DIY Green Screen setup at home: Low Budget

Published on January 17, 2017

Lighting Tutorials

Cheap, DIY, Green Screen

A good green key studio is the foundation of a successful Chroma key. The footage you make in a good studio will be easier to key in post production and will save you time while editing your project. So it’s better to take your time with the setup and lighting than to try and fix it in post.

There are different ways to set up a professional green key studio, if you have the means you can go for professional gear. But in this tutorial we are showing you the DIY low budget way to achieve the wanted setup. If you are creative and a little handy, creating things yourself has of course the financial  advantage.  An example for a famous DIY project is the camera slider made by Film Riot. In our DIY project, we used household tools we found in the garage. For lighting we also used the cheapest option to stay within the low budget theme. But again, use whatever you can find not every household has the same tools.

Green is the most used color for Chroma key, but what if your talent is wearing green? To avoid that you key out parts of your talent, you can choose the other color used for chroma key, blue. These two colors are used because they differ most from the human skin tone colors. But green is favored and more used, because digital cameras are more sensitive to green light and will give a better result.

In this tutorial we create a more mobile setup that you can easily move or dismantle if needed. But if you have the room and the means, you can always opt to create a permanent green screen studio like we build at our work space. If you are going for a permanent studio, there is also the option to use Chroma color paint which is the alternative for a fabric and commonly used by larger production houses. But this requires a smooth wall, so if that is an issue you better be safe and choose for a green fabric

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Film Gear from the video

• Twin head halogen Construction Light tripod: 1000 watt
• Chroma key screen (green) 10ft x 16ft
• 2 inch Metal spring clams (10 pack)
• LEE High Temperature white diffusion filter
• LEE High Temperature color filter: 1/2 CTO (Orange Filter)