Shooting Green Screen Video for Websites

Shooting Green Screen Video for Websites
May 26, 2009, 7:41 am - By: Chad Halvorson

Green Screen Video for Websites

Green screen shooting (or iShooting to make use of the buzz word) for the web or interactive CDs requires a unique approach. We've shot a number of web hosts, spokes persons, web tour guides or whatever you want to call them. Regardless of it's intended use the production approach is the same.

One of the first things we determine is whether the talent needs to be shot full body, head-to-toe, or if we can crop the talent off at the waist or knees etc.

Whether it full-body or partial body, if the shot needs to be from at least from the waist up, we always mount the camera 90 degrees on the tripod. The reason for this is to ensure we are filling the 1080p frame with as much of the talent as possible. Even though we are considerably scaling the footage down for interactive use, it's always better—and looks better to have the talent fill as much of the frame as possible.

In terms of keying the more the talent fills the frame the easier and cleaner the key will be in post. Another thing to consider when keying green screen web video (or any green screen video for that matter) is the source. We use the Sony XDCAM EX3 which captures video to a SxS card and is compressed.

Most visual effects gurus will say compressed green screen footage such as this is not ideal for post— compression noise and grain often makes the post process dirty, etc. However, from my experience when it comes to the keying footage for the web, the difference is negligible. This is due to the fact that the 1080p footage is scaled down so significantly.

We've been working on some tests to illustrate the keying differences between uncompressed footage and compressed, but that's a topic for another entry—a video blog perhaps?

So what about head-to-toe green screen shooting? This setup clearly requires the most prep work and the most room. When shooting this type of setup for web, the lighting, green drop and overall details are very forgiving.

We typically use a 20x40 green screen drop and rig it on poles and c-stands to create a cyc-wall like environment. This probably isn't the best if pricing a 1080p production, but it works fine for web video and is much cheaper to the client than paying to have the entire studios cyc-wall painted chroma-key green.

You need a studio no smaller than 20x35 to pull this off. It's important to have enough space behind the talent so the cyc drop can be lit as independently as possible. The deeper the space is the better as well because the farther you can get the camera away from the talent the more out--of-focus the green background can be, thus softening the coffee stains, wrinkles and seams in the drop.

Beyond that just stick to your basic principles; light well and even—keep the drop smooth and shoes clean. Post should be pretty basic and not require a ton of extra work.