Scarlet Greenscreen Musicvideo

[Kim Frank]

I shot quite often with Red M and Red Mx, but I thought I'd give you guys some insight into my first time experience with shooting Scarlet and greenscreen. Here you can take a look at the final result:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgfNSNPRpJI

The whole Project was under enormous time and money pressure, why it isn't as perfect as I would have wished it to be, but I'm satisfied after all. All Backgrounds were illustrated and animated before the shoot and I had one week to cut and composite.

We shot with two Scarlets and Zeiss Cp2s at 800 ISO, 25 fps, 100th shutter and 3200 K.

The greenscreen is a permanent installed studio with prelit tungsten fixtures. Cycs for the walls and two 6K ballon lights for the floor.

Overall the keying with Primatte worked okay, although I have to say that the Scarlets visible Noise and little artifacts at 800ISO made it harder than I thought.

The owner of the Studio told me that their tests showed that the perfect setting for Scarlet and greenscreen is between 320 and 500 ISO and that the tungsten balanced lights are not a big factor in quality. That's why I didn't use filtration, what I normally did when shooting greenscreen with Red and tungsten but even without and with 800ISO I was missing about 1 1/2 stops and because of the dancing (much more was shot but cut by the label) I didn't want to shoot at a 50th.

The CP2 weren't sharp enough to get close to the illustrations why I had to use a lot of sharpening what made the noise of the Scarlet even more visible.

I am really not that satisfied with the material, although the result is okay I think, but I shot Greenscreen before in a much bigger studio with much more light and even with a Red One M (not MX) and Red Pro Primes at 320 ISO, 100th shutter and with 80C blue filter, I was able to get far better results then this time.

I would have loved to test a blue filter, because I think a lot had to do with not using the sensor at his sweet spot of 5000 K. The noise got really heavy and at 3200K the material still was too warm tinted.

But after all I can't get rid of the feeling, that the picture quality of a RED One MX is better then Scarlets or at least even. I have yet to find a comparison between scarlet and Epic to prove me, that they are similar.

Im gonna have another Scarlet shoot next week and hopefully have some time for testing. I really wish that I will be more satisfied this time.

 

[Brandon J. Garcia]

Its kind of hard with these types of shoots... because the cinematography almost takes a back seat and your at the mercy of your motion graphics artists' skill (and animator) .... It's a very cool video, good song, kinda funky.

I didn't really see anything wrong with the photography. But as you said, the lighting was already pre lit and locked.
It would have been nice to light the subject differently in a couple scenes just for variation. She's lit the same throughout.

Other than that, I dug the video.

 

[Kim Frank]

I think you got me wrong there. The Greenscreen is prelit. The choice to light her in the same flat way throughout the video was because that way she fit best into the flat illustrated backgrounds. Originally I planned to make it even flatter, but that wouldn't have been that flattering for her.

glad you liked it!

BTW I am also the director and did all the compositing by myself.

 

[Joel Arvidsson]

I have not shot with red one but with scarlet i se no problem at all with keying. That said i never
tried tungsten for greenscreen. Was cool with all graphic. I did think the shadow of woman was distracting in some shoots.

Cheers
Joel

 

[Noel R.]

800 has more noise than 320. Also using 3200K lights will give you more noise than daylight balanced light unless you are going for a warmer look. In your video it looks like you balanced more towards white which means you have to amplify the blue channels in order to get the white balance there, your instincts were probably right about keeping the blue filter on. It would of been better to use daylight balanced light, and shot at 320 to avoid noise. Overall I thought the video looked good? Just my opinion.

 

[Kim Frank]

Thanks Noel, glad you liked it. Of cause I know everything you've summed up. Just wanted to share my experience. I also think it looks good, that's my job after all, but not perfect is all I'm saying.

 

[Zharmane Washington]

I like the video

 

[Brandon J. Garcia]

I think you got me wrong there. The Greenscreen is prelit. The choice to light her in the same flat way throughout the video was because that way she fit best into the flat illustrated backgrounds. Originally I planned to make it even flatter, but that wouldn't have been that flattering for her.

glad you liked it!

BTW I am also the director and did all the compositing by myself.

Very cool... well thats my take from it. But regardless, you did a good job compositing.
This is definitely a good piece, IMHO

 

[Zeb B]

It's a bit rough but totally fits the indie vibe. I'm going to the Green Screen production class at NAB this year since this is more complex a subject than shoot and key

 

[Chris Lowe]

I did my very first scarlet greenscreen shoot with tungsten lights and also had a lot of noise. But I have since used daylight balanced lights when shooting greenscreen and the difference is huge. It's almost as simple as a one click key, with very minor adjustments. But a whole different story with tungsten, at least in my experience.

I dug the video btw, particularly scenes of her walking through the woods with the chirping birds.

 

[Mark Pavy]

The key has way too much spill. I found this tutorial very helpful, there's actually 4 parts to it.

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/devis_andrew/Multi-Layer-Editing-1/video-tutorial

 

[Shapour Daneshmand]

It's a bit rough but totally fits the indie vibe. I'm going to the Green Screen production class at NAB this year since this is more complex a subject than shoot and key

Josh,
would you share some of the knowledge learned in NAB with us later?