope this helps.
Have fun.

after watching that short on Jackson's King Kong rotoscope artists, I'm amazed that a production that big wouldn't just get the shot right. I feel like more money is used up to spend in post-production when they could have just taken more time to get the shot right.

But then again, I'm a student filmmaker so I come from a world where I have $500 to make a short film and I have to go do it.

after watching that short on Jackson's King Kong rotoscope artists, I'm amazed that a production that big wouldn't just get the shot right. I feel like more money is used up to spend in post-production when they could have just taken more time to get the shot right.

But then again, I'm a student filmmaker so I come from a world where I have $500 to make a short film and I have to go do it.

Actually, it's "on set time" that's the most expensive.
On set costs include rental of the facility, the equipment, the director's pay plus that of all the assistant directors, producers, script supervisor(s), camera crew (per camera), high-paid talent, low paid talent, an army of people that move everything around, not to mention that film costs (including transport and scanning) is not cheap.

In the end, the cost of a roto artist's time to roto out that stuff in the background is nominal compared to setting up and rolling again to retake a shot .... not to mention that the director could have REALLY liked the actor's performance on a given take and you never know how many re-takes would be needed to get that particular performance again.

The roto work on Kong isn't even the heaviest I've seen. Consider the canibal island shots with all the natives with spears and detailed head-dresses and various ferns and rope bridges and such .... ALL of which had to be roto'ed since the director decided to change the look of the background after having shot with NO bluescreen.

Another heavy roto example is Flags of our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima, where Eastwood didn't want bluescreen on location since it would slow down and distract his production process. All the live action soldiers(and their gear) on the beach had to be traced so that the background could be added in without keying. Go to the Digital Doman website (http://www.d2.com), click Features, Click "Behind The Scenes" and click the fifth panel on the top row (Flags of Our Fathers) to see some of the shot buildups.
Consider that when the soldiers are waving at the plane fly-by ... all those heads, arms, hats, and cables were traced so the whole background could be replaced ..... and that's just one of the hundreds of shots on the show.

Have fun.

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the input. Is that Peter Jackson? He looks so different! Weight, hair, beard. Wow what a change.

I agree 100% with your comments on the Ultra2. And all of those reasons are why we use it on occasion. But we are moving to an all Mac studio and Ultra is PC only. So something new will take its place. We are also moving from an XL1s to shooting HD with a Pany HVX200, so all these things concern me.

When I first used Ultra I was using 5,000 K fluorescents to light the blue screen and tungstens to light the talent. The results were awful. Once I got some Westcott Spiderlites and shot everything but the hair light with 5,000 K everything changed. I am almost paranoid of shooting with less than 5,000 k now. Gimmie sun or fluorescents. I am about to start experimenting with the HVX200 now to see what I will have to learn and unlearn.

But hey, that challenge is what makes this great, eh?

Jim

The "Ultra" products for the Mac pipeline are :
Conduit (http://www.dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=conduit15)
and/or
dvMatte Blast (http://www.dvgarage.com/prod/prod.php?prod=dvmatteb)

Again, I'm not affiliated with these products in any way, nor do I get a kickback. In fact I only use them occationally, but many people I know that do TONS of video keying (as in hours of material per week) swear by these.

The guy that started this thread might be able to help if you have questions about them.

Have fun.

Applications like Ultra2 (which I use and love) assert that the background color is not so important. Your illustration of the importance of the color has me thinking very differently. From your tests I would venture that the chroma screen itself will have a lot to do with the results? After all, all chroma screens are not created equal. Being in the biz of writing this kind of software, do you find this to be true? That you get what you pay for and cheap green/blue screens give you lesser results?

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you!

My response to the above would be: abso-f*cking-lutely. :) The issue is not how much you pay for the screen, but how good it is. Getting the right light filters and cheap paint to perform is what I'm up to, but if you want a sure thing, Composite Components has pretty much perfect screens and bulbs.

Screen color definitely counts -- it determines the amount of raw color difference in your matte, and lighting color can help you make a good screen a great screen. No matter what the technology, the more pure the screen, the better the key. End of story. Even lighting is ideal, but a screen correction plate can save even terrible lighting, so color is crucial.

Regarding Holywood, it comes down to this very simple fact: they have enough money to "fix it in post." You don't. :) I know of multiple big budget FX productions that have gone to the expense of shooting against greenscreen, only to have artists (aka brand new recruits) rotoscope everything because the stuff they got on-set was basically unkeyable.

This is like doubling your FX budget for no reason. DPs think they know it all because they've shot a lot of blue + green screen. What they don't know is how difficult their shots were to extract. They internalize myths that they completely made up ("screen should be 2 stops darker than the subject!" or "some poorly-lit green back there is better than nothing!") that have no basis in reality. The next thing they know, the final composite is on the screen, and they think they saved the day, when in reality, it took three 22-year-olds staying up all night roto'ing the shot. :P

So don't pay attention to what big productions do. They have to get the shot on the day and move on, because their combined costs are like $100,000 an hour. You have the luxury of getting it right, on the cheap. :) Asking your talent to hang tight while you fiddle with the lighting for half an hour doesn't cost you anything, but it will save you tens of hours of roto.

Regarding Ultra: if you're getting good results from them, don't change anything! What the new dvmatte strives for is the ultimate in fine edge fidelity. It might not be important for talking heads in a corporate shoot. But if you're doing narrative filmmaking, and need to reproduce every flyaway wisp of hair, dvmatte is your tool.

I will also say... as far as I know, dvmatte is the only keyer in active development. Serious Magic (Ultra) sold out to Adobe, as did CFC with Keylight. Ultimatte (aka AdvantEdge) hasn't seen any new technology for over 10 years. (!)

I

Since filters are subtractive, a good green filter will hold back most of the red and blue light, but allow most (but not all) of the green light to pass through. So for a relatively small decrease in exposure, you can almost eliminate the red and blue light which is corrupting your greenscreen.

- ben

Ben,

Did you light with tungsten or daylight balanced. Which filter do you think would work best for daylight balanced.

Thanks for the very very helpful info.

Cheers, David

Ben,
Did you light with tungsten or daylight balanced. Which filter do you think would work best for daylight balanced.

David,

I used fluorescents with standard "cool white" bulbs. They're kind of halfway between daylight and tungsten, clocking in at 4100K. You can use anything to light the screen, as long as you manually white balance the camera to the lights, and then add the filter. Since it's a hassle to get the filters on and off the flos, I white balance off a separate set of unfiltered coolwhites, and then bring in the filtered banks. Lee 738 will be the best filter if you follow that procedure.

If, on the other hand, you want to be able to set your camera to the default daylight setting and not have to manually adjust the WB, then you'll have to experiment with your exact lights and camera to figure out what filter will be best.

Hope this helps!

Ben,

I translate "abso-f*cking-lutely" to mean yes? Heh heh.

I am happy with "good" results from Ultra2, but would be happier with "insane results" as you put it originally. Right now we are doing 99% web video and Ultra is fine for that. But we want to do more DVD and Doc work, so yes I want to graduate to a new level. Movning to HD makes this even more critical. I will check out your dvmatte for sure after this post. I see dvmatteblast, dvmatte pro, etc. Differences? Feel free to email me- jimross81(at)comcast.net.

I checked the Composite Components website, but no way to order. Do they sell through dealers or just to the industry? Do you know of some other reputable names for a screen that a small studio could get?

Jim

:)

blast is our easy to use realtime keyer, whereas pro is deeper and more powerful... The current version of Pro is a bit out of date, which is why we're releasing a brand new realtime version very soon. It will be available for Final Cut Pro at first, and then a variety of other platforms hopefully soon afterwards.

Composite Components is great, but their website really needs some lovin'. :) The best thing is to email or call them directly -- I think all their contact info is available on the site. If you tell them I sent you, I think they may give you a bit of a break.

Thanks, I'll give them a call!

Jim

:)
Composite Components is great, but their website really needs some lovin'. :) The best thing is to email or call them directly -- I think all their contact info is available on the site. If you tell them I sent you, I think they may give you a bit of a break.

I couldn't believe the website for an academy award winning green screen supplier. Their site does indeed need some lovin.

I've tried doing some elementary keying from some Panny DVCPro stuff using After Effects and Premiere. Man it's not easy. I kept on getting lots of green spillover at the fringes. The guys at Stargate sure have a great GS reel!

YouTube - Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Reel 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k)

Wow. Flash back! Stumbled upon this post that I had commented on almost three years ago. My have things changed! Now I shoot blue screen and green screen all the time and I remember now how I used this thread to build my studio and choose my equipment. I love this site!

Jim
High Definition Video Production In Atlanta: The Ultimate HD Productions (http://www.theultimatehdproductions.com)

Doing some other searches, I came across this thread. I usually do not try to revive old, old threads. But the information in this about green screen work is worth reading again.

The technology has moved forward over the years. But the techniques in here will still serve well. Ben Syverson, you made a great contribution with this material.