Shooting gold sequins over chroma BG?

Flame Tips and Tricks
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Hello Hive,

We have a shooting coming up with talent wearing a shiny, reflective gold sequined dress, and she’ll be put over a stylized CG background. Concerns are of course that we’ll certainly have plenty of roto, but also the green spill that we’ll want matched seamlessly with the gold sequins look.

Seems to me either green or blue screen would have the same issues, and the spill is more concerning at this point than the roto. Any thoughts on another approach, like gray screen (which I’ve never done)?

Thanks in advance.

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if you’re gonna be in roto town, you could just color the BG whatever color the CG is gonna be, cos yeah, I think you’re right–it’s not even the spill, just the straight up reflection of the screen that the sequins will pick up (and tint slightly golden).

If clients don’t have an answer for what the BG color is, or if it’s changing, my vote is gray screen.

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At this point we’re assuming a black limbo bg, with stylized bokeh particles, glitter, etc. behind and in front of the talent.

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My concern about gray screen is that the talent is a lady in her 70’s, presumably with gray or grayish hair. I def don’t want to be in hair roto land, for quality concerns.

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I’d go black background in that case if it’s close to what you want to end up with and you’re going to do roto anyway

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Black bg is in discussion too. Concern still is with wispy female hair, which will likely be salt-and-pepper-ish.

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I did a shot for a feature film that had this exact situation and I would say it’s far better to shoot against green and have some spill and roto clothes than to have to roto hair/everything else. For my shot, there was very little reflection of the green in the sequins anyway (but it wasn’t a close up)

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Thanks Greg!

*One thing to note is that we’ll be on a very small stage – so getting green far away from the talent will not be an option. So heavy spill is kind of assumed.

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How long is the shot/how many shots? I just had a full human target hundreds of frames, 800fps roto with tons of hair detail for under 1000 bucks.

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Mr. McEntee! It’ll likely be one long :30 shot, dollying in from wide to closeup.

Are you suggesting that the hit in quality would be less with rotoed hair, than with dealing with spill? That’s really the big question.

I’ve never been very happy with roto on wispy hair, but I suppose it’s possible…

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How about shooting with magenta sequins instead of gold… Complementary color that will show less spill and can be colorwarped to gold.

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I’ve found that with sequins, greenscreen is pretty useless, not just because of the spill, but with the thousands of flashing reflections. Might as well just go black. Some backlight on the hair might make it stand out a bit more for keying. If not black, then blue since green and gold are so close to one another.

Edit: In fact, the more I think about it the more I would go with blue if you are going to be close on her face and hair.

Is sand-screen still a thing? I hear it’s amazing.

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Something to consider…this isn’t spill, per se…this is the potential for thousands of tiny mirrors reflecting the wrong thing.

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I’m still in favor of black BG. If you’re adding stylized particles in front of and behind the talent, the hair (and the rest of the edges) will be very forgiving. The look of the talent will be correct for the environment with no color spill and particles that might disappear near the body will be believable.

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And if still want to go chroma, blue rather than green, which is too close to the yellow of gold.

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what about the hair

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what color is your hair, blonde or black? long or short?

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My understanding now is that her hair is long and blonde. So that could help make shooting on black, with a good backlight, more viable.

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Thanks everyone for the thoughts & tips here. Waiting for the creative concept to flesh out still, but at this point I’m leaning towards shooting on black.

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We have a shooting coming up with talent wearing a shiny, reflective gold sequined dress, and she’ll be put over a stylized CG background.

It’ll likely be one long :30 shot, dollying in from wide to closeup.

Not to knock the amazing collective post-vfx talent here figuring out a solution! But just curious if virtual production volume stage was ever considered?

Stylized CG background, one talent/prop, reflective component. Not much different than a car product shoot on a volume stage.

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