Green screen doesn’t suck, you just suck at green screen – Here’s why and how to fix it

Shooting on a green screen has become far more common these days. Green screens are cheap and readily available. Most video editing software, not to mention live streaming software like OBS and hardware like the Yolobox Products, have native support for it built-in. But it’s still something that many people struggle with when it comes to video editing with bad keys, dodgy artifacts and other issues.

A lot of people blame the software tools for a bad key, but is it down to operator error? Well, yeah, it probably is. There are many factors in shooting good green screen footage, and in this video, the team at Syrp Lab go through the process and explain exactly what could be causing your green screen issues and how to resolve them.

While this video might bring some news you might want to hear and there may be fundamental issues in your camera that you cannot resolve without buying a new one, the video covers a lot of great tips on how to properly light and frame your green screen footage to get a reliable key and how to prevent some of the common mishaps. The problem is, chroma-keying, whether it’s with a green screen or a different colour, has a lot of potential points of failure in the creation process. All of them need to come together in order to get a good final result.

I’ve been guilty of a few of the things highlighted in the video myself in the past when it comes to green screen, but once you make those mistakes, learning how to overcome them is pretty easy. Identifying where those issues are and remembering the solutions to them from one shoot to the next is where it gets tricky – and where this video steps in. But if you end up doing green screen a lot, you’ll pick up the good habits really quickly once you figure them out, you’ll remember them for the future!