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Creating a Greenscreen Period Piece:
Driving in Classic Cars

by Craig Herron

Ever wanted to create a film set in the past with realistic backdrops and vehicles but don't have the money or the people to make it a reality? Well, we did. However, rather than let our micro-budget limitations get in our way, we found ways to use it to spur us on to a creative solution.

The problem:
We needed to find a way to shoot car interiors for a 1950's period movie. Although we had three period cars and were able to shoot some drive-bys and a few quick stills of the interior on one, we did not have time to put actors in the cars and drive them. They are also very expensive cars and the owners are reluctant to let us drive off with them. In addition I have always thought it was difficult for the actors to work in a moving car and it can be dangerous.

The solution:
Although there is nothing new about having a mock up car in a studio and using rear projection or blue or green screen, we wanted to try it with the new generation of HDV and HD cameras. We even had a REDOne camera to try.


Step One — The shoot
We set up three cameras in the huge green screen stage at Blue Rock Productions in Baltimore. John Cooper brought his REDOne camera, Chris Strackbein of Blue Rock provided a Sony HVR-V1 HDV camera and I even threw in my little consumer Sony HDV just to see how it would work. Richard See, an actor friend, came by to help out. For our driving scene we put a couple of folding metal chairs together and threw our green cloth over them.


The green screen was lit using two space lights. We were able to adjust the cameras and even to key out the green screen and look at backgrounds with Veescope on a Mac lap top. Veescope contains a set of software scopes and it is very easy to adjust the lighting on the green screen to hit between 40 and 50 IRE on the waveform scope. Keylight (the keyer in After Effects) seems to really like a slightly darker green screen, so pay attention to this. You should have an even line right around 40 IRE on your scope. I think we set the exposure setting on the camera to around T 4.0. You want to light the talent, but not add light to your green screen background. It's best if the talent is far away from the green screen, which is the advantage of a large studio. What ever you do, don't open up the exposure all the way, as this introduces noise which makes it hard to key.

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