Portable Green Screen & Office Video

Last week, I was recording some “promotional” videos and “welcome” videos for some of my partners.  Because of this, we want to brand the back-ground and using green screen effects made the most sense.

Now understand this, I have been fighting the whole “green screen video” dilemma for about a year now.  It took me awhile to get better at this, too.

The art of chromakey video effects is not necessarily trivial (and to be honest, I am not entirely there myself, but I am getting close).

Last week’s videos were some of my best, though!  (You can see an example video at my last vlog post, Purchasing Premium Domain Names).

I personally think there are 3 major things that need to be met in order to do some effective Green Screen video:

1)  Uniformity - A solid, uniform and flat green screen.  Things like wrinkles, bends and unevenness will distort chromakey.  Uniformity is a major hurdle to overcome.  Yes, you can get away with some wrinkles or change, but understand that this will limit your ability to effectively remove and/or replace the background during the editing phase.  For the last video, I used a collapse-able green screen (much like the type you would use as a sun shade in your car).  The biggest problem with this is that is it kind of small.  I cannot do any full body effects using this size of screen.  Only face-size shots.  Still, this portal green screen is very flat, the perfect color and can be made very compact for storage.

(Check out portable chromakey green screens at Amazon here)

2)  Lighting - Some will argue that this is most critical (and to be honest, this is the thing I have fought the most, especially in my home office).  Remember that I mentioned above that a critical part of effective chroma keying is uniformity.  Shadows can be your worst enemy.  The trick here to try to light just the background in a uniform manner.  Blaring a big light on it usually doesn’t work because of the light usually is brighter in the center.  Plus, remember that this light needs to be behind you (else, your shadow will form). Therefore, you must light from the edges and sides, which again causes one side to be brighter than the other.

If you can, use multiple lights (on each side as you can).  Also, diffuse the light!  Instead of directly pointing the light to the green screen, reflect it off of some dulling, yet bright surface.  Even a white wall works pretty well.  In my example, I used a car sun shade to diffuse some bright industrial lights.

3)  Editing Software - Now you need some software that can effectively remove the green screen from your video (and replace it either by a transparency or another image/video).  The kings of green screen editing software was a company called Serious Magic, which has now been bought out by Adobe.  Their Ultra CS3 software (now part of the Adobe Production Premium) is the best software for doing this.  Still, it cannot be purchased ala-carte and the Adobe Production Premium package is rather expensive.

(If green screen and chromakeying are going to be a big part of your business, Adobe Ultra CS3 should be invested in).

Still, for some of us we don’t want to invest that much for the one-off chroma key effect.  For simple videos, I use another Adobe product called Visual Communicator 3.  This has a similar chromakey engine as Ultra CS3 (just not quite as good).  This is a great tool for creating “mini-internet shows”.  The editing ability is rather limiting, but it includes a teleprompter and lots of cool effects.  It is extremely easy to use, too.

Its “poor cousin” is Adobe’s VlogIt, which is only about $39.  It is very similar to Visual Communicator 3, but limited in the size of the rendered videos, the number of cameras, and a few less options.  This is a perfect choice for those looking to use the green screen effects (or even make simple internet shows) for places like YouTube.

There are other things to make a “good video” which includes the camera you use, the microphones, the “other lighting”, etc.  But if green screens are your concern, these are the things you must take extreme notice.  It is not as bad as it sounds…practice makes perfect and using green screens and chroma keys is a great example of this!

cheers…matt