Is Green Screen Overated?

[billyfromConsett]

We've had a few tutorials at our place - but is it worth pursuing?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k

[Arthur Bates]

I have little experience of blue/green screen but as an animator on the occasions I have used it, it worked well. I only needed a small screen and a coloured piece of cardboard two foot square did the job. I would reccomend it as a very useful piece of equipment in this size but I would not like to have to stretch it across a street or worse a landscape. Regarding the film, I would it like to have been slower and more explicit. Like so many things to day especially instructions, it shows what can be done and not how to do it. But then I would say that, now I'm old and grumpy. Arthur B.

[billyfromConsett]

I saw a greenscreen demo involving a film remake of the D-Day landings, and these also were demod at high speed, though with a little more explanation that the above demo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRS9cpOMYv0

It's high quality planning and imagination. Top film-makers.

The orginal programme piece is also on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdppwQIO ... re=related

[Brian Saberton]

Did any of you see The Apprentice last night? The task was to sell people a video experience where the customers were filmed against a background supposedly ski-ing or motor racing. The thing was that the backdrop used was a kind of grey colour and to get the green screen effect there was something that looked similar to a ring flash unit, but with a series of green lights round it, mounted on the lens of the video camera.

[billyfromConsett]

Aye, I noticed that. The camera had a ring of what looked like green leds around the lens, and they were filming a greyish canvas. The subject looked to have shadows all over the screen, yet the effect seemed to work.

Can anybody explain that? I thought that the screen needed to be well and evenly lit, with the subject maybe three feet in front of it!

I wonder if the cameras recorded in a higher colour processing range?

[Dave Watterson]

Those screens are usually glass-beaded or lenticular so that they bounce back a lot of the light thrown at them. The LEDs give sufficient strength to turn the background blue for chromakey purposes and having them directly by the lens helps avoid shadows. The talent also has to be lit conventionally.

A guy in East Anglia was experimenting with one a couple of years ago. You can buy the kit from the USA.

And that greyness of the screen ... is just like the dull effect you get looking at a flat-screen from an angle. The main light from the front bounces strongly back but very little bounces sideways.

-Dave

[Brian Saberton]

The backdrop they were using on The Apprentice looked like a standard photographic back-cloth.

[tom hardwick]

There's lots of YouTube videos explaining it. Here's one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5vk6iGsXSI

[Brian Saberton]

Amazing technology!