Green Screen

When I had a lecture about using a green screen in film I thought that it would be fairly straight forward, just have a green screen up, light it up and then boom. But it is fairly more complicated than that. With green screen being used more and more throughout the film industry it is essential that we have a fundamental understanding of not only how to use it but when to use it and why. Of course, filmmakers don't want to be using a green screen for an entire film as it might not look right and then it really comes down to the skill of the editor and it takes most of the work out of the production and leaves it for the post-production teams to deal with.

Now during this lecture, we only were able to have a basic understanding of how to use a green screen but through research I have found why people use green screen and how in such complicated ways. For example, in Karate Kid there is a scene where they are on some sort of dock doing some training and the background looks really nice and scenic but while shooting the film the background did not look like that whatsoever. In fact, there is a huge bridge in the background, but they didn't think it fitted the scene, so they instead put up a little bit of green screen and keyed it out in post.

The most important thing I learnt about green screen is that you have to light it very carefully. You can't have blotches of light in the green screen as then it becomes difficult to chroma key out. You have to light the green screen and subject/actor seperatly to avoid unwanted shadows. Also, I now know that we use green screens instead of any other colour because people, the majority of clothes, funiture and decors aren't green (MUO, 2021)

Now would I use green screen? Most probably. Only for scenes that I want that seem to be either out of our budget, if it's impossible to film on location and for instances like how they did it in The Karate Kid (just cutting something out the background that is immovable). But I feel like I would try my best to steer away from using green screen as much as I can as I prefer the authentic look of filming on location and the actor to know where they are and be able to interact and react to the world around them but of course, my opinion on this could possibly change with some more practice and work with green screens.