Blue Screen Lighting
D. Jacobs
able to get a decent bluescreen setup working. I bought a large sheet
of blue fabric from a fabric store and stapled it to a wall inside my
house. After fussing with this setup, I determined that it needs to be
illuminated evenly.
At this point, I'm wondering if there's a better way than using blue
fabric alone. I thought that if I could illuminate a white wall using a
blue light, that this would be better, because if I use a blue light,
it's the same as using a blue wall with a white light (perhaps?).
Does anyone with bluescreen experience have any advise on what I could
buy or do to get the perfect bluescreen setup? I am mostly interested
in shooting a person standing in front of the bluescreen.
I also learned a little about back-lighting the subject that's in front
of the bluescreen to reduce the blue glow around the edges of the hair
and such.
Are there blue lamps that could make a white wall work pretty good for
what I'm trying to do?
Thanks a great deal for any advise.
Dave
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Bill Farnsworth
>I've been using NLE hw and software for about a year and I've not been
>able to get a decent bluescreen setup working.
Ok Dave,
Here is what you HAVE to do to get the results you want with a minimum of
compromise.
First. Buy the right paint or buy a Westcott bluescreen background.
Roscoe makes the paint. It comes in Chroma key blue or green or Ultimatte blue
or green. Don't mess around with paint you can get from any paint store. Roscoe
paint has the lowest reflectance rating.That's one reason it's not cheap. (the
other is, it's Roscoe) You CAN'T get that formula at your local Kelly - Moore.
There are those that say that they get "good" results from the local paint
store. Fine.
Why settle for good? Do it right.
You can get the paint or the background at, www.studiodepot.com on the west
coast. or www.markertek.com on the east.
Make sure your surface to be painted or the background is smooth.
Light it evenly. Avoid spots and shadows
Don't place your subject close to the blue surface.
Light the subject with strong backlighting. BUT not so strong that it looks
artificial. (your gonna have to play with this. Call it .....the learning
curve.)
Make sure your camera doesn't look blue to begin with. Otherwise your key
will look ragged.You want to balance for tungsten light.
A blue light won't work for a large surface. It bounce off the walls and
causes more problems than good. It does work nicely for very small area. Like
inside the windows of table top models.
And finally, buy the best software program you can get your hands on.
Maybe I should say FIRST buy the best software you can get your hands on.
Bill Farnsworth/Videographer
Redmond, Washington
Nabet-57 Hollywood
GTC
Manxprods
To add to the always-right-on info from Bill F.--
1) If you're using blue screen you might try a backlight with straw or maybe
quarter orange gel. Since you can't get rid of the blue "wash" you need to
cancel it out with light from "the other side of the color wheel." With green
screen, you need a magenta-tone backlight. This leads to the reason why some
(see question below) say blue screen is considered preferable --the straw
backlight, where it spills past the blue wash isn't as objectionable on flesh
tones as the magenta might be if you used green.
2) Don't paint or cover the whole friggin' wall. If you do, flag or otherwise
cover every inch you don't need for background. Not only does this reduce the
amount of reflected blue or green light reaching your subject, but perhaps even
more important, it minimizes the angle at which it edge-lights the subject.
Also watch for the green/blue wash light taking a "second bounce" off a white
ceiling or light/shiny floor and tinting your subject on the rebound!.
3) As Bill says, place your subject as far as practical from the blue
screen--for the same reason as above--it reduces the volume of wash and also
"moves back" the angle.
4) Don't overlight the bluescreen.
Now a question for Bill, Bob or others with deep knowledge in this area. Is it
true as I've heard that with video, green might give a sharper edge than blue
as the YUV color space accords more data to green color data?
Just curious....
Tip
Manxprods
Noted in my post the phrase "a back light" in the singular. Obviously you want
two backlights, at the best angles you can determine (around 45 degrees) that
cancel out the wash but don't otherwise add orange or magenta.
Sorry for the typo...
Tip
Bill Farnsworth
>Now a question for Bill, Bob or others with deep knowledge in this area. Is
>it
>true as I've heard that with video, green might give a sharper edge than blue
>as the YUV color space accords more data to green color data?
According to the Ultimatte guy. Yep. Along with the Ultimatte software. (that
goes without saying)
But as you know....... There will be times when the forground dictates the
color of the background too.
Derek Dexheimer
stop darker than your foreground. Opinions vary, but some say as much as
two stops. I've found you don't have to be particular with this, even
though it does help to have the background a little dark. (Far more
important for the light to be even.) What say our wise men?
Derek
Alan Lloyd
>Dave--
>
>To add to the always-right-on info from Bill F.--
>
>1) If you're using blue screen you might try a backlight with straw or maybe
>quarter orange gel. Since you can't get rid of the blue "wash" you need to
>cancel it out with light from "the other side of the color wheel." With green
>screen, you need a magenta-tone backlight. This leads to the reason why some
>(see question below) say blue screen is considered preferable --the straw
>backlight, where it spills past the blue wash isn't as objectionable on flesh
>tones as the magenta might be if you used green.
Blue is also less prevalent in (Caucasian) skin tones. Hint: Go to a
good art museum that has classical (pre-Impressionist) paintings of
human beings,( or what passed for them in the Renaissance - some of
those Medicis....) and take a good look at the skin tones. They are
beginning to go a bit green in many cases. Why? Many Renaissance
painters did an underpainting of green before putting down the variant
on orange that is Caucasian skin tone. Why? Well, if you think about
the capillaries in our skin, carrying venous blood, there is a
greenish cast underneath. Second (this one's a bit off-topic) hint:
Most of those guys, especially the Flemish painters of Rembrandt's
time, _really_ understood light, and did more with a little
directional light and some well-placed darkness than I'd have thought
possible without an art school background and a refresher at the hands
of a gaffer friend of mine from Ireland. Thanks, Bill.....
>2) Don't paint or cover the whole friggin' wall. If you do, flag or otherwise
>cover every inch you don't need for background. Not only does this reduce the
>amount of reflected blue or green light reaching your subject, but perhaps even
>more important, it minimizes the angle at which it edge-lights the subject.
>Also watch for the green/blue wash light taking a "second bounce" off a white
>ceiling or light/shiny floor and tinting your subject on the rebound!.
Or put down a sheet of black velour or duvetyne to kill that bounce
outright, if it's at all physically possible.
>3) As Bill says, place your subject as far as practical from the blue
>screen--for the same reason as above--it reduces the volume of wash and also
>"moves back" the angle.
You should listen to Bill!
>4) Don't overlight the bluescreen.
True also - it's a background, not a light source!
I am found AT "worldnet" dot "att" dot "net"
Just take the space from between my given and family names.
Steven Bradford
http://www.seanet.com/~bradford/bluscrn.html
Then ask me what ever questions you have.
The responses you have gotten so far are excellent.
Jim
use the blue fabric or buy the blue paint that is sold in photo stores.
Insure the background is flat, no wrinkles and shadows! Now light it to an
even lux straight across. That does it. Wait! Want to be sure it all
disappears? Gell the lights! Yes Gell them with correction to bring them
up to daylight (5600). Now light your subject normally with tungsten!
Aren't there schools, internships and mentors out there?
Manxprods
Thanks Bill for confirming my suspicions on the green vs. blue.
Fascinating information on the Old Master painters and their techniques for
developing flesh tones. Could you continue on just a bit and really bring home
what all that means to video lighting? I know I'm missing something!
Tip McPartland
Alan Lloyd
Actually that just had to do wtih green screen vs. blue. The Old
Masters were cited for the green underpainting (pointing out the
greenish cast inherent in Caucasian skin tones) and separately for
their mastery of depiction of a scene with a simple lighting "plot" if
you will. Again, it seems the Flemish Masters were in the lead in
this area.
The green underpainting thing was remembered as coming originally from
a summer high-school class with an instructor at the Art Institute of
Chicago who was very well versed in both oil painting and art history.
Oils are apparently the only medium in which this technique works,
BTW. Acrylics don't quite "bleed" properly....whereas oils keep
bleeding and that's why some of those Old Masters are a bit green
these days.
The Flemish lighitng masters came from that plus the reminder of my
gaffer/author friend, Bill Watkins (anyone need a gaffer in the Twin
Cities? I'll pass you along Bill's info - he's quite good.) During
his apprenticeship in the UK, one of his mentors took him through art
museums when they weren't actually on set or on location.
Concentrating on the Flemish paintings gave Bill a taste for letting
darkness and subtlety become his friends - and an understanding of the
power of the implicit in an image.
Now Bill mostly gaffed in the feature industry, I think. And in the
UK at that. He's lived here (Minnesota) for a while, just written a
book on his childhood in Ireland, tells a great story (or several!)
and likes a good pint. He has given me a good bit of understanding of
what makes a nice-looking image, technique and "creativity" working in
concert to a good result. Sometimes people are scared of what the
front of lights I put up look like - bits and pieces of diffusion and
little foil things hanging off the doors - but the results look good.
As I learned things from him I found myself using smaller instruments
and more odd little things to modify, rather than just generate light.
Subtle and not-so-subtle colors became my friends. Shiny foil, as
well as black wrap, found its way into my kit bag - useful stuff!
Shadows began to have a purpose. The guy taught me a lot during both
studio sessions and just plain conversation.
Well, it's late, I'm tired, and I've gone on a bit long here. Anyone
else got something more to add to this? Or maybe take it in another
direction entirely?
ziggy
having poor chroma key results using NLE alpha channel? Had something to do
with 4.1.1 compression schemes versus 4.2.2? Reccomendations I saw were
along the lines of doing the chroma key work before digitzing footage. Am I
any where near this?
D. Jacobs <th...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:7stmpj$gcf$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> I've been using NLE hw and software for about a year and I've not been
> able to get a decent bluescreen setup working. I bought a large sheet
> of blue fabric from a fabric store and stapled it to a wall inside my
> house. After fussing with this setup, I determined that it needs to be
> illuminated evenly.
>
Steven Bradford
flesh tone in final composites. Having to suppress flare with green screens
sometimes
makes people look like they've used some of that "you can tan without the
sun" stuff.
Thanks, Bob, I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought this!
I'm always fighting to use blue in scenes that are primarily people.
Producers think that just because they have a shade of blue in the shot they
have to use green.
Eric
>
> After fussing with this setup, I determined that it needs to be
> illuminated evenly.
Imagine that.
--
***********************************************************************
**jeric@accessone - Synergy Productions/Synergy Graphix & Animation **
** "What makes the Hottentots so hot? What put the ape in apricot?" **
** Shooting, Gaffing, and Animation for the End of the Millenium **
*************************** Seattle ***********************************
Eric
>
> 3) As Bill says, place your subject as far as practical from the blue
> screen--for the same reason as above--it reduces the volume of wash and also
> "moves back" the angle.
And for you rookies: Twenty feet is not even "too far". When we say
"as far", we mean it.
Eric
A waveform monitor is by far the most useful tool in lighting the
bluescreen. At American Production Services here in Seattle they
recommend a 65% grey level on the backd.
You can do it with a handheld light meter, but what's the point? You
have to run all over. The WFM does the whole image at once. No matter
what % you decide, the WFM lets you get it easily.
Bill Farnsworth
>Derek Dexheimer wrote:
>>
>> I've heard a good rule of thumb is to light the background at least a
>> stop darker than your foreground.
He's here in Seattle too. We did lunch. Nice guy.
Bill
Bill Farnsworth
>A waveform monitor is by far the most useful tool in lighting the
>bluescreen. At American Production Services here in Seattle they
>recommend a 65% grey level on the backd.
Or if your zebras are set to 70 percent, you can see exactly what's hot and
what's not.
Here in the Seattle area there are two BIG studios that do a lot of blue
and green screen. American Production Services. And Pinnacle Productions.
Pinnacle is the home of many motion control effects seen around the world.
And American see a lot of everything.
American was also the home of the US Army Draft Induction Center.
(Seattle)
Many a hung over friend I dropped off there in '69 and '70. (my draft #
was 294, I never win anything)
I only picked up two at the airport.......................
To this day, when I'm in one of the studios there, I can hear the
occasional ghosts of guys throwing up or moaning about their headaches or
somebody saying. "Turn your head and cough."
Manxprods
What a memory your mention of the draft induction center evokes. I managed to
bob and weave around the draft with student deferments and other stuff I could
probably still be prosecuted for, but I'll never forget the tangible smell of
pure fear in that facilityr. Arrrrgggghhhh! The painful part is having two
young boys, three and one, and praying they never have to go through anything
like that in their lives.
Tip
D. Jacobs
my question.
I was reading within this thread and on some of the "attached" web
pages and understand that a video waveform monitor would be very useful
for fine lighting adjustments. Since I don't own a scope, I thought of
another way that seems to be a good substitute to the acurate
measurements on a scope: What if I digitize one video frame using my
video capture card and, viewing this frame in an editor such as Adobe
After Effects or Photoshop, use the INFO area or RGB values for each
pixel and scan over the image using the mouse and read the numbers
right there on the screen? It seems to me that the color data that
Photoshop sees is useful because it's the actual source of data that
the NLE keying SW will see.
Opinions? I would like to have a waveform monitor, but if Photoshop or
EA could be used instead, that would save me the cost of buying the
hardware.
In article <7stmpj$gcf$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>,
D. Jacobs <th...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> I've been using NLE hw and software for about a year and I've not been
> able to get a decent bluescreen setup working. I bought a large sheet
> of blue fabric from a fabric store and stapled it to a wall inside my
> house. After fussing with this setup, I determined that it needs to be
> illuminated evenly.
>
> At this point, I'm wondering if there's a better way than using blue
> fabric alone. I thought that if I could illuminate a white wall using
a
> blue light, that this would be better, because if I use a blue light,
> it's the same as using a blue wall with a white light (perhaps?).
>
> Does anyone with bluescreen experience have any advise on what I could
> buy or do to get the perfect bluescreen setup? I am mostly interested
> in shooting a person standing in front of the bluescreen.
>
> I also learned a little about back-lighting the subject that's in
front
> of the bluescreen to reduce the blue glow around the edges of the hair
> and such.
>
> Are there blue lamps that could make a white wall work pretty good for
> what I'm trying to do?
>
> Thanks a great deal for any advise.
>
Steven Bradford
>The Ultimatte 8 does a nicer job than previous models in this area, but I
still find myself subtly color correcting the foreground to make things
look right, especially with blondes
Hah! yes, I had a job last year, I was using a 6, and one scene had a blonde
in front of green, holding a hot dog. I had to hover between a setting that
made the blonde look okay without turning the mustard red.
Rick Johnston
>Hah! yes, I had a job last year, I was using a 6, and one scene had a
blonde
>in front of green, holding a hot dog. I had to hover between a setting that
>made the blonde look okay without turning the mustard red.
Tweak away with no worries. Just tell 'em she preferred ketchup.
Regards,
Rick Johnston
Ent/Gates Productions
http://www.entgates.com
Philip Williams
> Wow, what a wealth of information! I sure found the right place to post
> my question.
>
> I was reading within this thread and on some of the "attached" web
> pages and understand that a video waveform monitor would be very useful
> for fine lighting adjustments. Since I don't own a scope, I thought of
> another way that seems to be a good substitute to the acurate
> measurements on a scope: What if I digitize one video frame using my
> video capture card and, viewing this frame in an editor such as Adobe
> After Effects or Photoshop, use the INFO area or RGB values for each
> pixel and scan over the image using the mouse and read the numbers
> right there on the screen? It seems to me that the color data that
> Photoshop sees is useful because it's the actual source of data that
> the NLE keying SW will see.
>
> Opinions? I would like to have a waveform monitor, but if Photoshop or
> EA could be used instead, that would save me the cost of buying the
> hardware.
Hey, I'm a bit late here, but you might want to check out my green screen DV
page. It may (or may not) be of some use to you, if you shoot with DV
(again, I didn't read this whole thread, so this may not be applicable). In
any event, good luck on the project!
http://www.philipwilliams.com/green
Jim
and low-cost solutions, such as Buz, DC-10... I personally am ecstatic
that ATI has announced their MPEG-2 card! $200 and it will solve my
problems!
Philip Williams
Jim <ji...@nothere.ca> wrote in message
news:h0D2Nwrr+sPvhd...@4ax.com...
> Philip, we exchanged a few threads earlier on about DV greenscreening
> and low-cost solutions, such as Buz, DC-10... I personally am ecstatic
> that ATI has announced their MPEG-2 card! $200 and it will solve my
> problems!
Hey Jim, please let me know how the ATI works out for you, as I've never had
a chance to test compositing with mpeg2. Hope it works out for you!
Philip Williams
www.philipwilliams.com
Jim
(When it finally gets released... drool, drool) I'm filming a ghost
story where one scene is heavily composited, so I hope it works!