Andy.....FWIW here is a shot I did last year for the SWB Yankees head shots on media day. It was done in the clubhouse and there really wasn't much room with the players and media being there.
This was the first time I shot green screen and the Yankees supplied the BG which was a large collapsible type. I used one AB800 with a 22" beauty dish as the main light and a 580EX flash on a 5 gal. bucket on the BG behind the player. The players stood about 3 feet from the BG and if I had more room I would have moved them to about 6-7 feet because I got a bit of a green bleed over onto the uniforms a bit.
On this image it is as it was right out of the camera with no editing other than resizing to 800x600. I thought it was pretty simple as long as the lighting is even. But like Paul mentioned...there are some companies doing extractions for peanuts w/o GS.
Id be really interested to know more about your truss setup. DId you buy it or make it up yourself?
That would be much stronger and resistant to the "I'm paying more attention to my drink that anything else" crowd
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Glort,
The truss I rented from a mentor of mine who has a lighting company and lots of rigging/truss to spare. I do plan on using at future cheer gigs in a similar studio for background inserts available to 15,000 cheerleaders that we cover at one main event.
The truss does several things:
- minimizes ground space: no tripod legs to trip over
- maximizes stability: having a 10x20 greenscreen outdoors (creating a sail) would have been tough with any other method. (doable, but tough and/or creative with sandbags) So there was no setting up/tearing down for over two weeks.
- maximized professional presence: Lights were hung from truss, wiring layed out inside truss, high quality grass turf (for baseball atmosphere) and just overall impressiveness that customers and host alike noticed our seriousness.
Again, not slapstick setup of tripod legs and cords running everywhere like we just got there. This was setup for over two weeks within a high traffic area near concessions, bathrooms and tournament office - so having it turnkey, accessable and yet worry free was our main concern.
So yes, in pretty much any type of enviroment, you have the stability and presence for a few hundred 'socialites' or a few thousand cheerleaders!
