More Progress in the Film Room!

### Setting Up a Green Screen for Filming: A Step-by-Step Guide

In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of setting up a green screen for filming, from choosing the right materials to optimizing your setup for the best results. This guide is based on the full transcription of a video that explores the ins and outs of creating a green-screen-friendly environment, testing the equipment, and editing the footage using Adobe Premiere Pro.

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#### 1. Setting Up the Green Screen Area

The first step in creating a green screen setup is to define the filming area. The creator chose to use a frame as the base for the green screen, which will eventually be covered with muslin fabric. Muslin is a heavy, thick material that is ideal for green screens because it is not transparent and can be ironed flat to avoid wrinkles, which would otherwise create micro-shadows and complicate post-production editing.

The creator mentions that the frame is 10 feet wide, but the muslin they have is only 9 feet wide. This slight discrepancy isn’t a major issue, as they plan to adjust it later if necessary. To ensure the muslin lies flat, the creator threaded the fabric through small openings in the frame and secured it with clips. The goal was to create a smooth, wrinkle-free surface that won’t interfere with the green-screen editing process.

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#### 2. Choosing the Right Materials for Your Green Screen

The creator emphasizes the importance of investing in high-quality materials for your green screen setup. Muslin is a popular choice because it is durable and doesn’t allow light to pass through, which is crucial for achieving clean chroma keying in post-production. The creator warns against using cheap muslin, as it may be transparent or thin, leading to issues like washed-out colors or uneven lighting in the background during editing.

The creator also highlights the importance of ironing the muslin flat before filming. Wrinkles can create micro-shadows that are difficult to remove later, even with advanced editing software. The creator admits they didn’t have an iron on hand but expressed confidence that their setup would still work despite minor imperfections.

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#### 3. Optimizing Lighting and Camera Positioning

Once the green screen is set up, the next step is to position the camera and adjust the lighting. The creator used a wide-angle lens with macro capabilities, which allows them to stand close to the lens (about 1.5 to 2 feet away) without creating unwanted shadows behind them. This setup ensures that their entire body fits into the frame while keeping the background visible for editing purposes.

The lighting setup was another challenge. The creator’s lights weren’t as powerful as they had hoped, resulting in a slight shadow in the middle of the frame. To compensate, they positioned two center lights to brighten the foreground and reduce the visibility of the shadows. They also turned on a front light during filming to ensure proper illumination of their face and upper body.

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#### 4. Filming with the Green Screen

With everything set up, the creator began filming. They mentioned that they would capture their screen simultaneously so viewers could see what adjustments they made during editing. The creator emphasized the importance of standing at least three to four feet away from the green screen to avoid creating shadows. This distance ensures that the background remains evenly lit and free of obstructions during filming.

The creator also warned against moving too quickly in front of the green screen, as fast movements can create artifacts like green smudges or grainy patches in the footage. They demonstrated this issue by waving their hand rapidly in front of the camera, showing how the ultra-key tool in Adobe Premiere Pro struggled to remove the green background during quick movements.

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#### 5. Post-Production: Using Ultra Key in Adobe Premiere Pro

After filming, the creator imported the footage into Adobe Premiere Pro and applied the ultra-key effect to remove the green screen. They demonstrated how selecting a standard green color from the footage and using the key color tool could create a black background. However, they noted that some light shades of green remained due to uneven lighting and the limitations of the ultra-key tool.

To improve the result, the creator adjusted the settings in Premiere Pro’s matte cleanup tools, softening the edges and boosting the midpoint and contrast to eliminate most of the green tones. They also suggested standing further away from the green screen or using better lighting to avoid shadows in future setups.

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#### 6. Final Thoughts on Green Screen Setup

The creator reflected on their experience with green-screen filming, acknowledging that while it wasn’t perfect, it was still achievable with basic equipment and careful post-production work. They emphasized the importance of investing in a good-quality muslin screen and proper lighting to minimize issues during editing.

They also provided tips for anyone looking to set up a similar green screen:

- Avoid using cheap materials like thin fabric or transparent muslin.

- Iron your green screen flat before filming to prevent wrinkles.

- Position yourself at least three feet away from the green screen to avoid shadows.

- Use multiple lights to evenly illuminate the background and reduce shadows.

The creator concluded by sharing their setup costs, which totaled around $100 for the frame and muslin. They described it as a worthwhile investment for creating professional-looking content.

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#### 7. Final Remarks

In this guide, we’ve covered everything you need to know about setting up a green screen for filming, from choosing materials and positioning your equipment to optimizing lighting and editing your footage in Adobe Premiere Pro. While green-screen technology isn’t perfect, with the right setup and careful post-production work, you can achieve professional results even if you’re working on a budget.

If you found this guide helpful, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share it with others who might be interested in creating their own green-screen setups. Stay tuned for more content from Science Studio!

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This article provides a detailed breakdown of the full transcription, offering practical advice for anyone looking to create a green-screen setup for filming.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey what's going on everyone so more progress in the film room you can say I have the frame for what will be eventually a green-screen will be filming most of our like how-to and instructional informative videos in here and I think some of the more hands-on stuff we'll probably do on this desk but you want to do is stand about three to four feet in front of the green screen itself so that you're not you know pressed against it and creating a shadow which will be really bad for when you're trying to I use ultra key a chroma key whatever to change the color of the background and if we're going to be using 4k and was gonna crop the image just a little bit so yeah you can see right inside the frame and that's the point so we're gonna need that green screen itself which is over here alright so this is what is known as muslin this is kind of like a bed sheet of sorts but it's pretty thick it's actually really heavy too and you want this to be not transparent at all because when you do go into editing later on and you find that it is transparent you have weird colors kind of washed out in the background assuming that your wall is not just a uniform color then you're gonna have a really bad time in production now rule number one I'm not gonna practice what I preach because I don't have one with me I just you know I could just moved into here and I still have a lot of stuff to buy you want to iron this you want this to be as flat as possible you don't want any wrinkles because those will create micro shadows and again very hard to get out post filming so this has just a little opening a little speed that goes all the way through and we're gonna thread this part up top on the bar all the way across well let it hang down now to compensate for the lack of an iron I'm gonna hope these clips reach on these you know these are these are kind of sure they're not sticking out very far from the pole and I think that the frame is 10 feet wide and the muscle has only 9 feet wide but yeah whatever worst case I'll just take it down later and iron it but I do want to set it up and see kind of what it looks like start playing around with the ultra key effect in Adobe Premiere Pro and get used to making things look super fancy so that further ado let's go ahead and set this thing up all right so after some ironing which I didn't bother filming because you know who wants to watch them on that iron something I've got this thing pretty much the way I want it now the lights aren't super powerful for this I was hoping they'd be a bit brighter in here they're not which means that there's a slight shadow here in the middle and you're probably wondering why the camera is so close actually a macro little lens fitted to the front of Sarabhai the autofocus to the front of this camera so I can stand you know but like a foot and a half away from the lens in my whole body will be in the shot and just because it's a wide-angle lens of sorts so if I stand kind of you know there about I'd say a foot and a half maybe to two feet away from the lens then there isn't a shadow generated behind me there's a slight one but we'll talk about that in a second ultra key with premiere and the lights are far enough apart that the shadows really don't show up and tell about a foot away from the muslin so I think it's kind of weird saying muslin it sounds awfully close to Muslim and then I feel really weird I think that if I use the center light here I'll turn that on and it should brighten up the the foreground and that's exactly what I'm looking for to keep me bright because these lights are pretty far away from me so what I'm gonna do I'm gonna go ahead and insert the SD card and I'm gonna start filming from the other side so that you can watch the screen kind of see what things look like that way you have an idea of you know how bright things need to be in the background you can see right now I just kind of zoom in on this screen it's really awkward doing like a two camera thing here so the background is is a decently lit I'm not too bright right now because the lights aren't shining directly on me so I can do is turn on this front light and things will brighten up lots a little too bright a little overexposed there things will brighten up in the foreground I look super pasty on that screen but I promise you I'm not I'm not overexposed in real life and we'll go ahead and start filming so what we'll do is we'll take this footage and we will throw it into premiere and you'll be able to see I'll just capture my screen they're able to see exactly what I do to get rid of the green background behind me and instead replace it with like black or gray well if I don't want to use black somewhere in a black shirt - so - so maybe we can do like a gray color or just completely you know go out there with like pink or some thing but the whole point is as long as it's evenly lit and it's not like to in focus you kind of want to blur the background out and you don't want a lot of shadows you also don't want to move super fast if I like wave my hand back and forth in a premiere you'll be able to see just slight grains of green that's because the ultra key tool can't keep up with those fast motion so when you're standing in front of a green screen it's really only good for talking and and slow movements movements are predictable really fast ones will pose a problem for the software all right now we're gonna cut this SD card let's bring it back with us turn this light off because it's all battery-powered right now and we will plug in the SD card all right you see I am this was my first test clip right here's the second one so I'm going to switch now to the screen capture so you'll see that instead of this awkward camera facing a screen alright so we have our clip on the desktop doesn't matter where you put it just keep things nice and orderly so you know exactly where to go if you want your resources at your fingertips we're gonna open up Premiere Pro and I'm gonna show you exactly what to do to start working with your green screen so I have a previous video clip here or a previous project I want to open up slide the clip into the timeline and then we're gonna click effects up top and I'm going to go to video effects and key and then we're gonna left-click on ultra Keys slide it over to the clip and nothing's gonna happen at first because what we have to do is click this tool on the left side a key color we're gonna use that little drop tool and we want to select an area in this clip window that is pretty green pretty kind of standard throughout you don't want a darker shade of green because then it'll start warping the lighter colors and there seems to be a lighter distribution here than there is dark also you can kind of see the shadow behind my head that's not good so we need to adjust our lights of it to get rid of that or I need to stand further away from the green screen so let's select a pretty standard color here this looks to be pretty good and there you go look boom so we have a black background now but it's not perfect you can see we have some light shades in here if you have a muslin especially you're gonna have these issues unless your lighting is just perfect spot-on or unless you're standing really far away from the green-screen so what I suggest doing come over to the left matte clean up we can soften things that'll kind of better distribute the the shades of light and then midpoint we can jump that all the way up and then contrast which will help with a black background boom now it's almost all completely gone and we will watch the playback now to see if it is in fact good enough for production now one thing I want to point out like I said earlier because my hands are moving pretty fast when you'll see they're just hanging in front of the green screen you might see a bit of a green shade around my fingers if they're moving very fast that's because the ultra key tools having problems with interpolating that green and changing it to black especially when it's happening for a split second so when you're standing in front of a green screen like this be sure not to move super fast I can see what I'm doing there with my hand it's you just get the idea that there's something that's not black behind me it's it's green and that's the downfall of using a green screen technology like this it's not perfect just don't move super fast and you shouldn't have any major issues another thing I want to do is check hardware utilization I want to see if this is using the graphics card at all I'm not sure then never use this tool so while we are in playback let's check the CP utilization a few cores are being used pretty heavily it's there on 30 40 percent that's pretty standard though I mean there are a few extra percentage points here for using the electric key effect but not too bad and on the graphics card side we have utilization here of a whopping 2% all right now this point I should clarify what we're really doing with the ultra key tool is deleting the background in essence what we're doing is selecting the color that we want deleted in ultra key is rendering that background basically like a blank image and a PNG file so we don't have anything now behind me or close to anything I would say that these shadows are gonna be an issue but what we can do instead of just having a black plain background is sliding in an image like this one here now look at there your boys semi-transparent with a shirt because we're a bit aggressive with the with the settings over here to the left so what we can do instead we can choose some presets aggressive is pretty good it's not too bad anymore used to be pretty bad but now it's not too bad you can see there my shirt is good let's go ahead and play back and see how accurate things look oh yeah looking great and we're not seeing any green smudges or dots around my hair that's usually where it becomes obvious this is pretty good you can see when I move my hands there's a slight green tint that's just something you'll be a pickup in production again a downfall of using a low-quality setup here but this should be okay for most of what I do well there you have it I will say pretty simple to set up I've never worked with a green-screen before and the software is fairly forgiving so even if you don't have a perfect like production setup perfect green-screen if you're not painting a wall and it's super smooth and and evenly lit across the entire canvas you can still probably get away with some some of those errors in Premiere Pro especially with the ultra key tool but chroma key in general is pretty good now the software's in a long way and it is fairly forgiving for those who are wondering I have the products linked in the video description for this setup here spend about a hundred bucks on the green-screen frame and all it's a pretty pretty good investment I would say the muslin is pretty thick I wouldn't recommend going with a cheap one because they are transparent that could pose a problem in production and kind of working with it now I can see why because if the light's not evenly distributed and then like you have like a semi dark wall or her pain to your walls aren't very smooth or maybe have something behind the wall then you're gonna have a pretty rough time in software like premiere if you liked this video be sure to give this one a thumbs up I appreciate it thumbs down for the opposite key to subscribe but if you haven't written stay tuned for more content like this don't worry it won't be all on the green-screen it's not going to be super fake only use it when necessary this is science studio thanks for learning with ushey what's going on everyone so more progress in the film room you can say I have the frame for what will be eventually a green-screen will be filming most of our like how-to and instructional informative videos in here and I think some of the more hands-on stuff we'll probably do on this desk but you want to do is stand about three to four feet in front of the green screen itself so that you're not you know pressed against it and creating a shadow which will be really bad for when you're trying to I use ultra key a chroma key whatever to change the color of the background and if we're going to be using 4k and was gonna crop the image just a little bit so yeah you can see right inside the frame and that's the point so we're gonna need that green screen itself which is over here alright so this is what is known as muslin this is kind of like a bed sheet of sorts but it's pretty thick it's actually really heavy too and you want this to be not transparent at all because when you do go into editing later on and you find that it is transparent you have weird colors kind of washed out in the background assuming that your wall is not just a uniform color then you're gonna have a really bad time in production now rule number one I'm not gonna practice what I preach because I don't have one with me I just you know I could just moved into here and I still have a lot of stuff to buy you want to iron this you want this to be as flat as possible you don't want any wrinkles because those will create micro shadows and again very hard to get out post filming so this has just a little opening a little speed that goes all the way through and we're gonna thread this part up top on the bar all the way across well let it hang down now to compensate for the lack of an iron I'm gonna hope these clips reach on these you know these are these are kind of sure they're not sticking out very far from the pole and I think that the frame is 10 feet wide and the muscle has only 9 feet wide but yeah whatever worst case I'll just take it down later and iron it but I do want to set it up and see kind of what it looks like start playing around with the ultra key effect in Adobe Premiere Pro and get used to making things look super fancy so that further ado let's go ahead and set this thing up all right so after some ironing which I didn't bother filming because you know who wants to watch them on that iron something I've got this thing pretty much the way I want it now the lights aren't super powerful for this I was hoping they'd be a bit brighter in here they're not which means that there's a slight shadow here in the middle and you're probably wondering why the camera is so close actually a macro little lens fitted to the front of Sarabhai the autofocus to the front of this camera so I can stand you know but like a foot and a half away from the lens in my whole body will be in the shot and just because it's a wide-angle lens of sorts so if I stand kind of you know there about I'd say a foot and a half maybe to two feet away from the lens then there isn't a shadow generated behind me there's a slight one but we'll talk about that in a second ultra key with premiere and the lights are far enough apart that the shadows really don't show up and tell about a foot away from the muslin so I think it's kind of weird saying muslin it sounds awfully close to Muslim and then I feel really weird I think that if I use the center light here I'll turn that on and it should brighten up the the foreground and that's exactly what I'm looking for to keep me bright because these lights are pretty far away from me so what I'm gonna do I'm gonna go ahead and insert the SD card and I'm gonna start filming from the other side so that you can watch the screen kind of see what things look like that way you have an idea of you know how bright things need to be in the background you can see right now I just kind of zoom in on this screen it's really awkward doing like a two camera thing here so the background is is a decently lit I'm not too bright right now because the lights aren't shining directly on me so I can do is turn on this front light and things will brighten up lots a little too bright a little overexposed there things will brighten up in the foreground I look super pasty on that screen but I promise you I'm not I'm not overexposed in real life and we'll go ahead and start filming so what we'll do is we'll take this footage and we will throw it into premiere and you'll be able to see I'll just capture my screen they're able to see exactly what I do to get rid of the green background behind me and instead replace it with like black or gray well if I don't want to use black somewhere in a black shirt - so - so maybe we can do like a gray color or just completely you know go out there with like pink or some thing but the whole point is as long as it's evenly lit and it's not like to in focus you kind of want to blur the background out and you don't want a lot of shadows you also don't want to move super fast if I like wave my hand back and forth in a premiere you'll be able to see just slight grains of green that's because the ultra key tool can't keep up with those fast motion so when you're standing in front of a green screen it's really only good for talking and and slow movements movements are predictable really fast ones will pose a problem for the software all right now we're gonna cut this SD card let's bring it back with us turn this light off because it's all battery-powered right now and we will plug in the SD card all right you see I am this was my first test clip right here's the second one so I'm going to switch now to the screen capture so you'll see that instead of this awkward camera facing a screen alright so we have our clip on the desktop doesn't matter where you put it just keep things nice and orderly so you know exactly where to go if you want your resources at your fingertips we're gonna open up Premiere Pro and I'm gonna show you exactly what to do to start working with your green screen so I have a previous video clip here or a previous project I want to open up slide the clip into the timeline and then we're gonna click effects up top and I'm going to go to video effects and key and then we're gonna left-click on ultra Keys slide it over to the clip and nothing's gonna happen at first because what we have to do is click this tool on the left side a key color we're gonna use that little drop tool and we want to select an area in this clip window that is pretty green pretty kind of standard throughout you don't want a darker shade of green because then it'll start warping the lighter colors and there seems to be a lighter distribution here than there is dark also you can kind of see the shadow behind my head that's not good so we need to adjust our lights of it to get rid of that or I need to stand further away from the green screen so let's select a pretty standard color here this looks to be pretty good and there you go look boom so we have a black background now but it's not perfect you can see we have some light shades in here if you have a muslin especially you're gonna have these issues unless your lighting is just perfect spot-on or unless you're standing really far away from the green-screen so what I suggest doing come over to the left matte clean up we can soften things that'll kind of better distribute the the shades of light and then midpoint we can jump that all the way up and then contrast which will help with a black background boom now it's almost all completely gone and we will watch the playback now to see if it is in fact good enough for production now one thing I want to point out like I said earlier because my hands are moving pretty fast when you'll see they're just hanging in front of the green screen you might see a bit of a green shade around my fingers if they're moving very fast that's because the ultra key tools having problems with interpolating that green and changing it to black especially when it's happening for a split second so when you're standing in front of a green screen like this be sure not to move super fast I can see what I'm doing there with my hand it's you just get the idea that there's something that's not black behind me it's it's green and that's the downfall of using a green screen technology like this it's not perfect just don't move super fast and you shouldn't have any major issues another thing I want to do is check hardware utilization I want to see if this is using the graphics card at all I'm not sure then never use this tool so while we are in playback let's check the CP utilization a few cores are being used pretty heavily it's there on 30 40 percent that's pretty standard though I mean there are a few extra percentage points here for using the electric key effect but not too bad and on the graphics card side we have utilization here of a whopping 2% all right now this point I should clarify what we're really doing with the ultra key tool is deleting the background in essence what we're doing is selecting the color that we want deleted in ultra key is rendering that background basically like a blank image and a PNG file so we don't have anything now behind me or close to anything I would say that these shadows are gonna be an issue but what we can do instead of just having a black plain background is sliding in an image like this one here now look at there your boys semi-transparent with a shirt because we're a bit aggressive with the with the settings over here to the left so what we can do instead we can choose some presets aggressive is pretty good it's not too bad anymore used to be pretty bad but now it's not too bad you can see there my shirt is good let's go ahead and play back and see how accurate things look oh yeah looking great and we're not seeing any green smudges or dots around my hair that's usually where it becomes obvious this is pretty good you can see when I move my hands there's a slight green tint that's just something you'll be a pickup in production again a downfall of using a low-quality setup here but this should be okay for most of what I do well there you have it I will say pretty simple to set up I've never worked with a green-screen before and the software is fairly forgiving so even if you don't have a perfect like production setup perfect green-screen if you're not painting a wall and it's super smooth and and evenly lit across the entire canvas you can still probably get away with some some of those errors in Premiere Pro especially with the ultra key tool but chroma key in general is pretty good now the software's in a long way and it is fairly forgiving for those who are wondering I have the products linked in the video description for this setup here spend about a hundred bucks on the green-screen frame and all it's a pretty pretty good investment I would say the muslin is pretty thick I wouldn't recommend going with a cheap one because they are transparent that could pose a problem in production and kind of working with it now I can see why because if the light's not evenly distributed and then like you have like a semi dark wall or her pain to your walls aren't very smooth or maybe have something behind the wall then you're gonna have a pretty rough time in software like premiere if you liked this video be sure to give this one a thumbs up I appreciate it thumbs down for the opposite key to subscribe but if you haven't written stay tuned for more content like this don't worry it won't be all on the green-screen it's not going to be super fake only use it when necessary this is science studio thanks for learning with us\n"