Green Screen for Your Video Background
How A Green Screen Can Elevate the Production Quality of Your Video
From time to time we get requests from our clients to shoot interviews of important people – CEO’s, celebrities, doctors, scientists, thought leaders and others – with a green screen in the background. Sometimes a client requests a blue screen, but the majority of our gigs feature the green backdrop. That is because it is less likely that the interviewee would be wearing neon green apparel than blue.
One of our most recent gigs was a Super Bowl commercial for Avocados from Mexico. Guess who the star is? Drew Brees!
The point of the mono-color is that the editor will key it out during the post-production process. If someone is wearing a green tie, then when the background is keyed out, that tie will also be keyed out. And the interviewee will look as though they have a tie-shaped hole in their body.
Unintentional Comedy
I have seen the green screen key used to comic effect. On St. Patrick’s Day, one of our local news stations has a rather proper weather woman who was wearing a shamrock-colored jacket. When she strode in front of the green screen, her torso completely disappeared. Only her head was visible as it floated across the weather map. I laughed so hard, I had tears streaming down my cheeks. To this day I do not know if she did it on purpose or not, but she removed the jacket later on in the show.
The Magic of Chroma Key
If your video is to market your products or services, consider using a green screen for a variety of reasons. In a video we produced for Dimension One Spas, it made more sense to have waterfalls and spas in the background of the CEO than his office. So we interviewed him in his office with a green screen backdrop; with a few quick clicks, the editor keyed out the green and substituted water.
We interviewed a scientist using green screen because the client wanted a background of animated cells. And for a coaxial cable company, we used a green screen for their mascot who “flew” in and out of a coaxial cable. For a wine distributor, we placed wine cellars, vineyards and grapes behind the talent.
A green screen video production in San Diego
Everybody’s Coming to the Convention
You are making arrangements for an event in a new city and the last thing you want to think about is video. However, all your corporate department heads are assembling at one convention arena at the same time. Therefore you cannot afford to let the opportunity pass. You must gather interview footage of everybody while you can, if only for historical documentation. So to green screen or not to green screen… that is the question.
In the early days of green-screen interviews, a production crew would show up with a cumbersome neon green backdrop and take an hour and a half to set it up. Now there are portable green screens that are easily erected in a fraction of the time. But do you need it?
Why Green Screen?
Many corporate event coordinators are tired of bland convention walls, ugly draping or reflective and immovable art found in hotel rooms and convention halls where interviews are traditionally shot. The green screen offers a happy alternative. Your editor who stitches your interviews together can place any backdrop you desire behind the interviewee. For instance, your CEO who hails from San Antonio could have the Alamo in the background. Or the representative from Maui can have a gorgeous tropical landscape scenic behind her. You get the picture. Your editor can also change out the background in future presentations.
Proper Lighting is Key
You will need to make sure that the production crew properly lights the interviewees and green screen. That’s because lighting is everything in a production. And you will also need to make sure that the editor can expertly key out the green so you don’t get any green pixels showing through and around a blonde head of hair. Please make sure your interviewees are not wearing anything green!
If you are well organized, you can gather quite a few interviews in one day. Our record stands at 36 interviews in one day (each interviewee had two or three lines to deliver to the camera).
San Diego Video Production Green Screen Shoot
It’s a little trickier to use a green screen in an outdoor shoot; for instance, one with an automobile, such as this candy-apple Porsche we shot with and without green screen for a commercial. An experienced gaffer will be able to light both the car and the green screen for optimum results.
You Can Set It Up Anywhere
The beauty of a green screen is that you can pretty much set it up anywhere. Just make sure there are at least six feet between the interviewee and the backdrop. In the case of a dancer or a troupe of dancers moving and leaping, you would need to use a studio and have an entire wall and floor painted green. But for a simple interview with the subject placed in a chair, you will not need to rent a studio; you can get away with smaller quarters.
Keying techniques have really come a long way over the last few years in various editing software packages. I use DaVinci Resolve and love the results. If the DP lights the backdrop correctly, it is no problem to key out the neon green or any other color. And you don’t see that unsightly crude green outline around the person.
If you want to use green screen, first study how various producers have incorporated this method in their shows. Then think about how your product or service could merit from this technique. It could open new worlds for you.
