Topic summary

Green screen

Green screen

Extracted from the Wikipedia article Chroma key.

Even lighting

The biggest challenge when setting up a blue screen or green screen is even lighting and the avoidance of shadow because it is best to have as narrow a colour range as possible being replaced. A shadow would present itself as a darker colour to the camera and might not register for replacement. This can sometimes be seen in low-budget or live broadcasts where the errors cannot be manually repaired or scenes reshot. The material being used affects the quality and ease of having it evenly lit. Materials which are shiny will be far less successful than those that are not. A shiny surface will have areas that reflect the lights making them appear pale, while other areas may be darkened. A matte surface will diffuse the reflected light and have a more even colour range. In order to get the cleanest key from shooting green screen, it is necessary to create a value difference between the subject and the green screen. In order to differentiate the subject from the screen, a two-stop difference can be used, either by making the green screen two stops higher than the subject, or vice versa.