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What paint would I need for a green screen?

7031

7031

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 6, 2007
479
0
England
Hey guys. I'm setting up a basic film studio and I would like to paint a wall green for chroma keying. I can't really afford to get a proper paint just yet, but I have a good 1000 watt bulb that should be enough to light it.

So guys, could you tell me what kind of paint to get from a place such as Homebase, you know paint from brands like Crown, Dulux etc.
 
The professional stuff is chroma green. Just get a nice, bright, saturated green, but not something that's glossy.

I think you'll find your 1k light to be severely inadequate, though. If you're using just one light (especially undiffused), you'll end up with a specular that just won't key out.

Just a warning!
 
faustfire said:
ppc_michael's right, the lighting is much more important than the shade of green you use.
Click to expand...
Well I used to use 2 320 watt bulbs and yes, they were inadequate. I can of course, use them as well as the flood light, should I need to.

The room also has 2 flurescant strip lights, though I doubt they would work too well.

Yes, I'm an amature, but I'm hoping this experience will help me in the future.
 
7031 said:
Well I used to use 2 320 watt bulbs and yes, they were inadequate. I can of course, use them as well as the flood light, should I need to.

The room also has 2 flurescant strip lights, though I doubt they would work too well.

Yes, I'm an amature, but I'm hoping this experience will help me in the future.
Click to expand...

that probably won't fly. You need color balanced bulbs for it to really work. An Arri 1000 Watt is probably what you need, and you need two-three lights for it to work. Google Three point lighting. I'm a film student at Drexel and good lighting is paramount for this application.

Also, not to be a tool, but MiniDV sucks with ChromaKeying. I've tried it a few times and you get the mad halo effect. So keep that in mind. It all has to do with chromasubsampling. Wikipedia has a good article on it.

So moral of the story... LIGHT IT GOOD!!!!

Good luck!

-Chip
 
ChemiosMurphy said:
that probably won't fly. You need color balanced bulbs for it to really work. An Arri 1000 Watt is probably what you need, and you need two-three lights for it to work. Google Three point lighting. I'm a film student at Drexel and good lighting is paramount for this application.

Also, not to be a tool, but MiniDV sucks with ChromaKeying. I've tried it a few times and you get the mad halo effect. So keep that in mind. It all has to do with chromasubsampling. Wikipedia has a good article on it.

So moral of the story... LIGHT IT GOOD!!!!

Good luck!

-Chip
Click to expand...
So true that. DV sucks for chroma keying, simply because it's compressed. Thanks for the advice on what lighting I should get. True about colour balance, I have some other smaller lights as well as the 2 320 watts but it just never works in FCP simply because it's not balanced. I'll get the wall painted then test it out. Then maybe I'l have a better idea of what I'll need.

But yeah, currently I have just one 1,000 watt floodlight.
 
Good luck to you. Do you have Shake? Because of it's current incredibly low price, you might want to consider getting a copy. Although DV isn't ideal for green screen work, I have been able to pull some great keys with that software that I wouldn't even get close to achieving in FCP or Motion.

If you're interested, these tutorials will help:

Smoothing DV Jaggies
Edge and core mattes
Light wrapping
Spill suppression

Have fun!

P-Worm
 
P-Worm said:
Good luck to you. Do you have Shake? Because of it's current incredibly low price, you might want to consider getting a copy. Although DV isn't ideal for green screen work, I have been able to pull some great keys with that software that I wouldn't even get close to achieving in FCP or Motion.

If you're interested, these tutorials will help:

Smoothing DV Jaggies
Edge and core mattes
Light wrapping
Spill suppression

Have fun!

P-Worm
Click to expand...
Thanks for the links :D. I might have a look at Shake, though right now I'm pretty happy with Final Cut Pro. I find green works much better than blue for chroma keying though with DV.
 
7031 said:
Thanks for the links :D. I might have a look at Shake, though right now I'm pretty happy with Final Cut Pro. I find green works much better than blue for chroma keying though with DV.
Click to expand...
$500 spent on lights and a good background (be it paint or cloth) would be a much better investment than $500 on Shake. As it's been said before, the key (no pun intended) to pulling a key is almost entirely dependent how well you've lit the subject and the background.


Lethal
 
When I used to have to shoot on DV (well DVCAM, but essentially the same thing as MiniDV) in college, I found gelling the subject's backlights a bit red helped to get a better key.

It still won't be great though.
 
Lighting is a must

I always use at least three lights for green screen, all are diffused. Check out some final cut pro green screen examples at www.macapptraining.com. I use 3x 750 watt each diffused with at least 2-3 gels of various shades of diffusion. You need as large of a space as you can find. Keep the subject at least 6 feet from the screen to avoid shadows. Expect to spend most of your time working on the lighting. If your lighting is poor, you'll need to reshoot. So check it in the editor before taking the set down.

Best of luck.
 
7031 said:
Hey guys. I'm setting up a basic film studio and I would like to paint a wall green for chroma keying. I can't really afford to get a proper paint just yet, but I have a good 1000 watt bulb that should be enough to light it.

So guys, could you tell me what kind of paint to get from a place such as Homebase, you know paint from brands like Crown, Dulux etc.
Click to expand...

Whats the proper paint and how much those that cost?
 
You need a paint called DigiComp, it is the proper chroma key paint.

They have two colours DigiComp Blue and DigiComp Green, the stuff isn't cheap you will looking at least $500 for a bucket. Here it is

The reason it is so expensive it because it has special reflective bits in it which absorb light, it is very important creating a clean, crisp and uniform key for a background.

Even if you don't use the proper paint you will still need to set up some very decent lighting otherwise the chroma illusion will just not work when you put the footage into compositing software (make sure there's no shadows). You really need to make sure there is a decent amount of separation between subject and background.
 
LethalWolfe said:
$500 spent on lights and a good background (be it paint or cloth) would be a much better investment than $500 on Shake. As it's been said before, the key (no pun intended) to pulling a key is almost entirely dependent how well you've lit the subject and the background.


Lethal
Click to expand...

I agree, money towards lighting is better served. I just bring it up because I managed to get Shake at my school's bookstore for $200. It's not free, but that ain't bad.

P-Worm
 
striverdon said:
Whats the proper paint and how much those that cost?
Click to expand...

dutchboy clean grean matte from walmart 20 bucks/gallon

i saw it on a dv forum and he had a sample video and it matched perfectly with his color chart.

so i bought the paint and it works perfectly and has a true green color
 
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