What settings for shooting green screen?
 

About to do my first green screen shoot with my V1. Any tips on what settings to put the V1 in for shooting green screen?

Thx

Kevin

I have never done any green screen work with the V1 but I have done a fair amount with My Betacam. From what I have found, I light the green screen separately from the subject. I try to get very even lighting across the green screen. I use the zebras to check this. Then I light the subject and avoid spill onto the green screen. Then I set the camera to properly expose for the subject. I have been told the V1 is really great on green screen work.

Something else to ensure is to make sure the green screen is lit at a LOWER IRE than the foreground subject. This makes it much easier to pull the key.

If you can set up a rim or hair light it will make the key cleaner as well.

I have done a little green screen with my V1. It seems to work OK. Not as good as beta by any means but OK.

Thanks for the helpy guys!

Chris, can you eloborate on what you mean by "lower IRE" and a "Hair light" (new to this industry so not up on these terms)

I plan on doing some green screen work with my V1. I am going to capture from the HDMI connection. Ether in uncompressed HD or cineform codec. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

How do you capture from HDMI I thought that was a domestic only system for playback?

Do you need to get a converter plug from HDMI to Firewire?

Set up the camera and compose the shot with the green screen in the background. Set the camera exposure to MANUAL and configure the exposure you want to use for the foreground (shoot for about 70 IRE and above on the foreground subject). Then adjust the lighting on the green screen to be about 50 IRE according to the histogram (using a waveform monitor would be even better).

A hair/rim light is a light shining forward from above and off axis to the lens on the subject. This is good for giving a sharp break between the background and the subject and also will kill any color spill from the green screen on the subject. You can even use a color gel that is opposite of the key color on the hair light to make the break even sharper. You don't want to put so much light on the subject to make a halo of light on them.

look at the intensity card from Black Magic design. It captures uncompressed HD from the HDMI connection.

I have one installed in my dual quad core with a raid capture drive. I have tested the device and it works great but I have yet to set up a green screen and capture some footage. I will do just that and run some test as soon as I can.

I was just hoping someone had beat me to it and had some advice.

Thanks for thouse tips Chris.

Ron I'd be interested in your tests, I have a 2 x intel dual core Mac Pro with 9GB RAM and a 750GB SATA II drive (which is supposed to deliver 3GB a second). Would that be able to capture HDMI with the Balckmagic Intensity card or do you really need a RAID drive setup?

Thx

Kevin

Kevin as far as I can tell it is essential to have a raid capture drive set up. The intensity comes with a test utility that will run performance test on your drives. You may be able to get that utility from their web site.