RED Green Screen Workflow, R3D Chroma Key Procedure
I recently posted in the forums at CreativeCow on the workflow for keying with R3Ds. Noah Kadner’s reply suggested that we focus on what our destination for the project is and then work backwards from there, which I believe is the best thing to do-just make sure that you have your VFX team/guy let you know what is best for him, and also heavily consult your VFX Supervisor before you start shooting principal photography. But one person, Russell Lasson, had a suggestion as well which I think is brilliant, but I am interested to hear of anyone else has anything they would like to add to this, along with any other suggestions on workflows.
Here is what Russell Lasson wrote:
“Just a couple of quick thoughts on green screen with the MX sensor:
- Just because you can shoot at 800 ISO, I would still lean towards exposing closer to 320 ISO. The more light usually means a cleaner key.
- If you’re lighting with tungsten, I would still put a blue filter on the lens. This has much less to do with noise like it did with the original sensor and more to do with getting colors that are more true.
- White balance on set. This helps in post so that you can process your footage as close to true color as you can. If you don’t and you don’t have a good reference to white balance from, you can just be doing some guess work.
- When pulling the key, either use the R3D files in a program that supports it or render out to a 444 codec. DPX, TIFF and ProRes 4444 are all good options. Rarely have we ever really pulled keys from the original 4K resolution. If you do, consider using ProRes 4444 at 4K to help control files sizes. Also consider rendering at 3K or even 2.5K if you want.
- If a key isn’t working great, you can try to change the white balance and exposure from the original R3D to see if that helps.
- I haven’t had time to try it yet, but we’ve been talking about shooting at a faster shutter to limit motion blur. One you’ve pulled the key, then use a program like RE:Vision Effects ReelSmart Motion Blur. Again, I haven’t tried this workflow, but it seems very promising for green screen.
Those are just some of my thoughts. Good luck!
Russ
Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
www.colormill.net”
Any ideas or thoughts on this workflow??
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