When shooting against a green screen, you would believe that the rules would be straightforward: just don't wear green! But there are actually a lot of difficulties you can face if you're not prepared. There are many textures that can cause issues like small patterns with intricate details, pure black or white clothing, fur, or even sparkly or reflective surfaces like rhinestones! My name is Elise and I have recently completed my Master's degree in Costume Making at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. These rules can affect the maker as there are now many design choices that can no longer be used and cause a lot of creative boundaries for costume makers. For my dissertation, I decided to focus on the issue above and see what costumes, materials and textures work and don't work against a green screen.
To start this research, I held experiments against a green screen to test which materials and samples worked, so that I could use that knowledge when building my final designs. Using a large screen in the studio, whilst live compositing a different background onto the footage, I was able to see which materials would be too close to the green and would therefore disappear, making them traditionally unusable against a green screen.
When shooting against a green screen, you would believe that the rules would be straightforward: just don't wear green! But there are actually a lot of difficulties you can face if you're not prepared. There are many textures that can cause issues like small patterns with intricate details, pure black or white clothing, fur, or even sparkly or reflective surfaces like rhinestones! My name is Elise and I have recently completed my Master's degree in Costume Making at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. These rules can affect the maker as there are now many design choices that can no longer be used and cause a lot of creative boundaries for costume makers. For my dissertation, I decided to focus on the issue above and see what costumes, materials and textures work and don't work against a green screen.
To start this research, I held experiments against a green screen to test which materials and samples worked, so that I could use that knowledge when building my final designs. Using a large screen in the studio, whilst live compositing a different background onto the footage, I was able to see which materials would be too close to the green and would therefore disappear, making them traditionally unusable against a green screen.
For the final creation of the Green Goddess costume, I started by creating 12 small embellished appliques using a mixture of sew-on stones and non-hot fix rhinestones, mixed in with some beads left over from a previous project.
I tried to create natural shapes and lines whilst keeping the design detailed and intricate. I then took these green samples and turned them into small ‘moss’ embellishments on the corset!
Once I had hand-sewed these on, I used the rest of the flatback rhinestones to embellish the whole corset, blending out the harsh edges of the velvet and creating depth throughout the costume. I used a mixture of all of the colours/ gradients I bought and the different sizes to help disperse the sparkles evenly.
Alongside the corset, I had layers of silky green fabrics mixed with tulle and organza flounces, all intentionally designed to make it difficult for the editor. I also had time to create a collar/ back piece for the dress which I embellished in the same way with glue on rhinestones and sew-on crystal shapes.
Once all aspects of each costume were complete, it was time to pack up the costumes and take them to London for my final shoot where I was able to test my costumes against the green screens in a virtual production studio and see how my costumes worked against an LED wall. I am so happy with how the footage turned out and was able to record a lot of important information to put into my dissertation. Thanks to the help from Crystal Parade, I was able to not only test out my hypothesis for my dissertation but also create a beautiful piece of embellished costume that I can reuse for years to come.
