Lighting and green screen workshop

Lighting and lip sync workshop

This video is the final product of the lighting, green screen, and lip sync workshop that I did with the other members of my media class. We spent two hours working with different equipment and learning about different techniques that could come in useful when filming our own music videos.

Green screen

Setting up the green screen required several people and equipment other than the sheet itself, such as poles and clips to keep the sheet in place. In order for the image in post-production to be the best quality it can be, the sheet had to be completely flat and free of creases and wrinkles. The camera also had to be zoomed in on the subject so that the green screen was the only background setting that could be seen, or else the effect of using it would be diminished if parts of the setting that couldn't be replaced in post-production could be seen.

Lighting

Setting up the lamps again required several people and was a job that required knowledge of the health and safety issues that the lights posed. When lit, they are extremely hot and bright and so mustn't be touched without protective gloves on. A cool down time also has to be allowed before packing them away after use. To soften the harshness of the light, diffusion paper must be clipped over it, but only when the lamp is off otherwise it will be too hot to clip on. Another safety risk is the possibility of causing a power surge and overloading the system due to the amount of power that is required to to light these types of studio lamps. This especially needs to be taken into consideration if using more than one lamp, which is what we did in order to try and balance out the shadowing on the green screen sheet behind us.

To create different atmospheres and add interest in terms of lighting, coloured gels can be put over the lamps instead of diffusion paper. We used purple, and found that it created a warm but mysterious atmosphere. Other colours that we experimented with were blue and yellow.

Lip syncing

In order for the lip syncing to be in time with the music added in post-production, we played the song out loud while filming. We also filmed two versions of the lip sync: one with a close up where just her head and shoulders could be seen, and a long shot where almost her whole body could be. This is a typical feature of a music video and switching between the two types of shot adds interest and lets the audience see both the detail of the close up and the movement of the long shot.

Editing the video

The post-production process had several stages. All clips had to be imported into Premiere Pro and then the background removed and replaced. I replaced it with a black and white cityscape to fit with the hip hop genre and tone of the song that was being mimed to. After this I edited the two types of shot together so that there was a reasonable amount of both types. I tried to edit them so that the continuity between the actions and transitions between the shots was as smooth as they could be, but it wasn't always possible because of the lack of planning due to the experimental nature of the workshop. Colour correcting also needed to be done to get rid of the orangey/yellow glare that the lights caused. I did this using the three-way colour corrector on Premiere Pro. I also used this to add some small effects at certain points in the short clip, such as a blur/fade near the end.


The workshop was very helpful in teaching me about sophisticated equipment, safety, and how to create different effects using different lighting. The editing part also made me more familiar with the software and how to use the colour corrector tool which I will be doing more of when editing my music video.