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 p.1 #16 · T&I Sports related Green Screen BR | |
ifxbonz wrote:
My lack of green screen exp worries me. The shoot is scheduled for late August. I could easily do a conventional Head/upper shoot with lockers in the BR, but I wanted something clean and reproducible. I have heard about the difficulties with GS and I 'm wondering If one month planning is enough time to get a good product on my first GS experience?
Mate, I did my first greenscreen Gig with a few days experience and didn't have a problem.
Matter of fact, My "experience " was to get a bit of flat board, get an off the shelf sample pot from the hardware store of lime green paint, and shoot my daughter in front of it using 1 light.
It wasn't perfect but it was enough to let me know how to work the software. That was about Wednesday night. Saturday Night was shooting a large 21st for my Niece that really wanted a photo booth, but I thought I could do a lot better than that. I guess I did OK given 2 of her friends and their parents booked me to do their up coming parties and the comments I got were almost never ending. Most people thought I was joking when I said I had never done it before.
I shot and printed over 200 Pics on the night all by myself and didn't have any trouble. I also used a heap of different backgrounds to drop in for variety. I Have since done Corporate and charity events of 800+ people ( My 2nd, 3rd etc outings wth GS) and when you have the same background and can batch the images, they are so much faster still.
Like Hammy I am using Photokey, version 4 in my case but I believe 5 has recently come out.
It's easy and and I find it's very forgiving. I get creases all the time where people walk on the BG and I don't even pull them out now. Maybe I'm getting the lighting even enough but I can plainly see the creases behind the people but they just don't show in the pics.
I too read that the BG needs to be perfect as well as the lighting but I found there is a heck of a lot more tolerance n it than what's made out. I pretty much set my lighting up, do some tests for the amount of removal required and that's it. I might get 4-5 difficult shots over the course of a night that need a fraction fiddling mainly due to the clothing colour but that's it. Last time out was another parts with about 250 people and we shot and printed about 400 5x7s on the night. I had too rather ancient laptops as work stations and another equally tired laptop as a server and we knocked it over, again with about 10 Different backgrounds for variety and effect in under 4 hours.
I have been thinking of having something like spring loaded poles to hold the material tight across the width. One at the front edge closest to where I stand, another at the back where the vertical meets the floor and I can clamp it tight at the top of the stands. LIke I say though, I find the software is very good with the wrinkles etc.
What I have been on top of is making sure the background screen is well and evenly lit and that I have the people well forward of it and no splash light. People do tend to walk to the back of the screen so after the last job I bought some 4ft hight reflective bollards. I plan to put them at the side of the screen where people walk on with some tape and a big laminated sign with an arrow saying something like stand this side on the screen where the black dot is. Maybe I could even get some material, dye it green and barricade that part of the screen right off! 
I really don't know why you want to send the things out to be isolated. Photokey is damn easy to use, does a great job and is fast.
I was reading on another forum about a similar thing. A T&I guy was stressing about the work in printing over a week, less pics than I and most event guys do in a Day/ night as a matter of course. When you are set up and have things in place, it' is NOT hard or time consuming at all.
I'm doing a type of school photography now and shoot during the day up to 300 Kids and come home and print the packages consisting of 3 8x12 prints per kid in about 3 hours and have them all done with some help from my wife packaging the things. OK it's not greenscreen but that -may- add an hour to the deal, if that.
As far as having a month to learn, that's about 3 weeks longer than you could possibly need IMHO.
I'm about to try doing green screen shots underwater to see how that goes. If I can make that work, I'll be on to something I reckon I can turn into a pretty nice little earner.
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