Green screen (Chroma-key)?

[DJRobB]

Has any body been successful at making a green screen setup (Chroma-key) mobile?


Thanks,

Robbie

[holly]

Mobile? Like you want to take it into a club?

We're talking like a photographer's background truss with a small cloth blue/green screen about 4' x 5' (The average male stretching out his arms is almost 6'). Perfectly even lighting for the background (I use 8' flourescent tubes in my studio) and separate front lights for the foreground which need to be hung somewhere.... Not to mention the average chromakey device (like the one in your mixer) is total crap and will leave a rediculous blue halo around everything.... It doesn't seem practical for live use. A cheap set up (with uneven lighting) is going to need a good software filter to get a clean cut, but won't be realtime. It would take a quality set-up and lots of experience to get a decent cut out of just hardware.... I'm picturing one of those photobooth arches that you see at the prom....

As an alternative, I've thought about ditching the chroma altogether and using lumakey instead. Most clubs have at least one black wall (and black material is cheap and easy to keep). Some cameras are sensitive in the infra-red range (most "nightshot" cams are really just the same old camera with an infra-red bulb or IR illuminator LED as a light) so you could conceivably do an infra-red lighting rig against a black wall and get a decent lumakey. Subjects wouldn't even have to know about the infrared lights so they would be more likely to act natural. IR Illuminator LEDs (http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&key=IR1) Might be a black&white solution, but could be a subtle fun place to start for visual effects, maybe a gogo dancer.... Just add colors and FX.

[infopocalypse]

Luma works surprisingly well in this situation... if inhibition isnt an issue than I'd recommend par cans with varying gel sheets dimmed about 3/4ths of the way from their 600 watt capacity. For simple luma setups you'll need a straight on, a left, and a right... this will eliminate the most obvious shadows. If you really can go for broke I don't know the exact name of them but there are some par cans that have separate RGB, and so can create any color through their combinations... these are tricky but very useful. If you use multicolor pars or gel sheets then you'll be able to tweak how the color affects the resulting image. If you have a mixer chain you'll also be able to cast one image in one direction and the other in another and then use whatever your target is as an inversion layer (or whatever other effect you had in mind).


James

[LEVLHED]

par cans w/ RGB? maybe you mean the tasty lights made by this company..
www.colorkinetics.com
they've been doing shit w/ LED's for 5 years I think..unfortunately, their par-type lights are still in the $500 each range, and that doesn't include a controller or the power supply! It shouldn't be too much longer though as LED gets cheaper and we'll be able to afford them (what, doesn't everybody want these?) at least you can leave them on for like 11 years before they burn out...

[VjDeranged]

Here you go...THIS is what you need... http://www.reflecmedia.com/

:D enjoy!