Essential Tips for Shooting Footage on Green Screen

Green screen footage is really meant to be worked with in post, but it's assumed that it's shot in proper fashion. 

Whether or not you have felt the pain of having badly shot green screen footage, these tips are essential for every filmmaker who happens to remove similarly colored areas from the footage and replace them with something else. This can be a video shot on a green screen, on a blue screen, a bright background (or the sky), a dark background. You will always deal with the same issue: believability of the final result. While we all know that we have to match the lighting, which is one of the tips, a great one is to keep an eye on the shutter speed in relation to the motion of the subject. Sometimes, you may need a higher shutter speed in order to avoid the cinematic-looking motion blur and make your job easier in post. Don't worry, you can always bring some of that blur in post and at the same time, quickly and accurately key out the green screen from the source footage.

Tihomir Lazarov's picture

Tihomir Lazarov is a commercial portrait photographer and filmmaker based in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is the best photographer and filmmaker in his house, and thinks the best tool of a visual artist is not in their gear bag but between their ears.

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1 Comment

Good to know. Tnx!