April Fools and other Madmen, Part IV:  For a Muse of Fire  (2 Min. 30 sec)  YouTube | Vimeo

‘It is the Green Eyed Monster...’ -Othello, Act III Scene III

Shakespeare would have us believe that the Green Eyed Monster is jealousy or perhaps a cat (he hates on cats throughout Othello), but I tell you this monster is a kind of cyclops hanging ever-present in the background of nearly every shot in this, the final episode of April Fools and other Madmen: For a Muse of Fire. 

Part I:  Who Sins the Most? • YouTube | Vimeo

Part II:  What a Piece of Work • YouTube | Vimeo

Part III:  Sound and Fury • YouTube | Vimeo

Part IV:  For a Muse of Fire • YouTube | Vimeo

April Fools and other Madmen, Part IV:  For a Muse of Fire

Based upon an excerpt from 'Henry V' by William Shakespeare

Produced, Directed, Filmed, Scored, Mixed Performed and Edited by Benjamin Karl

Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0

horse by 3bagbrew • cavallicorsa by man • th_loud by Pingle • ambience02 by yewbic

20070918.galloping.horse and 20060419.horse.neigh by dobroide

Binaural Thunder A - Short by digifishmusic • D4. Indian Elephant Bells-No Attack, 3 Octaves Lower by hammerklavier • war noise rev by Leady • tvstatic by NoiseCollector

01366 cinema swoosh 2, 01597 fire swoosh, 01113 knight fight orginal, 01367 cinema swoosh 3, 01153 great wings in motion by Robinhood76

Info for The Free Sound Project at FreeSound.org

Special Thanks to

Scott Kennedy • Joey Song

Copyright © 2011 American Firelight

www.americanfirelight.com

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Settings:

DMC-GH2: ISO 160, 1080i AVCHD, Shutter 1/50

DMC-GH1:  ISO 160, 1080i AVCHD, Shutter 1/50

Lenses: Panasonic 14 mm f2.5, Voigtländer 35 mm f1.4 , Voigtländer 50mm f1.5

Memory: RAW Class 10 SDHC 16GB

Lighting for Green Screen:  (8) 100 Watt Open Face Reflectors.

Lighting for Talent:  (3) 100 Watt Open Face Reflectors.

Audio: AT815b Shotgun Microphone connected to an H4N digital audio recorder

Conclusions:

First and foremost, Green Screen requires a lot of light which produces a tremendous amount of heat.  If you’re planning on turning your garage into a small Green Screen studio, don’t do it on the cusp of summer, but rather early Spring or late Fall.  The actors will appreciate it greatly.

The primary purpose of this episode was simply to test DMC-GH1 and DMC-GH2 for Green Screen conditions.  Can they resolve the necessary color space to pull a good key without tearing the subject to pieces?  This is notoriously difficult in most video formats because of chroma-subsampling in consumer and prosumer cameras which reduces the amount of color information available when trying to isolate and remove a specific value.  While I wouldn’t say it was ‘easier‘ to do with these cameras, the end results were better than I’ve gotten with other cameras.    Part of that seems due to the cameras themselves and part of it due to the keying filter that I was using.

I started out using the color key filters in Final Cut Pro and Motion, but found them woefully inadequate.  I had stair-stepping issues all over the subject; it looked like he was assembled from a child’s building blocks.  An old friend of mine that I used to shoot with put me onto Keylight from The Foundry.  While pricier than I was looking for at this time, it turned out to be an amazing keying filter with many controls and features that you can use to fineness your key in ways that I had never considered.  Bottom line; awesome filter and easily worth a few hundred dollars if you want to do Chroma Key and keep your hairline.

A word about setting up and lighting your Green Screen.  You can use ‘actual’ green screen material or paint, but if you light properly, then you can get away with almost anything.  I have no plans to do extensive Chroma Key work so I picked up a roll of green paper from a local teacher supply store and hung it from the rafters in my garage.  The major problem with paper is that it creases easily and, worse than that, it is highly reflective.  You can’t light it directly, but rather you have to light it off-angle to keep it even.  Lighting off-angle means moving your subject even farther from the screen (to avoid both your screen lights and green spill hitting your subject), which means you need to hang more paper which means you’ll need even more l lights...you can see where this is going.  Plan on doing a lot of Chroma Key;  Get real lights (watch your color temperatures to make sure everything is matching) and get a real cloth Green Screen (keep it clean and nicely folded when not used).  You can find some decent ones online or go to a fabric store and pick up a bolt of green fabric (non reflective).

Some big take-aways; Avoid summertime Chroma Keys indoors and there’s no cheap way through a good Key.  You can spend on the lights and screen or you can spend on the filter, but you’re going to spend somewhere.

Benjamin Karl

President, American Firelight

www.americanfirelight.com

April Fools and other Madmen, Part IV

A series of short scenes from the works of William Shakespeare.

Part I:  Who Sins the Most?  |  Part II:  What a Piece of Work

Part III:  Sound and Fury |  Part IV:  For a Muse of Fire

Photos

Cast & Crew Credits

Press, Extras, Advisories

Director’s Statement