In video production, knowing how to use a green screen is an essential skill for any producer. It is an irreplaceable tool and can give you a lot of creative freedom in post-production. But in my book, knowing when to use a green screen is just as important as knowing how.

There are so many resources on how to shoot green screen for your project. Forums and blogs are filled with tips and tricks and best practices. In my experience, clients and producers seem to view green screen as a magic tool that makes a shoot easy, and avoid the hassle of being on location. However,  if you’ve had some experience trying to achieve high-end results with green screen, you’ve no doubt been frustrated with the process.

If you find yourself needing a shot of an actor hanging off the edge of a skyscraper, then green screen is probably going to be the most economical, and safest option. Often times, however, I’ve been asked to shoot green screen for scenes when a park, a news set, or a nondescript background was needed.

While green screen may appear to be a simpler option, often times I find that by the time I set up all the lighting properly, and spent the time in post-production to get the key and background correct, my time would have been much better spent researching and securing the right location. Good green screen work takes a lot of forethought and post-production time, and if not done properly, can easily bring down the production value of your entire project.

For interviews or a spokesperson, using a white or black background is a simple way to give you some of the options a green screen shot offers, without the time-consuming task of keying and precise lighting. Some simple editing can allow for graphics and other assets to be placed alongside your talent. I’ve always found white and black backgrounds to be easy to work with, while continuing to keep the production value high without a huge time investment.

So the next time you’re considering breaking out the green screen, consider your options carefully, and make the choice that will result in the highest production value you can achieve.

On May 7th Adobe released Creative Suite 6, and it’s pretty clear that their eyes are keenly focused on video production. While we’re still in the process of writing our review of the software suite, here are a few of the features we’re think video producers everywhere will be excited about.

Adjustment Layers in Premiere – Here’s the situation. You’ve edited together a very complex sequence of shots which features a drunk stumbling from home from a night at the local watering hole. The sequence is composed of several point of view shots cut tightly together, and sprinkled with wide shots of the person walking down the sidewalk. You want to make sure every POV shot is blurry and de-saturated so the viewer can see the world as the drunk sees it. Before, our only solution was to either apply the blur and de-saturation effects to each clip individually, or nest each chunk of shots and then apply the effects. Adjustment layers change this. They work just like they do in After Effects. Simply place an adjustment layer over the shots you want to affect, then apply the effects you want to the adjustment layer. It will transfer those effects to every clip underneath it in Premiere’s timeline. Now, if you have to change the amount of blur or desaturation, you only have to change the settings on the adjustment layer(s) and not each clip or clips inside of a nested sequence. To me, this feature is about six versions late, but better late than never!

3D Text (and Basic Shapes) in After Effects – Have you ever needed to do simple 3D text when working in an After Effects project? Unfortunately, After Effects could never do true 3D. Rather, it could place 2D objects in 3D space. That means if you wanted 3D text, you’d have to put 2D text in a 3D composition, duplicate it about a hundred times, then offset each layer’s Z position by one pixel. What a pain! Alternatively, there was a way to use the Shatter effect and turn off force and gravity to give pre-composed text a bit of extrusion. Still not very efficient. Finally, Adobe has added an extrusion option within the settings of 3D text/shapes. For those that only need very basic 3D tools, this may save you from spending a couple grand on 3D software.

SpeedGrade – Okay, this isn’t so much of a feature as it is a complete product. Adobe aquired IRIDAS, and included it in the creative suite for the first time in this sixth version. The first thing you’ll notice is that it doesn’t really feel like an Adobe product. The user interface is way different. Additionally, quite a few Adobe UI conventions that are ubiquitous in Adobe products aren’t there. The software itself, however, is great. Dedicated color grading software is being used more and more frequently outside of Hollywood. DaVinci, for example, can now be purchased for $1000 on OS X, where it used to be a $20,000+ system only. It only makes sens that Adobe wants to get in on the action. Considering the price for Adobe’s Creative suite hasn’t risen any (in fact, the Creative Cloud option looks like it’ll save you money), having a dedicated color grader is a welcome addition!

Obviously this isn’t a comprehensive list of new features. There’s tons more to look forward to in CS 6, so keep an eye out for our upcoming review!

I had the pleasure of auditing a portion of the Videomaker “Basics of Video Production” workshop a couple weeks ago. There are many basic rules when it comes to video, and there is a wealth of basic knowledge that continues to be the foundation for great production. Though I had been exposed to all of this before, it had been years since I had seen the fundamentals of good video production laid out so methodically. It caused me to really think about the basics again.

As my experience has grown, I have developed a tendency to wing-it much more often than I would have when I was just starting out. The video portion of my scripts began to dwindle, and the fine details of the script were often left to be finalized on set. I was still proud of the final product, but as I sat in the workshop, I was reminded that proper planning, and a concise vision of what you want out of a given video project can really be the difference between good and great video production.

While there is no substitute for experience, remembering to follow those simple rules makes your chance of success so much higher, so write that script and edit it until it’s perfect. Make that storyboard a true reflection of what you want to see in your video. Keep shooting takes until the shot is right. White balance properly for every shot. If you think there might be some distracting backround noise, do your best to minimize it on the set. Move the lights that extra inch to get it just right, and help your talent give the performance you know they’re capable of, even if it feels exhausting at the time.

Take your time, because what only takes a few seconds in the field, can take hours to fix in post-production. Doing all these things will make the the video production experience much more enjoyable for you and your crew, and it will show in the results.

Greg has 15 years of experience working with video professionally, and has recently joined the Videomaker team.

You know why filmmakers and videographers always say “We’ll fix it in post“? Because there are some problems that you can’t avoid no matter how many years of experience you have behind the camera.

You probably met these unwelcome guests the first time that you shot any video footage. And maybe you shrugged your shoulders and thought: Well, I’m just a beginner. I’ll learn to avoid these problems soon enough. That works for a lot of the problems you encounter in video production — you eventually develop a “videographer’s instinct” for recognizing violations

of the 180 degree rule and other video offenses before they happen — but these six tough customers never seem to go away. Why not? Well, because half the time they’re due to factors beyond your control. Sometimes you can’t even recognize that there’s a problem until after you see the footage. In any event, these are the little monsters that you can only defeat in post production.

1) Garish or Washed-Out Colors — Ugh! Lurid colors that make a somber scene look like a circus show! Bland, washed-out hues that make a big comedy sequence look like a funeral march! Who needs these?

2) Interlaced Footage — It’s great for broadcast convenience, but now your video has those tell-tale interlacing “lines” that will give your audience a real headache.

3) Shaky Footage — Jostling the camera a little bit can give your video a feeling of gritty realism, like in “Cloverfield” or “The Blair Witch Project.” But too much and no one will be able to tell what’s going on!

4) Weird Electrical Noises – What’s that sound? Surely you were shooting in a silent room, right? Then how can it be that your footage is full of strange hums and buzzes? You might not hear it, but your equipment can pick up annoying frequencies thatyou might miss.

5) Incorrect Frame Rates — Here’s one you probably won’t even think about until it’s too late! When you have to splice your footage together and you suddenly realize they’ve been shot at two different frame rates… that’s always annoying.

6) Unwanted Objects — What’s that boom mic doing there? You’ve seen this goof in even professional Hollywood productions, so you know it’s easy to miss when you’re behind the camera.

There’s probably no stronger argument for why we have post production than that list. Those are certainly some of the most common gripes that we hear from video creators who’re frustrated that they keep finding these “mistakes” in their footage, even after they thought they had carefully sidestepped them. When that happens, all you can say is: Thank goodness for post-production! To learn more about these nasty issues and how to fix them, check out Videomaker’s new Fix it in Post DVD.

Shooting and working in 4K is nothing new to professional film makers and compositors, but with the announcement of the JVC GY-HMQ10 being priced at under $5,000, 4K is finally within reach of prosumer and hobbyist videographers. However, most TVs and computer monitors will still max out at 1080p, so what’s the point? Personally, I don’t see 4096 × 3112 pixel TVs entering the average American’s living room any time soon, since if you’re sitting ten feet from the screen, the TV will have to be 80 inches before you’ll be able to see the difference between 4k and 1080p.

Even if your final output is still 1920×1080, you’re still going to get quite a bit of use out of 4k footage once you’re in post production. 4K footage is a whopping four times as many pixels as 1080p, and if you’ve ever had the experience of editing HD footage down to a final SD output, you know those extra pixels are a glorious luxury to have. It’s not uncommon to have a shot you’d like to crop and re-frame in post, and if you have four times the pixels, the amount of flexibility you have is enormous.

Additionally, shooting high resolution for green screen keying will make your keying process much simpler. With four times the data, your keying software should have an easier time differentiating the green pixels you want to key from the edges of your subject. Similarly, if you plan on doing any motion tracking, a more detailed image should help your tracker to stay on the points you’ve defined.

Now for the bad news. Much higher resolution images means much bigger files. The JVC GY-HMQ10 shoots to a variable bit rate h.264 file, which should be manageable, but if you’re editing in Final Cut Pro and have to trans-code to ProRes, file sizes are going to be enormous. If storage is a problem, plan on shooting in 4k selectively, and sticking to 1080p for the bulk of your footage.

It’s worth noting that with files being compressed to h.264, much of the color data will be lost. We’re excited to get our hands on some GY-HMQ10 footage to see exactly what we can do with it.