Blue Screen Vs. Green Screen For VFX
BLUE SCREEN VS. GREEN SCREEN.
A solid-color background is a versatile tool filmmakers use to add special effects to their movies. Learn whether a green or blue screen is the right choice for your next video production.
THE COLOR OF THE CINEMA.
If you’ve ever watched a behind-the-scenes specific for a Hollywood blockbuster, you’ve likely viewed actors performing in front of a green or blue background. But you don’t have to be an expert filmmaker to revel in the benefits of a blue or green screen. Even if you’re a beginner shooting a short movie on your outside or a YouTuber making a tutorial video, putting something as easy as a green or blue sheet in the background of a shot gives you the strength to add amazing VFX at some point in the post-production process by way of the usage of a technique known as chroma key compositing.
“In the historical days with film, blue made it much less challenging to key things. With digital cameras, green is greater popular,” says filmmaker Charles Yeager. “But even in present films, they nevertheless use blue screens for specific reasons.”
WHAT IS THE CHROMA KEY?
“Chroma key is when you lock onto a unique color that’s one of a kind from something else in the shot and cast off it completely,” says director and cinematographer Steven Bernstein. “Sometimes that’s green, due to the truth it offers you the excellent separation. But we have the video modifying technology to lock onto any shade of something shade we want.”
Blue or green colors are famous backgrounds for filmmaking due to the fact they’re special to most human skin tones, hair colors, and clothing. This is why it’s essential to make sure your actors don’t put on something that matches the shade of the screen at the back of them. For example, if an actor wears blue clothing in front of a blue screen, their body will be chroma-keyed out of the shot along with the screen in the back of them. This is due to the fact the chroma key system keys out and gets rid of the whole thing that is the identical color as the background screen.
WHICH SCREEN COLOR IS BEST?
Whether you use a blue display or a green display sooner or later depends on the instance of your shoot.
One key element is luminance or the quantity of light a color reflects. A green background has a whole lot greater luminosity than a blue one, making a green screen a higher desire for daylight scenes when you prefer your shots to appear vibrant and nicely lit. But a blue screen can be available in scenes where you don’t want so lots light.
“If you’re trying to composite round an actor in an hour of darkness scene, you choose to go with a blue screen,” Yeager recommends. “It’s darker, so it’ll replicate much less light back on them, which means much less color spill to deal with in post-production. The color spill is when the color of the chroma key background is reflected and returned to the actor. This can make the keying method extra difficult, so you prefer to keep away from the color spill as much as you can.”
If the scene you’re capturing requires a character to wear green, you have to use a blue background, and vice versa. But even colors that don’t suit the background can still cause a problem. “Blond hair can be tough to key out on a green screen due to the fact the way light displays through it. It’s nearly a little translucent and you get color spill,” Yeager says. “A blue display screen gives you a great deal greater contrast with blond.”
If you’re filming a blue or green screen in an outdoor environment, you should be as involved with the colors of your surroundings as you are with your actors’ costumes. And you’re someplace in the place trees and grass will be seen in your shot, you’re better off the usage of a blue screen. If there’s a giant body of water in the scene, then green is the way to go.
Because blue screens have decreased luminance, there’s much less chance of color spill around the edges of your actors. If you’re filming a shot at the place the actor and the chroma key background are close together, use a blue screen, as it will assist ensure the color spill will be a lot less.
Whether you’re making a sci-fi epic or a quiet indie character study, the proper color of the backdrop coupled with chroma key technology can free up a new world of possibilities for your film.
