Green Screen and Lighting

Filmmaker wrote on 12/27/2005, 3:47 PM

I just bought a new green screen.
It is a felt 10' by 16' small screen. I'm using it to shoot a music video.
I have a few questions,

1) How do I know how far to shoot from to get the actors to match the size of the virtual background that I'm putting in.

2) Right now I can't afford expensive lighting. Does anybody have any ideas for cheap effective lighting for the green screen?

3) I know Vegas Movie Studio can't do this, but how can I instantly view the keyed background while I'm shooting the actors simultaneously? (Like TV weathermen can monitor themselves while they are being broadcast live... so they know where to stay/move to.)

Thank You Everyone for all your help. I am having a tough time with these projects and your help is greatly appreciated.

Comments

ChristerTX wrote on 12/28/2005, 7:51 AM

On question one, you might want to look at this post:

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/Forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=428747&Replies=2

Further down in the post, this comment appear to be related to what you want to do:

"Now I'm sure their are a lot of other uses of the parent-child thing, but I expect this is a good starting point. Basically, when you want to combine two or more tracks, then shrink (or zoom) the result, use Parent Motion. You could also do picture-in-picture-in-picture, for example. Or maybe some green-screen work, where two scenes are combined, then shrunk down together to fit the scale of a CGI background, etc. Or, a green-screen shot with an actor, and a "child" track of the background, and then use Parent Motion to zoom in or pan, etc., so that the zoom/pan is doing actor and background exactly the same."