Greenscreen induction

Today we attended the first of two introduction into green screen filming. This session covered the basics of filming using the 'green screen techniques' and how to use them correctly. First of all I discovered we use green and sometimes blue because these colours aren't very common in skintone. Of course, I had never thought about why the screen was green or blue before; but being someone with both blue and green featured in her hair, I knew I would be in for a difficult time...

We also learnt how to set up basic lighting for shooting the future footage; Using LED lights and light weight stands. We used three points of light to achieve the over all lighting for the set. Below is a rough drawing of what I learnt, which is also the standard way of lighting any subject up.

The 'edge light' imitates what would be the sun in the environment and will generally shine directly onto the object (in this set it was pointed from behind). The 'key light' is positioned opposite the edge light, to act as a sort of counter light that bounces from other objects onto the main object. The key light is usually not as bright as the edge light and can be replaced with a reflector. The fill light is pointed at the subject, this light is normally used to illuminate any spiteful unnecessary shadows.

In this short introduction I've learnt the very basics about green screening and even if green screening isn't something I would typically think of using I might well consider using this technique in the future.