Use blue, human skin tones have the least ammount of blue color so you will get minium distortion.

To make one simple get a smooth wall/board/wateva and paint it a medium range blue. Once its made make sure you light it evenly!!!

Make Love Not War!

yeah, in theory any color will do but you want a color that wont interfere with the colors in front of it. blue or green is best. red is a bad idea for people.

"Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot apprecieate the great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them."

-------Pauline Kael

Here's a website that'll give you a quick rundown on fx backgrounds:? http://www.seanet.com/Users/bradford/bluscrn.html?. As an aside, it used to be that bluescreen was used in features, and greenscreen was used in commercials (because of the electronic post-production, I assume). Those boundries have gotten smeared over the years and now the screen used tends to be green. What is in front of the screen does make a difference, but it is not as big a deal as it once was (it's changed dramatically in just 10 years). I have done a lot of fx work, and I have never seen a red screen (although I know they used one for parts of "Predator" because of all the jungle stuff).

On that page above you will find links for paint and cloth in fx screen colors, but I give it to you here now as well.

? http://www.seanet.com/Users/bradford/buy_blue_screen_paint.htm?

Keep in mind that cloth screen is preferred over paint because it tends to reflect light more evenly without hot spots.

You can also add yellow screen to the list: a while back I saw some 'behind the scenes' footage from a 'Doctor Who' episode from the 70s, and they were using both blue and yellow for different shots.

Like I said, in theory any color can be used, depends on what else is in the shot. so I can see yellow being used also.

"Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot apprecieate the great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them."

-------Pauline Kael

I wouldnt recomend using yellow, the refelection would be far too much, the back of the subject would be coverd in yellow light.

Make Love Not War!

Actually, the reflected light is a problem with all effects screens, and is one of the principle reasons for putting a lot of distance between your subject and the screen. Getting that rim of reflected light makes it more difficult to pull a decent matte. Green is good because it's easier to see on your actors, and thus correct. Blue is good because blue light falls off very fast. Yellow would be harder to use in most situations because we use a lot of yellow when we light. You would only use it for very special situations. To that end, I've seen both black and white used. With white you're simply making a "difference matte". The computer adds two images together and whatever is different between the background and the foreground gets a matte. You can also use this to pull a matte with no screen, but it can be very dirty, and might need lots of frame by frame work to fix it up. In the movie "Firefox" they used UV screens because the models were chrome and reflected everything in the background.

What's my point...? I'm asking myself that too.... I guess it's that there are a lot of guys out there who do this for a living and have a lot of resources at their disposal. Don't reinvent the wheel when they've done all the legwork. All you're likely to find out is why you don't often see red-screen on TV. Stick to blue and green. Your movie is to important to you to be doing technical experimentation.

I prefer to use a black screen and instead of keying out color key out the light as there will only be light comming from the subject and if its well lit and a good screen there will be ABASOLOUTLY NO REFLECTION on the subject.

Make Love Not War!

What programs are there that you can use to replace the blue/yellow/green screen? I'm using Adobe Premier 6.5 at the moment, does that have a way in which i can replace the background?

Life is short, so film the most out of it