Lighting for Podcasts and Interviews

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In this lesson, we'll show several different ways to light a green screen and set up a basic interview style lighting setup. At first you may feel slightly overwhelmed by the quantity of lights or just the complexity of it all, but with a few basic steps we examine the different setups and sections of creating a virtual news room. (Click on any thumbnail image below for an enlarged view.)

Topics Covered:

• Lighting a Green Screen
• Other Techniques for Lighting Your Green Screen
• Adding Fill Light with Reflection
• Adding a Hair Light

Camera/Media

• Sony HDR-FX1 video camera
• Manfrotto Video Tripod - 525MVB - With 505 Pro-video Head

 

 

 

Lighting Equipment

• BackDrop Pole
• BackDrop: 10 x 12-foot chroma green
  • HalfDome^® nxt: small
• LiteDisc^® accessory: LiteDisc^® holder
• LiteDisc^®: 42 inch black/silver
• LitePanel accessory - Connector Clips
• LiteStand Accessory: Boom
• LiteStand Accessory: BoomStand
• LiteStand: large
• OctoDome nxt: small
• StarLite^® Lamp - 1000watt
• StarLite^® Lamp - 500watt
• StarLite^® OctoDome^® nxt Kit
• Video Connectors

Lighting a Green Screen The goal when lighting a green screen for keying it out is to light the screen evenly. This results with an even, uniform color behind your main subject or object. An even, saturated color with no shadow areas is much easier to remove in post-production. While there are several great applications available for keying out backgrounds even under the worst conditions, it is always best to shoot a clean original. This greatly reduces post-production headaches.

Figure 1

The background was set up using a green 10'x12' Photoflex BackDrop on a Backdrop Pole. The pole was secured atop two LiteStands. LitePanel Connector Clips were used to hold the fabric taut. It is good practice when shooting green screen footage to light the background separately from your subject. This resolves the issue of shadows falling on the background making for difficult knockouts. We set up a small HalfDome2 soft box suspended by a heavy duty boom arm for lighting the background (figure 1). Inside the soft box we attached a Starlite QL light with a 1000 watt lamp.

Figure 2

This shows a soft box with the front difussion removed. Notice the inner baffle is still in place (figure 2).

Figure 3

We gave the HalfDome a slight turn toward the green screen to get a more direct light on the backdrop. Another good practice when shooting green screen is to place your main subject far from the background, usually about 6 feet. This prevents shadows from hitting the background, prevents green reflected light from spilling onto your subject, and tends to let the background fall out of focus. An out of focus background will minimize any wrinkles and hard tonal anomalies. As you can see we have our chair about 5 feet away from the backdrop (figure 3). We wanted to reduce the spill of green on our subject, so we have kept the interviewee as far away from the backdrop as much as we could with our studio space. Ideally we would have made it further away to avoid any spill at all.

Figure 4

We looked at our set up from behind the camera to see how we are doing (figure 4). The background was looking O.K., but some wrinkles needed to be removed. One important thing to keep in mind when using a fabric green screen is to keep the fabric tight and flat. Small wrinkles can be fine, but large wrinkles and shadows can be a huge pain for the editor.

Connector Clips for LitePanels worked well for smoothing the backdrop when clipped on the LiteStands. The standard studio tool for holding your backgrounds tight is the spring clamp. Just secure the clamp over the fabric and light stand, then twist to tighten the fabric (figure 5).

Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7

Figure 8

We set up a second light to get a more even spread of light and a flatter green color to ease the chroma-keying later in editing (figure 6).

Figure 9

We found that this second light was positioned where we needed to set up our second interview camera, so we placed the light on the opposite side of the background (figure 7).

Other Techniques for Lighting Your Green Screen Figure 8 shows the standard way of lighting on a mobile/set location situation. Since we were shooting in HD with a wide screen aspect ratio (16:9), we were concerned that the lights would get in the shot. So we chose to use the one light overhead approach. If we used the lighting solution shown in figure 9, we would have had to raise our talent on a platform or a couple apple boxes.

Figure 10	Figure 11

Figure 12

We sat our interview subject down to evaluate how our lighting is progressing (figure 10).

Figure 13

We had a slight bit of light spilling on our local rock star/musician from background light.

We next brought in a 3 foot OctoDome nxt with a 500 watt light bulb (figure 12). We checked our lighting results in the interview camera (figure 13).

Figure 14	Figure 15

Figure 16

The OctoDome nxt has provided and even, soft light (figure 14).

Figure 17

Notice the slight shadow on the left side of our rock-star's face. We are getting a nice even light across his shirt but little light is actually hitting the left side of his face. We needed to add in some reflection or another light source to take out the dark side (figure 15).

Adding Fill Light with Reflection To fill in the left side we brought in a 42 inch white/silver LiteDisc reflector on a LiteDisc holder and LiteStand. The LiteDisc Holder is a great tool to have in your studio. It is easy to operate and saves lots of time when setting up. With the silver side showing, the LiteDisc was positioned to reflect light from the main light (OctoDome) until we had a nice reflection covering our musician's face and shirt (figures 16 & 17).

Figure 18	Figure 19

Figure 20

We now have a a nicely lit right side of the face with using a simple silver reflector. Though it's starting to look like a nice shot, we still need to add a hair light to get a well rounded, three point lighting configuration. (Figure 18)

Adding a Hair Light We added the hair light using a 50 watt Dedolight kit at full power. We added on a small ActionDome soft box, specifically designed for use with smaller video lights. Using the soft box greatly cuts down the harshness of using a straight light which would give you harsh shadows under your interviewee's chin. We chose to put the light to the right side, because we needed the room on the left to place the second interview camera (figure 19).

Figure 21 Figure 22 Figure 23 Figure 24

Figure 25

We are now lighting up the dark right shoulder and getting slight highlights in our rock star's hair. Though black hair is hard to light well, the hair light is going to show some separation of the different sections and strands so it does not all look like one big wig (figure 20).

In conclusion, there are several different ways to shoot an interview with a green screen. The main key points are: Keep your subjects far enough away from the green screen in order to prevent green light from spilling on to their faces and cloths. Light your green screen with even lighting. Always plan the shoot days before you show up on set, and never forget to have plenty of fun. Green screen/chroma keying program recommendations: Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Studio version 07 or later, Apple's Final Cut Pro.