Green Screen Shoot

Hello.
I'm shooting my hand in front of a green screen. I'm shooting at 30p and removing the green in After Effects. I'm using Linear Color Key and Spill Suppressor to remove the green but it still looks bad.
I know this is a FCP forum but can anyone help me make my final composite better? Should I use FCP instead? Why do some green screen shots look so real while mine doesn't?

Please Help!
Thanks,
Marko

what are you shooting with and what are you using for a green screen?

Thanks for responding. I'm shooting with a Panasonic DVX100A at 30p
and my green screen is a chroma key green painted wall. I've got a two lowell lights (1k & 5k) and an Arri 1k lighting the subject and wall seperately. When I shot I had my hand about 2.5 feet in front of the green wall.

I guess I lost you guys?

Hi Marco

the trick to shooting GS is to have a very evenly
lit background--

If you are shooting in a small room-
Background should not be to bright
If background is to bright you will get spill over
of green light reflecting from other walls
on to your hand--

Light your hand a little on the bright side

Remember to set lighting so you dont
cause shadow of hand on background
in the frame--Jay--

Add the "Matte Choker" to your Greenscreen combo in After Effects and tweak the settings to bring the edge in. If there are dark spots away from your hand, you may need to use garbage mattes to block them out.

- Joey



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

isnt there established logic that minidv is not very good for shooting greenscreen in the first place?

DV Green Screen is difficult but not impossible...check out DVGarage.com for their DV Matte Pro...it helps a lot.

But shootin 2.5 feet away from green screen is recipe for disaster....you need a good distance between screen and the subject..6 12 ...feet..as much as you can get....to make absolutely sure no green spills on your subject.

Using a minus green gel to backlight the subject helps tremendously....to isolate the subject and keep any green off the subject.

Color smoothing in DV also helps (Filter under the Key Filters)

If you can shoot and capture uncompressed BETA for your green screens you will get better results....I've done a dozen of these this year...DV's ok...BETA is better for green screen...DV compresses a lot of the color information out and it's a challenge to get as clean a key.

Andy

I have had excellent luck using the Chroma Key and Color filter(s) in FCP.

I only wish there was a Replace Color filter as in PhotoShop, where you can add add'l colors in the same pass. Very helpful for any lighting shadows that look like a different color to the computer, but not to the naked eye.

The Primatte plugin can add an infinite number of shades of green to your key, with a 'color dropper' type of approach, where you just keep clicking on the lingering shadowed areas of your green screen and it keeps subtracting these from your matte. It's not totally automatic, and sometimes it's better just to break the shot up with garbage mattes to isolate different areas, but I've found Primatte to be one of the easiest and most powerful tools for GS.

Thanks everyone! I've got lots to try!

Marko

Marko,

Gosh, well, first you need to do a couple of things on your lighting setup.

Put some diffusion on your fixture lighting the green screen. If you're using an open face source or a fresnel, softening it a bit will help reduce any hot spots.

Second, I'd put some minus green on a smaller fixture and put a rim on your hand. 1/2 minus green usually does the trick. The minus green is magenta colored gel.

Also, remember that if you put lots of light on your green wall...well it becomes a big happy green light source. Back off a bit more from the wall. Six feet min. I'd say, but I prefer more. Heck you're only shooting your hand.

Be sure to use the 4:1:1 filter or Gram's "nicer" filter prior to doing the FCP color key filter. Take your time with adjustments...less is more.

Best
Chet Simmons
Las Vegas