Jon Schellenger
REDuser Sponsor
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- Feb 14, 2007
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Hi everyone-
I wanted to pick everyone's brain on something very interesting that I have run into with our keying process. I have a ton of keying experience under my belt with the RED ONE along with Shake, Keylight, and Primatte.
My research over the last year and half of shooting with the RED has changed the way I have done keying over the years. We have a tungsten lit studio, however, all lights have been gelled to 5600K daylight. I have been shooting everything at 5600K white balance for the camera. I know that is the sweet spot for the chip- even under build 20.
I have done a ton of research as to why video prefers green over blue. I understand the luma and grain difference between R, G, and B with video. Blue being the grainiest/darkest channel. Green rocks on least amount of grain, and best luma. You can see a bunch of our work on GlamourKey.com.
Here is where I am totally lost-
I have heard countless times that Blondes key better with blue screen. I have never had an issue with keying blondes with green. In fact, I have had fantastic results. The girls with brunette hair, and black hair have been a real pain in my butt to key with a green screen. Blondes are a breeze.
I have fought to keep feeding the blue channel as much blue light as possible. However, on this last shoot the blue channel still is the darkest and most grainy as usual. Even at 5600K with 200 ISO - 320 ISO. Obviously if we were tungsten and white balanced at 3200 we would have a slight disaster on our hands. We originally shot a couple of modeling shoots at 3200, however, most shots were practically ruined because of the large grain and underexposed blue channel. This is why we moved to daylight a year ago to help the RED One camera.
When I key out the brunette hair with either keylight or primatte, I end up with a ton of grain in the transparency of the hair. Here is the funny part- using a background of 50 percent gray up to white, the grain is not seen at all. Using a background color of 50 percent gray to black, the grain starts to really pop out and sizzle around the hair at 75 percent gray all the way to black. If she was blonde, she would have been perfect all the way through, but because of the hair color I am stuck with a grain issue. I am assuming this is do to the fact that the luscious green color and luma has been removed and now I am stuck with the grainy blue and good red channel. This, mixed with the color of the brunette hair is now causing grain.
So - this being said, has anyone seen this? I know there are a ton of forums that talk about noise in keylight. They talk about changing parameters to hard color or "source" versus soft color (default). I have tried everything and nothing seems to work. I even swapped out keylight for primatte to see if I would get better results. Everything ended up looking the same.
So I begin to wonder something.... Is my theory possible that by keying out green (nice bright luma for the red one), I am left with the red channel (good) and blue channel (fair to poor - even at 5600K). With having only one good channel and one fair channel- is this producing my noise? I think it is. And I have no idea how to get rid of it even on future shoots- Unless----
Why not key out blue instead? I know it is not the best color for video to key out, however, would I get less grain? I would have a great green channel, and a great red channel.
I would really appreciate any ideas from you guys. I have no blue screen experience so I need you all to help me with your knowledge in this area.
I noticed that the Alicia Keys (James Bond Quantum of Solace music video) was shot on the RED One. It was all green screen- from what I could see, the video looked great. Her hair was not down with thin wavy strands like what we shoot for GlamourKey, however, none the less, the video looked great.
What are you guys doing? Has anyone tried Blue Screen?
Is there another way to feed even more blue light to the RED ONE? Even above and beyond the 5600K in order to help the darkness of that channel and the grain?
Thanks again everyone!
Jon Schellenger
VP of Production
www.GlamourKey.com
I wanted to pick everyone's brain on something very interesting that I have run into with our keying process. I have a ton of keying experience under my belt with the RED ONE along with Shake, Keylight, and Primatte.
My research over the last year and half of shooting with the RED has changed the way I have done keying over the years. We have a tungsten lit studio, however, all lights have been gelled to 5600K daylight. I have been shooting everything at 5600K white balance for the camera. I know that is the sweet spot for the chip- even under build 20.
I have done a ton of research as to why video prefers green over blue. I understand the luma and grain difference between R, G, and B with video. Blue being the grainiest/darkest channel. Green rocks on least amount of grain, and best luma. You can see a bunch of our work on GlamourKey.com.
Here is where I am totally lost-
I have heard countless times that Blondes key better with blue screen. I have never had an issue with keying blondes with green. In fact, I have had fantastic results. The girls with brunette hair, and black hair have been a real pain in my butt to key with a green screen. Blondes are a breeze.
I have fought to keep feeding the blue channel as much blue light as possible. However, on this last shoot the blue channel still is the darkest and most grainy as usual. Even at 5600K with 200 ISO - 320 ISO. Obviously if we were tungsten and white balanced at 3200 we would have a slight disaster on our hands. We originally shot a couple of modeling shoots at 3200, however, most shots were practically ruined because of the large grain and underexposed blue channel. This is why we moved to daylight a year ago to help the RED One camera.
When I key out the brunette hair with either keylight or primatte, I end up with a ton of grain in the transparency of the hair. Here is the funny part- using a background of 50 percent gray up to white, the grain is not seen at all. Using a background color of 50 percent gray to black, the grain starts to really pop out and sizzle around the hair at 75 percent gray all the way to black. If she was blonde, she would have been perfect all the way through, but because of the hair color I am stuck with a grain issue. I am assuming this is do to the fact that the luscious green color and luma has been removed and now I am stuck with the grainy blue and good red channel. This, mixed with the color of the brunette hair is now causing grain.
So - this being said, has anyone seen this? I know there are a ton of forums that talk about noise in keylight. They talk about changing parameters to hard color or "source" versus soft color (default). I have tried everything and nothing seems to work. I even swapped out keylight for primatte to see if I would get better results. Everything ended up looking the same.
So I begin to wonder something.... Is my theory possible that by keying out green (nice bright luma for the red one), I am left with the red channel (good) and blue channel (fair to poor - even at 5600K). With having only one good channel and one fair channel- is this producing my noise? I think it is. And I have no idea how to get rid of it even on future shoots- Unless----
Why not key out blue instead? I know it is not the best color for video to key out, however, would I get less grain? I would have a great green channel, and a great red channel.
I would really appreciate any ideas from you guys. I have no blue screen experience so I need you all to help me with your knowledge in this area.
I noticed that the Alicia Keys (James Bond Quantum of Solace music video) was shot on the RED One. It was all green screen- from what I could see, the video looked great. Her hair was not down with thin wavy strands like what we shoot for GlamourKey, however, none the less, the video looked great.
What are you guys doing? Has anyone tried Blue Screen?
Is there another way to feed even more blue light to the RED ONE? Even above and beyond the 5600K in order to help the darkness of that channel and the grain?
Thanks again everyone!
Jon Schellenger
VP of Production
www.GlamourKey.com
