Need to kickstart your biz after covid? Green screen is an efficient and economical way to make branded content and remind your clients you’re still here.
We’ve seen an uptick in demand for greenscreen – especially shooting testimonials.
Locations, particularly office-y looking spots have been more difficult to secure lately. A green screen set is a cheaper alternative to get the job done, and include snappy branding.
Shooting green screen with the idea of dropping in a few inexpensive stock video clips is a difficult thing to achieve, and not look fake. You need the perfect video concept from the get-go. And a perfect concept usually requires a well thought out, art directed plan before you shoot your testimonial video.
You need to choose the clips and form the video idea simultaneously. We can do that for you.
Client Case Study
A fintech client in the blockchain community needed a testimonial vid to explain a complicated message, with a limited budget. Their original idea was to purchase a few city scapes from Singapore, New York, etc. and drop them into their green screen background.
We looked and we looked at stock video clip options. We finally agreed that on a limited $500 – $1000 stock footage budget, we were not going to find anything that did not look fake or cheap in the end…and we’re pretty resourceful and creative.
Our art director, Grant, came up with the idea to use one of the client’s previous motion graphic stock purchases and build upon that. The end result helped the viewer focus on what was being said and the client created cohesive branding on their very first video production. It is featured on their home page. And they look legit!
To vary the scene during the 90 seconds, we tweaked our “one frame” in photoshop, giving ourselves a few options to work with.
Knowing what our replacement background was going to be, we shot the testimonial green screen with a few angles and lenses, to keep the viewer engaged in what was being said.
Just fyi, finance writers are specialized beings, in great demand, and charge 3x that of a regular ol’ gifted copy writer. But you cannot live without ’em.
How Do I Choose My Green Screen Background?
As always, we do the heavy lifting in concept creation and pre-production. Things have to coordinate. Basically you’re matching lighting and the overall feel of things. What’s your final video going to look like? Are we matching existing branding? What resources do we have to work with?
How Do I Blend My Green Screen Background and Testimonial Video Subject?
Light the subject so your viewers don’t notice the background, i.e. “set.” and your subject blends seamlessly into the replacement background. Give your title a think in pre-pro too.
Either light the background to match the speaking subject or vice versa. Say we find stock video clips we like, we then match the studio lighting so they are both shot in similar situations. For example, if you’re using a stock clip of a bright field in the middle of the day, light your subject using bright daylight with a hair light to match. If you’re drop in background is an interior naturally lit scene, light your subject with a soft light too.
Don’t worry, we’ll do the heavy lifting.
Last Minute Greenscreen ProductionTips
- Manually set your color balance appropriately during your pre-light.
2. Mark your green screen with contrasting tape for the video editor, especially if you want to drop in 3D titles.
3. Add a contrasting post-it on a c-stand near the subject for foreground separation.