Should I shoot a whole movie green screen?

My 2¢: All greenscreen is not a panacea, however, if the project is conceptually designed around that aesthetic it could work.
IOW, it's the right tool for the right job = the wrong tool for all other jobs.

I like p38's identification of Amazon Studio's 'Black Hat'.
It has 'a look', and if that's what you're happy working with then you're gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rFs74avjds


And then there's the series SonnyBoo introduced us to, 'Aiden 5'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffHMDtt1c6A


That said, I STRONGLY advise that any nubes (such as ourselves) stick to the obviously greenscreened background projects and away from anything approaching this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a2cAEQUkIo

That's probably a bite we cannot chew without choking, IMHO.


GL, and I hope you have something cool in mind where all greenscreen is appropriate.
I've put some thought into attempting the same kind of project. ;)


EDIT: Looking for some more GS film examples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnFBvRALR5I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPQlWSi1S_c

Maybe it'll look better than this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcOqicBA75c
 
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If time is the reason you're talking about... there's a simple solution... schedule more time.

We just got done shooting 8x12hr. days for a 20 minute short. Each scene took 1-2 hours to light. We had professional actors who were just at the point of building their portfolio through a service that accepts no/micro-budget productions and whom the actors involved know the budgets up front (we were told we were some of the most professional they'd work with -- some are already lined up to try out for the next one!), so we had fantastic performances from take 1 to take 15 (yep, new, slightly less than confident director -- but it paid off, footage is fantastic).

So, to get better results, give yourself more time to prepare. Schedule far in advance so you can make all of the puzzle pieces fit together more easily. First locations, then actors at this budget level. On set, avoid smaller rooms... or bring a mirror to cheat more distance out of the room by shooting into that.

20 minutes short = 20 pages @ 96 hours ~~ 2.5 pgs per 12 hour day (with a lunch break and load in/out) on our script (properly formatted using CELTX and sticking to a 50% dialog/action ratio).

How many pages / day are you shooting... we can shoot up to 10/day, but our results SUCK!!!!! No one has the time to concentrate on getting the shots right, only on getting them done. You don't have the budget to hire professionals who can bang this stuff out quickly...

As I've said many times before... Time = Money... If you don't have one, spend the other... you don't have the $$$ to do a large production, so budget the time to do it right. This is not a fast paced craft when it comes down to it... not in the least... and it's not a solo craft either. Build a team by doing a bunch of shorts, keep getting the people back who are really passionate about it... get them excited to be on your set, treat them with respect, feed them! They'll bring people they trust on to your next productions that can replace the folks doing a bad job... don't invite them back.

You don't hit the ground with no budget and expect to be hollywood... build up to it. Budget your time as if it were your money... you'll need to spend it to make up for the lack of $$$.
 
knightly said:
20 minutes short = 20 pages @ 96 hours ~~ 2.5 pgs per 12 hour day (with a lunch break and load in/out) on our script (properly formatted using CELTX and sticking to a 50% dialog/action ratio).
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2 4/8 pages per 12 hour day...? Your setups must be intense..

We tend to stick to an average of 5 pages/day, depending on how intense the setups are and the coverage we need for each scene. It often varies between 4 and 6 pages, but a 2 4/8 pages day seems like it would be either really slow or your setups are really full on.. :weird:
 
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harmonica44 said:
Okay so fixing in post is bad. But what do you guys do on set, when you don't have much time, or the best angles, cause of how the location is shaped?

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The shape of the location shouldn't be a surprise, because you go look and visit before you shoot.
This way you can figure out which angles are possible and which ones you need.
You draw a map along side with the storyboard to organise the shots, angles and lights.
This saves you a lot of time on set. And you don't look lost ;)

The rest is a matter of realistic planning:
you can only shoot a certain amount of shots in a day. This depends on length, complexity and the experience of cast and crew. Nobody can tell you what the number of shots is that you can shoot on a day.
This is where experience is an important factor. (Experience teaches you how much you can do on a day and experience makes it possible to do more on a day and it makes it easier to come up with creative solutions :-p)

When I'm running out of time I just go for the essential shots.
Sometimes I just go completely 'Ed Woods' if I have to: 1 take only: next!
(This is hard to do without experienced people and not perferred at all, but sometimes you just want to wrap things up :P)
 
My question is why do you need 8-10 shots per scene? What kind of scenes are you shooting? Do you have a large number of characters in each scene? Are you including pick-up shots in this number?

I would think about scaling back the number of shots if you're concerned about time. Or else be prepared to shoot guerilla style. My last short was 5 minutes long and I had 54 different shots on my shot list, but it was outdoors so set up was quick because there was no lighting (although outdoor shooting created all kinds of other problems...)
 
harmonica44 said:
Okay so fixing in post is bad. But what do you guys do on set, when you don't have much time, or the best angles, cause of how the location is shaped?
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You either plan ahead, or you compromise on the day. Within those two primary categories are innumerable methods/techniques/solutions/etc.
 
jax_rox said:
2 4/8 pages per 12 hour day...? Your setups must be intense..

We tend to stick to an average of 5 pages/day, depending on how intense the setups are and the coverage we need for each scene. It often varies between 4 and 6 pages, but a 2 4/8 pages day seems like it would be either really slow or your setups are really full on.. :weird:
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We had 10-20 extras for many of the setups to wrangle... we did full on set dressing that had to be done on the day (free locations again)... we take the time because we don't have the money to spend... you can see it on screen when we're done though... when we've shot 5 pgs / day, we've got decent results, but still not as good as we get at 2.5... which seems to be our sweet spot. At 2.5pg/day, we can spend the time to get exactly what we're looking for (last shoot, we could've gone a bit faster and got up to about 3-4 pgs / day, but again, newish director who kept calling for "just 1 more").

Time = Money... that 20 minute short with 4 main actors, 6 more speaking parts and 20-30 actors looks like we spent much more than our $2K budget (food, props, rentals, costume).
 
Harmonica,

I re-read your initial post, and wanted to toss out an option which is specific to cheap locations and set dressing.

If you are able to get a free location, but are not allowed to alter it, you should think about shooting there anyway, and altering parts of it in post to add some art directed 'texture'. Yes a lot of VFX, but if you limit the digital dressing to your master, and shoot around it in the rest of your coverage, your VFX shot count goes way down.

Some of the benefits include, getting your actors in a real place; Actors lit under the same lights as the set (realistic, because it's real); Actors can move freely in the space and interact with the set; as well as allowing you more freedom with the camera (as opposed to simple moves limited by the tech requirements of a GS composite).

If the camera is locked or just pan/tilt you can track in all sorts of stuff in a simple composite, or even replace parts of the set with photographs of other elements. This requires no 3D CGI experience to accomplish, just Photoshop & simple compositing.

But, if your master has a moving camera, you may need a 3D matchmove & CG elements (Slippery Slope Alert).

Rok
 
knightly said:
We had 10-20 extras for many of the setups to wrangle... we did full on set dressing that had to be done on the day (free locations again)... we take the time because we don't have the money to spend... you can see it on screen when we're done though... when we've shot 5 pgs / day, we've got decent results, but still not as good as we get at 2.5... which seems to be our sweet spot. At 2.5pg/day, we can spend the time to get exactly what we're looking for (last shoot, we could've gone a bit faster and got up to about 3-4 pgs / day, but again, newish director who kept calling for "just 1 more").

Time = Money... that 20 minute short with 4 main actors, 6 more speaking parts and 20-30 actors looks like we spent much more than our $2K budget (food, props, rentals, costume).
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It is about finding your sweet spot - the optimal convergence between time and quality.
Though, sometimes when you're paying for equipment hire and even cast/crew you may get Producers who want to squeeze in a few extra shots per day if it means cutting out an extra full day rate down the line. It's also very much dependant on experience, beginner crews might take 4-6 hours just to light one scene, whereas an experienced crew might only take 30 minutes to light the same setup.

To add to the discussion - if your location isn't going to let you change anything, then why arent you finding a location that will..? That's why you go location scouting to find the best location that will work the best within the story and practicality wise. Also, most places should let you move most things, as long as you reset it the way it was before. We've made pristine hotel rooms look like dirty shacks that homeless people have been living in. But, the hotel owner would only have known if he saw the film. We left the room in the same state as it was when we found it. Conversely, I've heard of young filmmakers using a friend's house to shoot in while he was away and he returned to find his house just a ridiculous mess. That's what burns people, but if you can show them you're not like that they're going to be more likely to let you use their location properly. Half of that is your presentation to them - if you walk up with hair down to your ankles, a piercing through your lip, ripped jeans and heavy eyeliner, and start mumbling about films and 'can we use your room..?' they're going to be much more likely to say no, as opposed to if you rocked up even in jeans and a shirt with a professional manner and answers to all their questions. I'm not suggesting that you would present yourself in such a way, just using it as an example ;)
 
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Sonnyboo's 'Aiden 5' is quite good.
I bet it was a LOT of work to create this. It looks simple but it's not.
 
Getting back to the issue of locations that don't fit the scene as written, and can't be changed: I try to write scenes in a way that avoids that problem. I don't make actions dependent (mostly!) on a door or a window being in a certain spot, x number of windows, etc.

And if the available location still doesn't fit, I re-write the scene to fit the location.
 
One of these days the occasion will arise where I'm going to be convinced to use green screen for the first time, at all. It hasn't happened yet. I can think of situations where it would make sense, I just have so far been able to get the shot without resorting to it.
 
_Rok_ said:
Harmonica,

I re-read your initial post, and wanted to toss out an option which is specific to cheap locations and set dressing.

If you are able to get a free location, but are not allowed to alter it, you should think about shooting there anyway, and altering parts of it in post to add some art directed 'texture'. Yes a lot of VFX, but if you limit the digital dressing to your master, and shoot around it in the rest of your coverage, your VFX shot count goes way down.

Some of the benefits include, getting your actors in a real place; Actors lit under the same lights as the set (realistic, because it's real); Actors can move freely in the space and interact with the set; as well as allowing you more freedom with the camera (as opposed to simple moves limited by the tech requirements of a GS composite).

If the camera is locked or just pan/tilt you can track in all sorts of stuff in a simple composite, or even replace parts of the set with photographs of other elements. This requires no 3D CGI experience to accomplish, just Photoshop & simple compositing.

But, if your master has a moving camera, you may need a 3D matchmove & CG elements (Slippery Slope Alert).

Rok
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Okay thanks, that sounds like a good idea. Some scenes I was thinking about shooting almost the whole scene in a master shot though, kind of like an old school pre 80s movie. Not sure if I will shoot it a lot of like that, but some scenes I wanted to so far, particularly, the more quiet ones.

What about scenes where a guy needs to get thrown through a glass wall or something like that. The location will not be okay with you doing it, and they won't let me remove the glass, and put in sugar glass, so perhaps some green screen will be in order for scenes like that?
 
I try but it's impossible for me to come up with a story that has no eruption of violence in to carry the plot along, even just a little. Plus it's for the audiences sake too. No one wants to watch a thriller without a little danger nowadays.
 
harmonica44 said:
I have a script for a feature I want to do in the future, probably the next 2 or three years. One of the problems with getting very cheap microbudget locations though, is bad art direction. I have shot one short film so far, and in my experience locations can be used very cheaply, and maybe even for free, but the owners all have the same rule: Do not move anything.

Some things of course are okay to move, but a lot are out of my control, and this results in bad art direction. Another thing is, on a high budget Hollywood set of course, the directors can pretty much shoot from whichever angle they want, even if it means digging a whole in the wall or floor for example. I don't have that option which can result in some pretty awkward angles that might even look unprofessional.

Another thing is time, a lot of locations, there is just not much time, to get many takes, so it's risky.

So I figure why not hire a green screen expert to greenscreen the whole movie, or at least whichever scenes could really use it, then find a location that I can get the shots of, for a short time, and then put those shots into the green screen. Does this sound like a good idea? I was at a lotcal film festival this year and I noticed how quite a few scenes in their movies looked green screened, so maybe it is.
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Shooting a feature entirely on greenscreen has some benefits. Creative control on what the scenes are going to look like. The background plates and such. It can also be a hinderence like lighting issues and such. It all depends on how much knowledge you have for greenscreening and lighting it properly. The project I'm currently involved with is being shot entirely infront of greenscreen and I'm creating background plates for it. If you do end up going this route, storyboard the heck out of it. It will help. Put tracking markers up on the screen so when you have any dolly and/or handheld shots you can track it and have you background plates stick. It can be done but you gotta have lots of patience. Check out the Sin City directors cut DVD. The special features on there talks quite a bit about greenscreening :)
 
My first short ended with a stabbing scene that I still love...fake blood and a knife with a retractable blade, plus some good editing.

We realized just as we were about to shoot it that the originally planned blocking was impossible, plus we were losing the light. But a pa came up with a last minute suggestion, and it all worked.

I've had violent scenes in several movies, but never broke a "window" and always worked around the available space.
 
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