Selecting among Blue and Green Screen Carefully

When choosing color of background, one must keep it in mind that it should be as different from the color of the subjects as possible. Since human lips and skin tone tends to be red in color, these colors cannot be used as background and we are left with green and blue colors. Many factors are considered before choosing among blue and green background.

Green screen has become more popular in recent years, due to the reason that green color provides a bright color channel which has lesser noise as compared to blue channel. Relative brightness of this color makes it an awful choice for shooting subject with blonde hair though, but it is much easier to key as compared to blue backgrounds.

Blue screen has some distinct benefits. When you cannot avoid spill (for instance – when the background has to be placed close to chroma material), it is better to use blue. This is because the blue casts lesser disturbance as compared to people walking around appearing seasick with green-colored faces. In addition to this, when you are shooting for something which will be composited to water or outdoor backgrounds, slight bluish cast will not cause any problem.

The selection of photography backdrops has to be done carefully. Otherwise, it can cause big blunders. For example – In a Turkish TV show, the team wanted to show two invisible men trying to tie the third man with chains. They used blue screen background for the scene and green body suit for those two men. This created wrong effect as the two men appeared black in the scene. The problem was this they did not use blue suit against blue background for making those two men invisible. If they wanted to use green suit, they could have used green background. Also, they forgot to add the chroma key effect. So, you can see that it is very important to select backgrounds and chroma key material carefully.

Source of Turkish TV show mistake:

• http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/196797/turkish-tv-show-forgets-to-add-green-screen-effects-hilarity-ensues/
• https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=242283592583457