lighting a green screen

[reginald_lewis]

hi all i have a couple of questions for you i am new to using a

green screen and recently piced one up i need to know basicly what

is the best way to light one to get proper replacement of the

background? is it better to use flash or continusus lighting?

basicly anything on lighting one would be helpful

[peter_witkop]

The short anwser: evenly, very evenly. Slight variations, you can work with, but get the lighting as even as possible. Copy style lighting ussually is the easiest. As far as continuous or flash; doesn't really matter, just as long as it's color balanced with the rest of the lights on the set (don't mix tungsten and flash, unless you gell one to balance everything). There are two gottcha's though, and these apply whenever you're lighting a background this way, whether it's a green screen, or a white seemless, or any other background that gets much illumination. The first is to make sure that the background lights don't spill onto the model, it's important that they're flagged so that the subject doesn't recieve any illumination from them. The second is bounce back from from the background itself; if the subject is too close to the background, the background lights will bounce off the background, illuminating the subject, and the subject gets a green rim light.

 

Peter

[todd_joseph]

I'm not an expert on this, but I think they are usually lit with fluorescents (Kino-flo's)

[ellis_vener_photography]

What type of lighting are you using to light your subject? if flash, use flash. And yes you

have to light the green screen very evenly.

[reginald_lewis]

well i was using a mix of tugston and flash but am havingt trouble geting it lit evenly not sure but i think it may be the fact that i have very little room and have eveything very close togehter

[reginald_lewis]

thanks for the info all was very helpful one other question do you recommend using flashes or hot lights