There's a decent chroma key tutorial on the Video University site that gets into "lighting on the cheap".
Just ignore the references to FCP :-)

edit: Here's another link for you.

Mike

Hey it sounds cheap, but if you get those 5 bulb lights with bendy arms and put 1 on each side and have 100+ wattage equivalent bulbs in each socket, you should be able to achieve pretty consistent lighting on the BG and have one or two of each bulb pointing to the back and then just have a decent lighting job on the talent. If you haven't got any lighting for the talent, then just do a couple more of those stands, and but a diffuser on it and, it should be all within about $150-$200.

Dave

For best results from a green screen use daylight lights. There's plenty of cheap fluro lights suitable for lighting a screen on eBay.

Bob.

GREAT links Mike...extremely helpful.

Thanks for posting them!

TB

Mike, thanks for the first article- great information and very helpful on the front end.

Dave, if you get a moment (now being a proud father and all) can you provide a few links of what you are talking about? Bendy lights?

Bob, when I did a search for daylight lights, what I got was "light's that give off natural sunlight type light" which, according to the article, has blue hues in it and that is not the greatest for keying if using blue screen (I guess it is fine for green). Is that what you are talking about?

Thanks for the information- I will look on ebay and see what I can find there as well.
j razz

For a screen and support- what do you think about this for the price?
The link

j razz

"Daylight" lights include fluro and HMI lights.
Kinoflo, Arri, Lowell all make lights that are daylight.
Daylight lights have a color temperature around 5400 deg K

There's two problems with using tungsten lights for green screen work.

1) They add red to the green of the screen.
2) Video cameras are less sensitive to the blue end of the spectrum than the red. To achieve white balance at tungsten color temperature the camera has to increase the gain in the blue channel which results in more noise which makes the key harder to extract cleanly.

Most daylight light sources are at least 3 times more efficient than tungsten so you get less heat for the same light.

Here's a typical daylight fluro light:
http://www.dragonimage.com.au/product.asp?id=1376

I'm certain you could buy cheaper through eBay in the USA. If that's too expensive then cheap light fixtures of any kind with daylight (cool white) compact fluorescent tubes in them would do. You could also build a couple of Victor Milt's Nanolights to light your screen.

Bob.

I'd think about what you're going to do with this screen... I've got one of those 5x7 pop up ones and it's really too small for a anything but headshots. Consider you need to get your talent away from the screen and it doesn't leave you much room... I'm looking hard at the ebay kit rjazz posted earlier....

Take a look at http://www.skaeser.com/servlet/the-671/**2400-WATT-COOL-dsh-FLO-CHROMAKEY/Detail

I had occasion to work with a videographer recently who owned this kit. It's extremely well built and, at this price, is a great buy. My friend ordered the 12x20 foot green screen, which added only a little to the cost and turned out to be well worth the extra cost as it allows for a continuous flow from top of frame down to and across the floor.

Jack

Hey Jeremy,

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=8204466

http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=1958407280&SKU=13906068&RN=262

A few of these ugly mugs oughta get the job done for ya, and the walmart one has a floor lap included which is good for getting better even distribution of the light - they should all be white on the inside, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Dave

I have the skaeser.com 4-light halogen kit and it is very well built and the 9X15 screen cloth is seamless and easy to handle. I would definitely do business with them again.

"get those 5 bulb lights with bendy arms and put 1 on each side and have 100+ wattage equivalent bulbs"

Those sockets are made for 25-watt bulbs. DO NOT PUT 100W BULBS IN THOSE SOCKETS!

jazzmaster, I didn't say 100 watt bulbs, i said 100watt bulb equivalents

The CFL Bulbs that do 100 equivalents are about 28 watts i think. Very close to the 25, and I've seen this used, before, however you do make a strong point that should be made clearly, DO NOT USE HIGH WATTAGE Incandescent bulbs in these lamps if they can't handle it.

Thanks jazzmaster.

Dave

In any case they're useless for lighting a screen, you want a largish light source. Not that I'm that familiar with USA hardware stores but I did find these at USA Hardware.
You just need to fit the 4' tubes and you have flicker free light for your screen with two of them, obviously you don't hang them, mount them vertically using any cheap stands, even mic stands, one on each side of the screen.

Bob.

A good point that Mikes link said “we need GREEN not green”

I went and bought some nice bright green cloth and made my screen and it was ok
Then I went over to Lightads place to shoot some stuff when he brought his screen out MAN that was GREEN
It was such a hideous bright green that when we took it outside it seemed as if the sun became dull
It almost seemed if it had a built in light source and just screamed key me out PLEASE


So look for a good GREEN back before you buy

The green I was looking for isn't on the pantone chart yet. We used a sample of it and its work fantasticly well. It's a dayglo, luminance highlighter green. So I'm off to buy the rest of it today.

I tried to film it to show you guys but it just comes out blank :)