Why do screens have to be white?

[burstingfist]

I almost prefer a darker screen color, like blue or red. It makes the imagery more subtle and murky. I use black a lot, so I guess I just tired of seeing the white screen.

[KillingFrenzy]

I kind of see where you're going. The answer is probably some sort of backprojection. Backprojection can look very clean and "transparent" instead of looking like you're projecting on someones tighty-whities. I've found that I don't mind a slight wash of blue or blacklight on my projections. This is usually a "well if you have to get some lights near the screen, make them blue". This is because traditionally the blues don't carry as well from the projector. Having an extra boost of blue kind of hides the grey base color, and gives your projected blues a little power to beat out the reds. The worst case scenario is a lazy lighting guy, or someone with a poor selection of gels that decides to make everything red. Red lights can really kill projector performance.

So, for the effect you're going for, I'd say a semi-opaque plastic or some sort of mesh might serve you better then using dark fabric of any sort.

[bigloose]

we have an old green one

[charlielangridge]

Try a heavy (comparitively) muslin or mesh. Looks great and u can do several layers down the room for effect

[NickT]

I use a nice big raw cotton dust sheet that could best be described as 'dirty beige'; not white in the slightest.

[ristuuk]

Rosco produce pure black screens for rear projection,great, for when not projected on they are hidden ,plus you can project a smaller image size without it looking like your projector wont fill the screen

[brain]

yes, the black back projection screens that ristuuk mentioned are a killer, cause the image appears in "nowhere" instead of a predictable "there will be the beam" white space. but you need the space for rear projection and they are expensive.

there is a club here where they project onto the camou-green wall (understatement...) and i always want to know what it looks like if you cover just a part of the projection area with the high reflective white material used for traffic signs. guess it flashes like hell :cool:

anyone tried?

[NickT]

I used to work in traffic signing, and that sheeting costs about ?80 to ?100 per sq.m - eeek! That would be one expensive screen, but it would be bloody bright.:cool:

[vandeti]

any pics of those coloured screens
specially that black one .. I wanna see that !!

post them here and/or in the topic 'pictures of screens // shows'

[fluchtpunkt]

@ my last gig i used semi-transparent screens. nevertheless i did a front projection on them. ca 1.5m behind the screens i hung black cloth as a background for the transparent screens.
...nothing unusual so far.
happens that the black cloth was semi transparent, too. while testing the projectors i noticed that this resulted in a very interesting, 2-layer projection - if looked at from behind. the white screen was still easily visible through the black screen in front, but the rigging etc wasn't. the (larger yet a lot dimmer) projection on the black screen added 'depth' and 'texture' to the white one. of course the layers would shift relative to each other if you moved around (unfortunately i don't have any pics). i was playing high contrast, rapid movement visuals(eg (http://n.ethz.ch/student/tobhalbh/movies/mixVJO92002_02.mov)) which worked out very well.
sadly i didn't have the time left to change the setup, which left the backstage with the 'two-screen' setup & the dancefloor with an ordinary white screen with a black backdrop.
next time :)