Just getting to the end of sorting out new studio, i'm going to put up a curtain track with a green screen on it (ceiling to floor) and also a section on the floor. I need 3meters by 12 meters, i've found a 3x6 on ebay and was thinking of just sewing them together and putting curtain webing along the long end so it can be drawn back (there's going to be a white one as well).
Obviously the one on ebay is sold as "Green screen fabric", i've also found stuff from Fabric warehouse! how acurate does the green have to be?? The ebay option is the favirote as it will involve only one seam as i doubt the stuu from Fabric warehouse will come in 3M width.
Any advice would be great.
Dominic
I know nowt about the cloth - only what the software needs.
I don't believe the green is critical - only that :
-it needs to be deep colour (any deep colour really) so long as it is distinct from foreground subject and their clothing.
-it needs whatever colour to be very consistant colour, so cloth where you can see a texture, or even its weave, would be less suitable
-it needs to be hung FLAT, no slight folds creases ( so crease resistant cloth I guess) as any slight uneveness will demand a wider software key, which make keying out sporadic pixels on subject more likely.
On being FLAT, I'd think twice about hanging as curtain, where curtain hooks etc and drawing back will mean the drawn curtain will not be flat at all but have minor vertical 'folds' which will be a pain either for getting flat lighting right, or for a good non-destructive key.
Maybe paint the wall green (if 100% smooth, no wall switches etc), or go gor a drop down roller system, which could roll up the floor part as well. Several different rollers could be put on ceiling coming say 9 inches from wall, with a pole across top of wall say 6 inches down to ensure the falling drape is close to wall.
Oh - you need 1-2m between subject and wall to avoid shadows, so need to check your have enough room for camera to go further back accordingly.
Or look at the chromaflex etc systems that use glass beads and are less critical on folds/lighting.
HTH
We use a pop-up green screen. It takes a while for the creases to drop out but once it's smooth (15mins) we get a really nice key with very little effort.
I'd agree with Dave about being cautious with anything that might crease or gather. While it's true that modern keying software is capable of dealing with less than ideal footage it does take quite a bit of messing around to get a decent result when the background has shading/creases/hot spots etc.
Have you thought about a paper/fabric roll background system? You can create an infinity drop down and onto the floor (if required). We need portable kit but if I still had a studio I'd consider it as an option.
If you have to put it on a track, then you really need to think about getting a chain pocket sown into the bottom, at the rear, just above the ground. If you don't you'll spend ages getting the thing to hang properly. The most useful gadget ever invented are hold ons - http://www.flints.co.uk/acatalog/Holdons.html These I use on elastic and they can gently stretch the fabric if you use them top to bottom. really handy things.
Cloth wise, I've a couple of ebay ones and they are slightly different colours. Used on their own, I've never had a problem - but together they won't match - so if you are buying more than one, get them from the same supplier at the same time. Rosco paint is the standard if you can paint the wall - although ordinary emulsion paint works fine. However DON'T do what I did a few years ago to get a really pure colour. I wanted for a project to paint a big wall chroma key blue. So I went to the local Dulux centre and explained that whenever I've had paint mixed in those machines, there's always a main base colour plus a few weird ones, and according to the machine (which was a manual one, rather than the modern computer ones) the most pure blue they had also had a bit of grey, a bit of white and a bit of yellow in it. So I asked them to leave those out, and make up the volume with more blue! On your own head, I was told. The tins contained exactly what I wanted. So we painted the wall - 10m x 6m The colour we painted over was white, so it went on really well and looked great. Next morning I walked in and had a fit. The paint was still wet, and worse still it had slid down the wall - there was a puddle on the floor, and the blue at the bottom was how I remembered it, but as you looked up, it got whiter and whiter!
After 4 days, it had dried.
Dulux told me, when I phoned them, that the other colours were not colour at all - they were binders that make the paint set - leaving them out just left the paint as a liquid, until the water in it evaporated! I bought 10l of rosco and did it properly!
Thanks for the info guys. I'm not to worried about the curtain track as i can get that set that up so there's no creases, but it's a good tip about weighting the bottom. I'd have loved to have just painted the walls but the room is also used for training courses so it might have been a bit off putting. I think i will get three lengths from ebay as it's pretty good value at under £120 for 3 meters x 18 meters comparied to £600 plus from the likes Rosco!!
I'd have loved to have just painted the walls but the room is also used for training courses...
2 other options:
i) Cover wall in big sheets of ply with grooved runners top and bottom (wardrobe style ) with painted green one side and 'normal' colour other side, and flip them around as needed.
A variation on above would be to have one side as black board or white-board for presentation/teaching use.
ii) Paint walls green and use curtain to pull across for training room use - perhaps a soft grey colour - as if often done by hotels etc to divide rooms and screen off walls.
Both good ideas, unfortunatly because of a door i would'nt be able to have a curtain in place all the time as it would block it. The rooms 4M wide and i'm going to come down 3M from the end wall, this will allow me to film pretty big things.
I looked at these green screens for film making (there are quite a few videos on YouTube about them) and the claim seems to be that they are essential.
I'm not so sure.
I already had a white vinyl background screen that I've used a few times as a photography background in my studio so will probably use this when and if I ever need a plain background for film making.
I've made a diy system of rolling it down but I suspect, as a previous poster said, that for speed and convenience you can't beat a chain system.
Another idea I have is to buy a white vinyl blind and use this as a background. I actually did this, mostly because I planned to put a blind in a window anyway, and this suited me fine, so I killed two birds etc.
It looks as if they are only good for head and shoulder shots, not full length shots though, as they aren't usually long enough, not the ones I saw anyway.
Cost wise, I can't remember the exact cost of the white vinyl, maybe £30 or £40. It's about 4 metres by 2 metres so you get full length body shots and continuity, because it also covers a good part of the floor.
The window blind was about £15.00.
green screens aren't essential by any means but can be handy, esp for talking heads where you might have someone pop up over a scene to either do a head and shoulders intro or ( less often) a signing for the deaf type shot.
Green screen doesn't need to cover the whole screen area - just to surround your talent so you can bung a matte in the edit to extend the green.
If you want white, you replace the green with any colour -.