5" x 7" is a small background! Of course you don't need the screen to fill the FoV (because you can paste over the stuff at the edges) but you do need to keep the talent distant from the screen. http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/alindsay/story/greenscreen_primer_part_1/try this[/link] might help; in two parts.

EDIT: http://www.bluesky-web.com/greenscreen-6.htmwhy use 5600K lighting[/link]

I shoot greenscreen in a room about that size all the time - see 45 seconds into this example: http://www.torealize.net/2physics.html. Be sure to watch full-screen and press pause immediately at 45 seconds (the editing is a bit quick).

I put the camera only some 4' or 5' in front of the talent. I light the greenscreen (mine is about 8'x8') about 3' in front of the screen, at the 4 corners. I put the talent between 4 and 5 feet in front of the screen, with close, diffuse lighting to minimize need for bright lights that might create difficult-to-deal-with shadows on the greenscreen. I use a lot of black flags (multiple sheets of black kraft paper) to prevent talent lights from getting much light on the screen. I use backlighting, as you can see. I almost certainly could have gotten rid of the slight green cast in the fringe of the hair if I would have attended a bit more to spill suppression; but still the results aren't too bad for a small room.

Shoot with a 3 CCD camera if possible - the better the camera, the easier it will be to clean up the key. I, too, use 5600K lighting for all lights except the backlight (3200k).

In Vegas:
First I use color correction to saturate the greens (be sure nothing in the shot is at all green). Then I use BCC7 keyer - much better than NewBlue or Vegas. After keying, I do any color correction needed to match other cameras, etc.

Incidentally, that shot in my example was my first use of BCC7, without having read instructions, nor spending more than maybe 7 or 8 minutes tinkering with it; certainly not the best that BCC7 is capable of providing.

Thanks everyone. I have a tungsten light kit and fortunately have daylight gels I can use.

Paul

"Be sure to watch full-screen and press pause immediately at 45 seconds (the editing is a bit quick)."

You may have gotten better results by keying each part of the subject by breaking it down into layers using masks and the best settings for the keyer for each layer/ part of the subject.
The key at 0:43 looks to me like you've used too much matte expansion and smoothing. That's cause the outline around the subject and made the hair on the RH side look like a clump instead of strands. By breaking it down into layers you should be able to eliminate those problems.

I've got a pretty wide choice of keyers but I've managed to wrangle a quite good key using nothing but Vegas's keyer but you've got to work at it. Sure Vegas lacks the useful extras of the higher end tools but the basic key function seems to work exactly the same in pretty much all of them.
The only one that gets a lot of good press as standing above the rest of the pack is Primatte. I just watched a tutorial on it and I can see why. If keying was part of my daily work I'd part with the $500 to buy it no problem. If you want a really quick key you don't even have to select the key color, Primatte is smart enough to work it out. If you need lots of control and smarts for hair and smoke it has all the bells and whistles and then some. On the downside Primatte only runs in AE and FCP but Red Giant seem to be listening to us Vegas users of late.

Bob.

@farss:

The key at 43 seconds was done with New Blue. It was because of dissatisfaction with New Blue that I bought BCC7. I agree with your assessment.

Thanks for the other suggestions. I've been hoping to go back and spend a bit more time with that key when I'm able to do so. - Will keep your suggestions in mind.

Try the free Cinegobs keyer, it's great with spill

Anthony

Yes, Cinegobs is good; but the alpha that it produced never looked as clean back on the Vegas TL as it looked when pulling the key. Maybe there's some trick that I was missing?