Hi,
I am hoping to get some advice around green/blue screen lighting. We have a small green screen that we use to shoot out miniature characters against. We have got this working very well, there is a lot of distance between the characters and the green screen, so the lighting has been seperated, and can be nicely controlled. We use an overhead flourescent (not corrected - so it still has its inherent green hue) shielded and slanted down towards the green screen. Along with this, we have two red heads on flood, directly at the screen. This brings the IRE on my camera waveform monitor to a good level (between 55 and 60). So far, we can get some very clean shots with this.
Now we are starting to shoot against our blue screen - this screen is 3m high, and 11m long. both sides bend out to allow a sort of 180degree blue screen studio.
I am not sure how to go about lighting something that big. Firstly, after yesterdays initial test, the material we got is completely wrong, as it absorbs the light far too well (two red heads, on spot, on the same area barely raise the IRE) and there are terrible little silver flecks in it (that I am ashamed to say I never saw before - I think I need to be sat down, and givern the "eye for detail" chat again!
)
Currently we have 5 Red heads (800w bulbs) and around 6 or 7 flourescent, daylight colour corrected free standing lights - these have cones attached to direct the light forwards. They really do not give off much light at all. I am now wondering if we should build a softbox to group the flourescents together to light the background, but then again, how many do we need to get good lighting.
I posted this query in the After Effects forum, and got some great advice from the guys there, and one comment in particular mentioned that a small studio (10mx20m) uses around 120 spotlights to get well lit. It was also mentioned to me to try this forum as well, as the advice given here is also very good.
Well, thank you very much, and I look forward to finding a solution for our "giant" blue screen lighting.
Pierre