Would like advice for test photoshoot tommorow.

[EJTrowbridge]

Hello everyone, it is great to have found a community that is active and as helpful as yours. I've come for a little advice for a shoot I have scheduled this coming week. I have strong feelings that it will be a success, but I would like to know as many tips before I begin.

First, I don't shoot with a Canon (sorry!), but I'm shooting digital with a Panasonic PV-DC252D. It's a GREAT camera, and I have gotten some great quality photos from it. For the past few months, I've been messing around with bluescreening. It's been pretty successful, but my current photos need to be a little more precise for the task I want to tackle this weekend.

Ok... here's the task. I'm doing a shoot of different characters from "Dracula" (the city is doing a production of it), and I want a shot of their entire body behind a bluescreen. I've bought a large roll of seamless blue paper to hang it the background, and I will be spray painting a box chromakey blue for them to stand on. If all goes well, I will be able to get a full body shot where I can key out the blue and replace it with white and add their bodies to the poster.

Tommorow I am doing a practice shoot on the stage (so I will have access to all the lighting and so forth), but I need some tips. I use Photoshop to do my color keying, but it is not as effective as I would like it to be. Currently, I use dvGarage's technique for keying out blue (http://216.127.92.202/media/techtv/cfh_key.pdf), but it leaves me with distorted quality and uneven color tones.

For my shoot tommorow, could you please give me some bluescreening tips? I've had a horrible time with lighting (shadows, brightness, uneven lightning on the bluescreen, ect). How do effectively do bluescreening in Photoshop, and any other quality tips to make these posters come out as best as they can? I think I will be able to do a good job, but I would like to hear what advice you guys could give me.

Thanks guys, and I will check back later.

ERIC

PS: My goal is something like the Matrix: Reloaded character teaser posters, but with their entire bodies and not just their torsos and half their heads. See what I am aiming for here: http://www.jarusa.com/matrix-reloaded-posters.htm

[AliasMoze]

I think I can help. I am a filmmaker by trade and have some experience with compositing.

My first question is, "why bluescreen?" If you're doing still photos, it is probably easier to either manually remove the bodies or use a program like Procreate Knockout. I have Knockout, and it is amazing. I recently had to pull a matte from a still of a water fountain, and I was able to snag all of the water droplets in the air and even some fine mist, all from a low-res image.

Even in the case of video or film, there are non-bluescreen solutions, such as roto-splines, more time-consuming but definitely valid.

IF you're hell-bent on bluescreen, the first thing that comes to mind is avoiding reflected blue light from hitting the subjects and changing their temperatures. Either put some distance between them and the background or be careful not to let light reflect off the bluescreen and into the actors.

Either way, I'd check out Procreate Knockout to do the removal from still photos.

If you can't get it, there are several ways to remove a subject from a background, but it usually requires a combination. I may use a density mask for hair and water droplets, for example, while drawing splines for the clothing and flesh. Splines are good, but make sure you don't try to do it all with one spline, because the result is what looks like a human-produced outline. Using a spline for the arm, the torso, etc., makes for a more natural matte and gives more control over the feathering.

Lighting-wise, if you're horrible with lighting, nothing I can say right now will help you by tomorrow. Just light the way you want the subjects to look in the final composite. If you're shooting indoors, and the final composite will be outdoors, it doesn't take a genius to realize that you must make the lighting match.

That aside, your important light is your key light; that is, the main source of light, be it the sun, a lamp, or moonlight. The second is your fill light, which helps manage the ration between the lit side of the subject and the side not receiving direct light. The fill is naturally not as bright, and, it being usually reflected light, it tends to be softer. A third light could be a rim light (or backlight), which is a light coming from behind. The backlight has no natural equivalent; it's just to seperate the subject from the background. The trick when doing it is making it look natural.

Good luck.

[EJTrowbridge]

Thanks, I appreciate your comments. That program sounds very interesting, so I will definetely check it out.

Again thanks, if I have any troubles today, I'll be back. ;)