For over a year, Kitchen Scenes Studios green-screened videos were shot in my living room all this year in front of a system of green curtains acquired at different times and made of a diversity of fabrics - all because of a particular afternoon lighting situation that was mysterious until I figured out why I can green screen in a shallow space without making a shadow that a relatively simple editing program like Final Cut Express cant accommodate. It is NOT impossible to green screen in a small apartment! You will not be able to make Star Wars in a small apartment, but you can create an amazing amount of illusion without the lights you cant have because theres not enough space for both those lights in a small apartment AND the most important thing, the tripod or human holding the camera. Dont just give up on your idea just because you dont have the ideal situation in which you can place the action at least 8 feet from the green screen and light the actors and the green screen separately. That would be so cool, but do you want to make a movie or just talk about it in a bar? My system of curtains acquired at different times and made of a diversity of fabrics wont work anymore because: 1) There is too much action in the scenes in front of 2) the layers of curtains creating shadows that 3) I cant fix without softening/feathering to death in Chroma Key & 4) I cant even get the green screen key effect to work at all. However, in spite of this, I pulled off miracles in my tiny living room. The reason: when you pull the blinds in my living room in the afternoon or on an overcast day with intense glare, the light is so diffuse that it lights both green screen and actor with remarkable evenness. But what my reflective ceiling cant do is evenly light my increasingly layered system of green curtains acquired at different times and made of a diversity of fabrics. So, I returned to my kitchen, which has a Chroma green wall in front of which I can roll a matching felt carpet. Voila, studio. But thats not all. I invested in a 60 by 40 (152.4 by 101.6) reflector with a stand that easily sits in my kitchen sink while the reflector screen is stretched across the stove. I also bought a hardware store halogen work-light appliance with an adjustable stand and two adjustable lamps. With this setup, I can put a small HD camera on a mini-tripod on top of the refrigerator for a long shot, a camera in front of the actor for closeup and a camera at another angle for a mid-shot. While it would be difficult for crew to fit in the room, it would not be impossible to have several actors in this setup. And cameras can, if desirable or necessary, can be operated remotely. #SylviaToyStLouis #sylviatoyindustries #performanceart #VOICE #greenscreen #nobudgetfilmmaking #KitchenScenesStudio Below are two green-screened clips. You can see a halo around the figure in the chair. Im 99.9% sure that halo happened because the chair and figure created a shadow on the green screen rug on the floor. Im sure of this because when you play the video (youtu.be/3Jmbuw-ns7M?t=36s), you see the halo vibrating. I can tinker the vibration away, most likely, but it will take a lot of experimentation or luck or both. The two clips shot at the same time from 2 other angles on 2 other different cameras have even lighting and Chromakeyed just fine. I am going to fix the vibrations and will not reshoot the video, most likely. But next time I shoot with this set up (2 first-gen Canon Vixias and a new Canon Vixia Mini-X), I will attach puck lights or something similar to the underside of the seat of the chair to light the space under the chair and better match the light in the rest of the frame. My No-Budget Green-screening videos showing the setup for green-screening in my kitchen are in a playlist on my YouTube channel, https://youtube/user/SylviaToyStLouis. Thanks for watching and thanks for subscribing to my YouTube page.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 16:42:56 +0000
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