no, infact i use some cheap walmart cloth to green screen. i'm no expert, but i've used green and blue screens, and if the uniforms are a shade of green i'd go with blue, just to be safe.

Cheers,

"They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But a film? Well, thats worth a thousand pictures."

-(Own3d Studios)-

www.own3dstudios.com

Use whatever color works best for the color of uniforms/skin tones/props. But I would go with blue, don't make it too dark.

Also, you might want to look for something else that a brick wall. The surface of a blue screen has to be as consistent as possible, any shadows or shine on the bricks will make your post a lot longer and will probably ruin your shot.

_____________________________________________________
"Imperfection equals Realism"

What Henry said.

Plus: A way to make the surface of the green/blue screen look perfect is to light it well, and to have it a few meters away from where the action is going to take place, just to avoid shadows ?;)?

coolios.

i am in UK, so at this time of year there is a consistency of cloud cover, meaning that shadows wont be a problem.
Also, the brick wall is more or less flat, no bumps.
so blue it is, but how specific does the blue have to be, should i google image blue screen, print a sample of, and take it to the local super market and get best match. if anything, should it be slightly lighter or darker

one more thing i forgot to say, for explosions + effects, is blue or green screen better.

thanks for the help guys

You want to use a color that is as chromatically different from that of your talent and props as possible. Since the opposite of green is red, your best color would be red. Unfortunatley, there's a lot of red in the human skintone. So, try blue instead. Whenever you have a question about what color to key on, take a digital still of your foreground elements, and reverse the values in your computer... the predominant color in the negative view will be the tip off to what your screen should ultimately be for sharpest composition. Green and blue are the ones we all fall back to, simply because they are industry standards.

One reason people choose green over blue is because there are bits of blue in most human skintone. However, a soldier might be dirty, or have camo paint on and the slight blue would probably be very heavily obscured so as to be non-existant.

I'd go with blue. Sky, if it dropped out, would be far easier to repair than trees, grass, and/or uniforms and vehicles.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

I'm not sure if I agree with you on the reason people choose green over blue, rj. I've heard that the reason most people do that is because blue is a much more common color than green is. Blue is often considered America's favorite color. A lot of people wear blue quite often (In fact, I'm wearing a blue sweatshirt as I speak). A lot of objects are blue. Clearly, green is not as popular as blue, and because of that, a lot of films tend to have characters that wear blue, so most filmmakers use green over blue for that reason.

Well, that's what I've heard, anyway.

Seems you are right, I misread something somewhere. Both green and blue are chosen because they are not found in skintones.

RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA

i love you all.

"They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But a film? Well, thats worth a thousand pictures."

-(Own3d Studios)-

www.own3dstudios.com

hehe, WOOT

in terms of the shade of blue, am i right in saying that it should be the opposite of the subject. army uniforms are a dark green/brown, so will i want the blue to be a lighter shade of blue.

Not so much opposite but different than any other blue in the scene. IF you have a light blue third infantry badge on one of the soldiers you should make sure you pick a darker blue for your blue-screen so your program will have no trouble telling one blue from the other.

Again you really need to do test shots because it can be a pain if your colors are too close and you've got things disappearing that you don't want disappearing.

RJSchwarz

and the last thing you want is to be in post, almost done and realize you have to re-shoot half your film 0_o

"They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But a film? Well, thats worth a thousand pictures."

-(Own3d Studios)-

www.own3dstudios.com

hehe, no, im just getting some gear together to do some effects tests. its somthing im gonna have to perfect so lots and lots of effects tests, no real narrative.
im in my gap year, and am going to ravensbourne college (any film peeps from UK will know what im on about) in sept so atm im planning films + doing effects tests to get good at the post production visual side of things.