I have ZERO lights for a green screen studio I'm creating over the next couple months. I have found that it's easier to start off right, than to try to retro-fit existing things. Hence my question....

I need to know two things:

1. What is the basic lighting and equipment I should acquire for a bare-bones, but decent green screen set?
2. What lighting and equipment do I need to do it right (not bare-bones). I.e. professional looking.

This is what I'm doing. Green-screen video with a Canon A1 to be used with Adobe Ultra virtual sets primarily. The room dimensions are roughly 15'X15' with 10' ceilings. The "tone" of the virtual sets is documentary/news in nature. 95% of the time the video will be of one person at a time.

If more info is needed, please let me know.

I have ZERO lights for a green screen studio I'm creating over the next couple months. I have found that it's easier to start off right, than to try to retro-fit existing things. Hence my question....

I need to know two things:

1. What is the basic lighting and equipment I should acquire for a bare-bones, but decent green screen set?
2. What lighting and equipment do I need to do it right (not bare-bones). I.e. professional looking.

This is what I'm doing. Green-screen video with a Canon A1 to be used with Adobe Ultra virtual sets primarily. The room dimensions are roughly 15'X15' with 10' ceilings. The "tone" of the virtual sets is documentary/news in nature. 95% of the time the video will be of one person at a time.

If more info is needed, please let me know.

Two words - Reflecmedia ChromaFlex.
http://www.reflecmedia.com/

Dan

I'd use fluorescent lights only. They are nice soft lights, don't need a lot of power and don't get hot. Maybe one or two small halogen lights as a hard edge light would be good, but you can also use a soft light for a hair/edge light. Doesn't define the edges as well as a hard source, but it usually looks nicer on hair than a hard light.

I'd say you need two fluorescents for the green screen, two for key and fill and one for the edge light. Maybe you can do it with just one key and a reflector, but I'd say two plus reflector is better for good keying.

what is you budget i got a lighting system for greenscreen from pclightingsystems.com which is designed for chromakey all the lights are fluorescent and work great it was the 11500 watt 5 head system from day-flo

I recently worked on a green-screen project where the studio had two kino-flo flourescent fixtures with chroma-green bulbs. Definately the classiest setup I've ever used (and I've used a lot!) Big, soft, narrow color spectrum, bright as one could wish.

Somewhere's online there are plans for sticking a piece of electrical conduit in concrete in a 5-gallon plastic bucket - that's your stand. Then, mount a fluoro 4' two-bulb shop light (with electronic ballast) vertically on the conduit with u-bolts. From there I'd test the junk tubes the shoplight comes with, perhaps step up to high-cri tubes, stick green sleeves on the tubes, buy a roll of blackwrap to help mask...

I always thought that would be a great way to do two screen lights for less than $100 but I've never had a reason to do it.

Two words - Reflecmedia ChromaFlex.
http://www.reflecmedia.com/

Dan

I checked this link out and this looks incredible. Has anyone used it? And does it really work as described? I see that the basic kit at B&H is around $5000! Wow! Pricey!

The thing I really liked about this is that I don't need as many lights as the "standard" way does. Taping in Phoenix in the summer is hard enough since many times we need to turn the A/C off for the particular shoots (audio reasons), and then turn it back on again after the shoot is over. Shoots usually only can last MAX 30 mins. because EVEN WITHOUT LIGHTS, room temps inch back up from 60-degrees to 100-degrees! So with lights I know it's worse! If I can eliminate some heat, that would make a lot of sense for my needs.

what is you budget?

Just like everyone else, I want it as cheap as possible. But I want to do it right. I'd like to keep under $3000-$4000, but if I can get it for 1/10 that, I'd be ecstatic!

I have absolutely NO LIGHTING right now, so I want to approach this the right way from the start. It's nice to have a clean slate to built from.

I recently worked on a green-screen project where the studio had two kino-flo flourescent fixtures with chroma-green bulbs. Definately the classiest setup I've ever used (and I've used a lot!) Big, soft, narrow color spectrum, bright as one could wish.


I did a little Google'ing and couldn't find anything specific to what you are talking about. Are you saying the bulbs themselves green and emit chroma green light? Do you happen to have a link on this? Is this the best type of setup?

lloyd with the kit i got the two big lights are used exclusively for the chromakey whereas the other three lights are portable enough to be used in a variety of situations you keep saying you want to do it right the first time so do it right

I did a little Google'ing and couldn't find anything specific to what you are talking about. Are you saying the bulbs themselves green and emit chroma green light? Do you happen to have a link on this? Is this the best type of setup?

Hey, it's one way to do it, it works really well.

Looking around, we had to be using the 488-K5-S lamps described on this page (http://www.kinoflo.com/Kino%20Flo%20lamps/Visual%20Effects%20and%20Designer%20Colors/Visual%20Effects%20and%20Designer%20Colors.htm).

There is no one way that is best in all circumstances, in my humble opinion. I've been in the biz professionally over 25 years and shot countless chromakeys, I was quite impressed with the kino approach. We did shut off some lamps so we were down to one 4-footer on each side.

But kino-flo fixtures are pretty expensive for parking in a green-screen studio. Especially since it sounds like you're needing foreground lights for your subject as well. I do like the bulbs.

However, Rosco & Lee both make gels that will do most of the same effect for about $5 per sheet, there are many ways to skin this cat.

Again, if I were setting up a studio for this (in Phoenix!) fluorescents are the way to go, but I'd use a do-it-yourself approach with some bulbs from Kino or green gel.

The idea here with the green light source is that you avoid illuminating your screen with other colors. As green as it is, it has some reflectivity across the spectrum, and green light further reduces the intensity of other colors allowing a cleaner key more easily.

PS. Mark's pclightingsystems.com system looks good too, and surprise! includes green gels. And you're going to need a minimum of 5 instruments to light this thing right. (that would be key, fill, backlight aka. hairlight, and 2 screen lights).

PPS. You should check out some books on lighting!

PPPS. Here's (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/263769-REG/Kino_Flo_488_K5_S_Visual_Effects_Lamp_.html/) the bulb by itself. Note that it's 75w, and most 4' flos are 40w, most shop lights use two for 80w total.

Seth and others, thanks so much for your direction in this! You detailed comments are greatly appreciated! Thanks for taking the time.

I am looking more into this and yes I do have a book on lighting. I'm on page 50 of my 250 page book on lighting ("Lighting for digital video and television" by John Jackman-- http://www.amazon.com/Lighting-Digital-Video-Television-Second/dp/1578202515/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202165727&sr=8-1). However there's only about 6-7 pages on greenscreen. Also the book seems a little dated, but I guess that doesn't matter too terribly much since light is still light, right?

I'd take any other book recommendations if you have them.

Thanks again.

what is you budget i got a lighting system for greenscreen from pclightingsystems.com which is designed for chromakey all the lights are fluorescent and work great it was the 11500 watt 5 head system from day-flo

Mark, I assume this is the one you have: http://www.pclightingsystems.com/DF/11500-kit.html
Is that correct? That looks great!

Do you have any humming/buzzing problems from it? I need to be very careful with that in my audio recordings.

Hi Lloyd,

On the cheap here is a Lowel EDU link with some helpful info on lighting a green screen using the traditional route.
http://lowel.com/edu/lesson_green_screen.html

Then here is another link off the Lowel site with a newsroom set-up with fluorescents. http://www.lowel.com/fluotec/setups/chromaset.html

Here's an excerpt from DVcreators.net "DV Enlightenment" on lighting a green screen http://dvcreators.net/media/demos/ross/ross_greenscreen_excerpt.htm

And finally, here is a sample of Reflecmedia that I put together http://vimeo.com/393748

I checked this link out and this looks incredible. Has anyone used it? And does it really work as described? I see that the basic kit at B&H is around $5000! Wow! Pricey!

The thing I really liked about this is that I don't need as many lights as the "standard" way does. Taping in Phoenix in the summer is hard enough since many times we need to turn the A/C off for the particular shoots (audio reasons), and then turn it back on again after the shoot is over. Shoots usually only can last MAX 30 mins. because EVEN WITHOUT LIGHTS, room temps inch back up from 60-degrees to 100-degrees! So with lights I know it's worse! If I can eliminate some heat, that would make a lot of sense for my needs.

Hi Lloyd:

That basic kit with the 8x8' screen is about $2,500.00. I have shot around 300 to 400 interviews with the setup. If you want to see it in action, I shot all of the interviews for the TCM Documentary "The Dawn of Sound" with it as well as all of the interviews for the docs on Howard Hawk's "Rio Bravo" DVD with it. The Dawn of Sound is a 90 minute doc that is also included on the Warner Bros. 2 DVD set of "The Jazz Singer" with Al Jolson (yes, the original one). We interviewed a lot of experts in sound like Ben Burtt and Dane Davis as well as some real historical figures like Mickey Rooney and Rose Marie. For the Rio Bravo, I shot interviews with John Carpenter, Walter Hill, Peter Bogdanovich, Angie Dickinson, etc. all with the ChromaFlex.

It's the only practical way to shoot green screen on location quickly if you work alone or or to shoot green screen in small rooms period. I have done interviews with this setup in rooms as small as 8' x 10' with the subject 10" in front of the screen. There is no spill, no lights other than the ringlight and no heat. Of course, you still need to light your subject but not having 2,000 watts lighting up a green screen keeps a room a lot cooler.

The drawbacks are:

1. If you abuse the screen, it's useless. This means spilling makeup/powder on it, drinks, etc. The screen is embedded with thousands of tiny glass beads and you can't abuse it at all. To replace it is really costly.

2. If your talent wears glasses, you will get the reflection of the ring light in the glasses. This is fixable but a PITA to fix, you have to key it separately in another matte layer and then it will end up looking like a white or gray light reflection.

3. System does not work with teleprompter at all.

4. If you fly, the 8x8' screen folds down to about the size of a large Flexfill. It is workable but a pain if you are dragging it all over NY or London. I use a U-Haul mirror box and packing tape. Works but I need a new box about every 5-6 flights because it gets torn up.

Other than these limitations, it's a dream to use, its almost magical to setup an entire greenscreen interview in a tiny room alone in less than 5 minutes and get a perfect key everytime.

Best,

Dan

I always recommend that people light in two layers: the cyc or background lighting for the screen which should be smooth and even and without hotspots and the foreground or subject lighting which can be whatever you need it to be for the "look" on the subject to match with the composited background.

On my site, we have a gallery for posting user installations. I'm a bit behind in getting entries in there but the first one shows a Cool Lights customer's green screen setup which was really well done on a budget of $2500. That really stretched well IMHO when you look at the quality of the screen setup which is the linoleum type continuous hard cyc painted green and includes the floor too.

http://www.coollights.biz/wordpress/archives/category/gallery

This is the way I always recommend to my customers to do green screen lighting on a budget. He used mainly home depot class shoplights (with electronic ballasts) and daylight bulbs to light the screen. In addition, he used two of our CL-655 studio flo fixtures as foreground subject lighting. A total "cool" solution for green screen lighting and won't break the bank either.

Another way to do it (especially when you will have more than one angle of screen for multiple angles and including the floor) is to use a spacelight type fixture which is really a high intensity lantern with diffusion around it. These are used in some green screen settings where multiple walls and the floor are covered for total replacement of the background and "world" that the subjects are to be matted into.

The DIY way to use this method is to put a few of the 200w 8U fluorescent daylight lamps hung upside down from mogul fixtures at intervals in the action area of the screen. I call these "poor man's spacelights". They'll put out around 600w to 700w each equivalent to tungsten diffused softlight lanterns. This gives a nice even and flat lighting over the entire action area of the screen and floor. Hope this helps.

...For the Rio Bravo, I shot interviews with John Carpenter, Walter Hill, Peter Bogdanovich, Angie Dickinson, etc. all with the ChromaFlex.

It's the only practical way to shoot green screen on location quickly if you work alone or or to shoot green screen in small rooms period. I have done interviews with this setup in rooms as small as 8' x 10' with the subject 10" in front of the screen...
Dan, I have access to a system but haven't used it much. How wide are you going in your interview shots - any issues there?

Hi Lloyd,

On the cheap here is a Lowel EDU link with some helpful info on lighting a green screen using the traditional route.
http://lowel.com/edu/lesson_green_screen.html

Then here is another link off the Lowel site with a newsroom set-up with fluorescents. http://www.lowel.com/fluotec/setups/chromaset.html

Here's an excerpt from DVcreators.net "DV Enlightenment" on lighting a green screen http://dvcreators.net/media/demos/ross/ross_greenscreen_excerpt.htm

And finally, here is a sample of Reflecmedia that I put together http://vimeo.com/393748

Hey, thanks a lot for all that. I really liked the videos you did. I anxious to see more! :)

Dan, I have access to a system but haven't used it much. How wide are you going in your interview shots - any issues there?

Hi Seth:

I typically am framing from the waist up to a CU with head and shoulders but I have done standing full body length. You just garbage matte out the edges. As long as talent has green around them, the rest is easy to fix.

Dan

Hi Guy:

Really nice clips with the Reflecmedia ChromaFlex you posted on Vimeo. For anyone wanting to see this thing in action, this is a great demo.

Dan

lloyd there is absolutely no humming or buzzing from the system if there had been i would have sent it back oh and yes that is the exact system

Thanks for all your posts. I will be looking into this more, but the fluorescents seem like the obvious winner for my situation. Now I just need to determine if I should try this DYI or spurge for a "real" set.

Still on the topic, can you explain to me what the best green-screen for my scenario would be? I have an upstairs loft area that I will be doing the shoots (aka, "the studio"). It's also a play area for my kids when I'm not shooting. I will be shooting 1-2 times a week with greenscreen, and the rest of the time it will be used as a normal house room and other non-green shoots (more on this later on another thread).

Right off the bat I know I'm not going to be painting any walls green, so I'm assuming a curtain of sorts is what I need. I see a curtain as a easy "here today, gone tomorrow" set-up.

Oh, BTW, there will be some full body shots, so I need green behind and below the talent, which is another reason for the curtain.

Do you all agree that this is the way to go? If so, what product would you recommend? I need it to put up with a lot of putting up and taking down on a weekly basis... washable too I'm sure... I know Dan Brockett recommends Reflecmedia ChromaFlex, but I can't afford the $5k set up, although it looks like it's AWESOME!

Thanks.

Generally, you want a green screen to be really flat, and not have wrinkles or "fullness" (the curtain's wavy appearance) that cast tiny shadows. So, curtains are rarely used.

Some choices are:
Photo background paper can be rolled down from a background stand or ceiling hanger system, and right under the feet, but it will get wrinkled and is probably unacceptable for a foot shot if carpet is underneath. When you eventually get folds and wrinkles in the paper you cut some off and roll more down.

Green-screens are available as nylon cloth on photo-flex-style popup reflector frames, good for a waist shot.

If no cyc & paintout, the best way for a full shot is with this non-woven foam-backed fabric rolled down from a background stand, available from your local light/grip store, eefx.com, filmtools.com, etc. (so far as I know, no forum sponsors sell this material.)

However...

You never mentioned a head-to-toe shot in your posts until now, and this is typically harder to light, harder to key, and needs a specific light plan to evenly light the screen in the area of the feet equal in intensity to the area behind the subject. You can't use green illumination for the screen, as you're also lighting the subject with the "screen" lights. This is typically done with a couple of hanging lantern-style fixtures that are carefully placed to provide equal intensity below and behind. Now, you have some very flat lighting on your subject, and add key and backlights, maybe siders too, to give the subject some dimensionality.

In short, starting off your lighting career with head-to-toe screen lighting is pretty ambitious, more time & trouble, a steeper learning curve, and perhaps a more expensive screen material... then you need those lanterns, which can be inexpensive.

But if you've got to have a full shot don't let me rain on your parade, I'm sure forum members will be just as generous with suggestions as they have been :)

You're getting some great advice here, LLoyd. Since I shoot something similar to what you're describing, I'll weigh in.

I bought a 10'x20' muslin chromakey green and 13'-long support system on eBay and use is to pull some pretty good keys with Adobe After Effect's Keylight keyer. I've shot in my home in various spaces in the local area as small as 14'x10', but the setup works best in 20'x15' rooms or bigger. I can set up the screen, lights, camera and audio in about an hour.

I've done one head-to-toe job where I keyed out a buddy of mine for a "walk-on" website. The final results are on the first four pages of this site here: http://www.inspectionadvantage.com/ I'm also attaching a frame grab prior to keying.

Due to the final image size and zero budget, I didn't spend much time lighting the talent or the screen. Used a total of five lights: key, fill, hair, and two screen lights. All compact flos in inexpensive SmithVictor lights and stands. I also rotated my XH-A1 90 degrees with a home-made bracket.

Most of my other keying work is from the belt up. Here's my latest example for a local Chamber of Commerce gala: http://www.beeriodic.com/client/broomfield/playlist.htm And here's one rough draft from another project I'm working on this week: http://www.browncowvideo.com/YWCA/stan.html These were shot "on location"... usually a big boardroom with light (and sound) control. One of the Chamber interviews was even shot in my living room. The "golden ears" out there could probably tell which one.

Anyways, I hope these real-world samples and details will give you some ideas.

Regards,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions

You never mentioned a head-to-toe shot in your posts until now, and this is typically harder to light, harder to key, and needs a specific light plan to evenly light the screen in the area of the feet equal in intensity to the area behind the subject. You can't use green illumination for the screen, as you're also lighting the subject with the "screen" lights. This is typically done with a couple of hanging lantern-style fixtures that are carefully placed to provide equal intensity below and behind. Now, you have some very flat lighting on your subject, and add key and backlights, maybe siders too, to give the subject some dimensionality.

In short, starting off your lighting career with head-to-toe screen lighting is pretty ambitious, more time & trouble, a steeper learning curve, and perhaps a more expensive screen material... then you need those lanterns, which can be inexpensive.
:)

Sorry I never mentioned that it was head to toe. Hmm... just when I though I was getting this figured out! :)

So the hanging lanterns would be to light up the green back drop as well as the green on the floor, right? In so doing, you're lighting up the talent equally, I'd imagine... Or are the lights behind the talent?

I bought a 10'x20' muslin chromakey green and 13'-long support system on eBay and use is to pull some pretty good keys with Adobe After Effect's Keylight keyer. I've shot in my home in various spaces in the local area as small as 14'x10', but the setup works best in 20'x15' rooms or bigger. I can set up the screen, lights, camera and audio in about an hour.
Regards,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions

Thanks for that. I'd love to see a wide-angle of that shot to see the lighting placement. Do you happen to have something like that?

I'm starting to see the problem in lighting the area below the feet. At least with just a green background, it's pretty straight forward in lighting the background completely separate from the talent, but when the background continues on and UNDER the talent, the separation becomes more difficult is what I got from Seth's email.

Well, I do want to do this, and I'm up for a challenge, so I need to figure out what to buy to make this happen.... and learn what I need to learn along the way to do it right.

I will try to attach some photos of my space I intend to work in tonight to help with this possibly.

Thanks for your post and picture.

I also see why the green gels wouldn't work now in this situation because they green wouldn't be separated from the subject, but instead would be spilling all over him/her.

Thanks for that. I'd love to see a wide-angle of that shot to see the lighting placement. Do you happen to have something like that?

Lloyd, this is from a different shoot, and there's some extraneous stuff in the shot since I was sharing the room with a still photographer, but you'll get the idea... screen lights, key, fill, and hairlights.

One of the interviews that day was of four co-owners of a local business, and that was a lot of bodies in one place at one time. We shot it with two cameras, four lavs. and a couple more lights. It was far from perfect... lighting or audio-wise, but acceptable in the end. I'm still working through the edit and keying, so I'll have to see what I can do with the footage.

HTH,
Brian Brown
BrownCow Productions

seemed as good a thread as any..


need advice on what standard is best used to shoot for keying...
1080i or 1080p

I'm thinking of shooting with the camera at 90° to give me Hi rez content I can then comp into standard def projects.

1080p

Reducing motion interlace artifacts can only help a clean key.

thanks.

makes sense.
would you suggest upping the shutter speed to cut down on motion blur?