Digital News Production: GREEN SCREEN RESEARCH

I decided to research into green screen to get more of an idea of how it works and how it's set up in different situations so when it comes to green screening I won't be as nervous and worried about the outcome.

I watched this video below which shows green screen in movies, I can't believe how much green screen is actually used, especially for the street scenes in Ugly Betty.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k

Film Riot is a really helpful channel on Youtube which creates videos for film creators and gives lots of helpful videos and tutorials. It also gives helpful DIY videos so if you can't get hold of expensive equipment you can do it yourself at a much lower budget.

I found a video in which they talk about how to green screen. He used tungsten lighting and florescent lighting as he said tungsten give a warmer glow and florescent give off a cooler glow, in turn this balances out the colours of the actor and the background and gives a contrast making it easier to key the green screen out.

Lighting:

I decided to look into three point lighting as it's the most effective and simple way to light someone when you are creating a basic green screen. 

Three point lighting is pretty straight forward, it uses three lights to effectively light the actor and background creating a 3 diminutional image.

The first light is called the Key Light. The key light is the main light that lights the subject and is usually in front of her towards the side- usually at a 45 degree angle from where the camera is set up so it adds definition to the face. 

The second light is the Fill Light. This fills out all the shadows on the subject to create a glow in her face which makes the subject look a lot better. This is also placed at 45 degree angel from the camera,  but also 45 degrees away from the key light. The fill light needs to be less powerful than the key light or you will just end up having a bright white face on the subject. 

The third light is the Back Light. The backlight acts as a way to allow the subject to pop out of the green screen and make them look less flat and more 3d or they will just look flat and part of the background image. The backlight is placed just at an angle behind the subject and should just spill light onto the back of her - with a low intensity. 

After watching the video below I found it quite simple to know what each of the lights do and feel confident in creating our green screen. 

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcMX1RcNRYA