Alternative Lights

The23rdman

The23rdman

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Dean
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I know less than nothing about video, but I have a friend who's going to be doing some puppet work with green screen. He's investing in some lights and has spoken with the guys at Proactive who've recommended these. Do any of you guys know of any other lights that do this job for less money?
 
Seems an expensive solution, lighting requirements is an even illumination, can that not be done with ordinary household lamps, anglepoise or suchlike, just need to sort the white balance. How big is the set
 
It's for large green screen puppets and human interviews.
 
This is from Nathan...

"I need to film shmonkey and guru against a green screen
- much like the clip I sent you in that last mail of Glove and Boots on youtube

I also need to film two actors (one of them me) in green screen full body suits (which I have) against a green screen (which I have) interviewing experts.

That requires 2 cameras (I have one an HD video camera I bought last year - good enough) -

- one for wideangle shot
- one for interviewee

Then puppets will by lypsynched in later in separate film

I spoke to bournemouth film school technicians
and they said the most complex part will be the two puppets + interviewee with green screen

They said I would need one light to backlight the puppets and interviewee

and two lights on either side of the set at the front.


What confuses me about the Lishuai link recommended by the Proav technician is that there seems to be 2 lights in each package - maybe 2 of them is the equivalents of 1 bright bowens film light?

Hope this helps"
 
Lighting Green Screen has plenty of its own challenges - namely, the need to illuminate the green screen evenly - so just lighting the background itself will need two lights of its own really, before you even go into illuminating the subject. LED panels are a good choice for it though, because of the nice even flood illumination - as long as they're bright enough
 
So do you know of any better priced LEDs that will do the job?
 
Those seem about the going rate actually... Decent size LED panels aren't cheap.
 
Fair enough. Thanks mate.
 
(whether or not those ones are the best or even great are an unknown I'm afraid, I haven't worked with those ones)
 
I'm completely blind in this field so have no idea myself.
 
There are challenges to green screen - you need to have a very evenly illuminated green (to within 1 or 2 steps on the green channel) which is hard.

I'm not sure how much it costs, but the BBC invented a special back cloth about 5 years ago that reflects light back at a source. They then just put a ring of bright blue or green LEDs around the lens and get a fully lit backdrop without the need for any special background lighting.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/researchanddevelopment/2009/12/making-things-vanish-the-truem.shtml

Still a bit expensive to buy, but we normally hire a complete kit for around £40 for a weekend. (It's really easy to build the lightring, it's just the retroreflective cloth that is pricey - really need to test some from Deal Extreme or AliBaba some time)
 
Thanks for that - very interesting stuff.
 
those retro-reflective greenscreen kits are alarmingly effective. Not the very best, but very easy and widely used...
 
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