Green Screen Workshop
We started of the lesson by looking at a short video, titled "Hollywoods History of Faking it - The Evolution of Green-screen (chromakey) compositing. This video talked about the different types of green-screen and projection, how everything works and it provided excellent case study films, followed by clips that the effects had been positioned over. I thought that the video was both creative and inspiring, I have started to explore some of these techniques in the green screen room, however it is sort of second nature as I haven't used much green screen before other than on my short course evening class for Film Production with Plymouth College of Art. I organised a trip up to the green-screen to play around with the lighting set up, and as the cinematographer I wanted to find out the best positioning for the lights so that the green screen would be lit up evenly across the back, the camera that we took out was the XF100, I had done a few test shots last week with the Nikon D7200 but the green screen backdrop kept flashing, tried to edit it in post but it seemed to enhance background shadows of the actors so today I decided to use the XF100 for a test, took out 2 LED panels for different lighting ideas, shadows etc.
Hollywoods History of Failure - The Evolution of Green Screen"
There were two music videos that really sparked my interest as the cinematographer for this module, the first was called "Watsky- Whoa Whoa Whoa [All You Can Do]" I thought that the technique of looping video helped to highlight specific parts of the film narrative, I thought that this specific effect would work really well for the shot of the robber stealing the actors phone, I thought that the footage for the phone being stolen could either be slowed down, sped up or looped over and over to look as if it was being taken or placed back in the bag, this could add enigma too the video, the looping would both look as if the robber was hesitating to steal the phone as well as making the robbery part stand out, thinking about it, it could be used to loop the part of video where the actors are pointing to tell each other where the train station is.
The second music video that inspired me for the looping was from the Rapper Dizzie Rascal, for the song "I don't need a reason", I liked the idea behind that the peoples faces were moving or lip syncing whilst everything else was either frozen or moving fast, in some places it created a fantastic illusion that time was moving really fast, the way that he kept throwing objects in the bin, I loved the idea of the water splashing out and then disappearing, the way the man walked past and reset the playing card stack, the moving and the mouths, facial expressions moved and reset, everything kept cycling creating an element of repetition, enhancing the music videos narrative, helping us too see what was going on.
Not to mention the way that this was shot using a variety of camera angles, close ups for the facial expressions, long shots for the moving images, tracking and pans to follow movement off and on screen. What stood out to me was the way that everything was frozen around Dizzie, but his mouth was constantly moving to speak the lyrics of the song, thought that it could link back to how progressive that he has been in the music industry, he is further ahead than a lot of other rappers. The idea of him being progressive could be reflected in the location as he appears to be in a castle/palace which makes him look wealthy which is then again linked to his appearance as he has stylish clothes and various items of bling, linking back to the genre of rap.
Green Screen Room Additional Information.
Towards the afternoon we got into our groups, I decided to arrange a trip to the green screen studio for our group as I wanted to try out some of the techniques as well as exploring lighting and how to evenly light our green background, I thought that the idea of green screen could link back to creating a window onto another world. Within this shoot I set up the camera, some of the lighting, helped with the experiments for the projector which weren't working too well, sat in on the meeting, took some notes and operated the camera for the test shots with one of our group members in front of the camera, we wanted to test whether there were any shadows on the backdrop that were visible on the green screen backdrop, myself, Dan, Janusz were really happy with the outcome.
We took notes of where the lighting was positioned so that we could rectify and replicate the positioning of the lights on the day, we played around with the camera settings as well, trying to check out how the camera should be setup and where it should be positioned. We did some test shots and started to edit some experimental pieces of footage using Premiere Pro, learning the capabilities of the green screen but also trying to work out whether there were any shadows that weren't visible on the camera viewfinder, everything was a success.
We discussed our idea and we now have a rough idea of the shots, lighting set up, angles, editing techniques that we are going to use for our "Film A Project".
Equipment Set Up - Green Screen Room
Played around with the idea of projecting the footage but the screen wasn't big enough so we are going to stick with our original idea of Green Screen.
Took test shots to see how the light worked for the backdrop of our piece, took a variety of test shots with the light on and off and then played back to see how our footage looked, all pleased with the way that it looked.
Checked the amount of steps that were between the Green Screen and the positioning of the XF100 camera (total of 9 steps)
Lights were positioned either side of the Green Screen Set, in line with the plug socket (45 Degree angle I reckon).
Set both the LED pannel lights to 25.5 temp
References
Green Screen Hollywood History Video:
Filmmaker IQ. (2013). Hollywoods History of Faking It | The Evolution of Greenscreen Compositing. [Online Video]. 16 June. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8aoUXjSfsI. [Accessed: 03 February 2016].
Green Screen Hollywood History Video:
Filmmaker IQ. (2013). Hollywoods History of Faking It | The Evolution of Greenscreen Compositing. [Online Video]. 16 June. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8aoUXjSfsI. [Accessed: 03 February 2016].
Music Videos.
Watsky - Whoa Whoa Whoa (All You Can Do):
Dizzie Rascal - I don't need a reason:
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