Chroma Key Green Screen Video Production

Alright, so here's quick and straight forward techniques on lighting and green-screen shooting. I will assume that you do have the lights, a camera and a green screen. The guide below is about on how to arrange to them.

Now if you don't already know, what works well with cameras is the chroma green. Do you already know about the color space of 4:2:2? Also RGB? To make things simpler, in your digital camera, most color information is stored in the green space of the color channel (G). So make sure that green-screen is the right color.

1. Lights

The greatest aspect of having superb separation of the subject from the green-screen is the lights in which ultimately is the key. This means that in the recorded material that you input in your video editing software, the background separates well from the object.

This is what makes the difference between a pro and an amateur. You could have the top of the line tools and crews, but if you're not successful with this separation, all the best efforts would be useless.

Let's get more on to details.

2. Use a back light

This is the light that illuminates the back of the object. Sometimes this light is higher in the air, sometimes lower (I recommend about 20% higher than your subject) but it is ALWAYS pointing at the back of your subject (in between your subject and the green-screen). The ideal is to have one light per side with both of them having a 45-degree angle.

So what does this do? Well it creates a subtle white “halo” around the edges of your subject. Like a small white or illuminated edge, it's going to dramatically affect the quality of your key.

3. Green-screen and lighting

The covering of the light with the green screen should be even. Do check if there any wrinkles. There should be no shadows, no brighter parts and no wrinkles in the green-screen. It just needs to be green and even.

4. Use of lights

Ways of lighting that green-screen? A light on either side. Overheads and floor lights. It creates a Cyc lighting that casts an even light from the floor going up. If you don't have the necessary lights, you can rent these up at your local gear rental shop.

I use a four bank KinoFlo on either side of the screen depending on how much you expect the subject to move.