I am looking to buy a green screen but I don't know what to do about lighting. I am looking for something under $100. Right now I am considering this green screen click here to see it
If you know of anything in my price range, I would appreciate it if you would let me know.
Also, I need some lights to light the green screen, so if anyone has any suggestions or cheap lights, please tell me.
Thanks a lot.

-Alex

i don't know much about lighting, but will that screen at b&h be big enough for what you need? Last time I needed a green screen, we just bought a ton of green cloth from the yardage store and that worked out pretty well. It wasnt as nice or nearly as professional as that one youre looking at, but it only cost liek 20 bux. To light we just pointed 2 halogen bulbs at teh thing and tried to get rid of any shadows. Thats a terrible lighting solution I'm sure, but it worked.

Thanks for the help. I was just wondering what program you used for the chroma keying. I am using Final Cut Express (Soon to be Pro) and I've done a few tests. I used just pieces of solid paper and random objects to go on top, but the whole background never goes away. It is probably just because my lighting is not great, but I am wondering if there is an easier way to do it. Did it work perfectly for you? Do you think if I got a green screen and better lighting it would work better? Thanks again.
- Alex

sorry for the essay, but here goes. I dont use a Mac but there are a ton of people on here that do, and could tell you a lot more about chroma keying with FCP than i could.

The main short we used the screen on was a project my friend did for college. He did all of the keying on that and used after effects. More specifically he used a pulgin called Keylight that works better than the standard AE keyer. Even then he had to edit/matte a bunch of the sequences frame by frame (although the greenscreen was underwater so it made the lighting weird). We also used a greenscreen for a public access thing we did, and lit the whole screen up, I managed to key the green out of that using a filter in Adobe Premiere, so that worked pretty well.

On average greenscreen doesnt always work so well on DV because the image isnt perfect, so the green and surounding images sometimes blur together on the edges, which makes the resulting image kind of messy. IF you get rid of the shadows and can get a clear difference between actor and screen. without many shadows a basic sheet of cloth from a fabric store should work for you. (if you want examples I can post clips of the public access thing, or the film in question is Lost Springs which is on studentfilms.

Ive had a lot of experience with blue and green screening, i have built my own greenscreen and used it successfully with little problems. I got a piece of plywood and sanded it down flat, then applied a irish green color (eggshell gloss paint from hardware store) it costs about 20 dollars and my results were amazing. I use the croma key filter (i belive its called green screen) in final cut pro... i have pictures on my website of the setup and use of the greenscreen, and you can see the final product in the movie revenge factor which is on the site aswell... the green screen shot is of fire and is in the middle of the movie, where an arsonist lights a kitchen on fire.... the urls are www.bigjayfilms.com/gallery1.htm for the pics... and www.bigjayfilms.com/films1.htm for the movie... before you go buying a 100 dollar green screen look at what you have as options around you invest a little time and make one.... as for the lighting, if your scene is to take place outside, the best lighting for a green screen is when its a cloudy day... basically the clouds funtcion as a large diffusion filter for the sun and you get a very even light... there were a few imperfections in the green screen, but in the filter in FCP i turned the color tolerance up a little bit to compensate...to light the green screen with lights, halogen work lights would work well for low budget work... but ideally a professional light kit would improve the look. Hit the green screen from each side and place the lights equal distance from the screen...place the screen as far back from your subjects as possible and you should get good results... any questions email me... jeremy@bigjayfilms.com

Ha! Nice pic, stupid friend.

hey big jay, it looks like ur green screen culd catch on fire has that ever happened?

When people usually shoot fire for compositing they shoot it against a black screen, not green. Then you pull a luminance key instead of chroma. This will also get the smoke accurately. You may have to light the smoke to get it to show well.
When you pull the lum key, the fire will not get keyed because it has no black, and the smoke will key semi-transparent because it is grey.