Green screens in TV shows...

[Sheep]

...wow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clnozSXyF4k&feature=player_embedded

My mind is blown at just how much stuff is done in front of the green screen on TV, as evidenced in the video above. I NEVER would have expected shows like Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy or Monk to have a bunch of scenes staged in front of a green screen, but it makes sense from a budget perspective. Cheaper to get actors on a sound stage than to transport them to the locations along with the crew, close off a street and do live filming.

What's even funnier is how I've almost never noticed them in shows like these, and yet big budget action movies like the Star Wars prequels look dog ass awful with some of their gratuitous green screen effects.

 

[Christopher]

What's even funnier is how I've almost never noticed them in shows like these, and yet big budget action movies like the Star Wars prequels look dog ass awful with some of their gratuitous green screen effects.

Well, the compositing tech has probably improved over the past few years. And maybe when it's a fantasy setting, you're expecting special effects and are more alert to the signs. If it's just a city street, it doesn't occur to you to look. (Although it will now...)

 

[Lindley]

If a group of enthusiasts with a decade of experience but minimal funding can do this, it shouldn't be surprising what Hollywood can do with an actual budget.

 

[broberfett]

I wonder how much of the news footage is faked.

 

[Gaith]

I love this sort of thing. Like in Rome, they used the main Forum set for Alexandria, laying sand above the cobblestones and putting some camels in the background (gotta love the half-completed tree!):

Now if the studios would only use this green screening power for good (historical vistas), rather than for evil (yet more cop shows), we could get some decent television indeed...

 

[Caliburn24]

In the last episode of Boston Legal I can remember thinking the lake resort where all the characters end up looked odd, and how strange it was that a show would go to so much trouble to greenscreen a simple wilderness scene.

 

[Roger Wilco]

I never really thought about it, but it makes sense I guess. That's a very cool, eye-opening video though.

 

[darthraidr]

the HBO mini, John Adams, also had this sort of things going on. i was blown away with how good it looked and how often it was used.

John Adams

 

[Christopher]

In the last episode of Boston Legal I can remember thinking the lake resort where all the characters end up looked odd, and how strange it was that a show would go to so much trouble to greenscreen a simple wilderness scene.

A location shoot is never simple. You have to truck the equivalent of a whole studio out to the location, and the farther you have to travel to reach the location, the harder and more expensive it is. Indeed, if there was no suitable lake resort location available within range of the studio, or if the time of year was wrong (for instance, if they were trying to shoot a springtime scene in the dead of winter), then location work may have been completely unfeasible.

 

[TheSeeker]

Very cool link. I wasn't surprised by the ferry scene from grey's though. I'm also pretty sure every scene in Private Practice overlooking the beach from Addison's deck are green screened too.

 

[Mistral]

Bones uses green screens all of the time. Watch the edges of the picture next time they are driving...

 

[Roger Wilco]

Aren't driving scenes always green screen?

 

[TheSeeker]

^I've seen plenty of driving scenes with the vehicle sitting on a low-riding trailer.

 

[Joy]

Aren't driving scenes always green screen?

I think they usually are for TV because of budget, but for movies, they often do this:

http://saab92x.com/viewtopic.php?pid=431371 (see the pics near the bottom)

 

[Christopher]

Aren't driving scenes always green screen?

They used to be done with rear- or front-projection. In fact, there's a scene in Bringing Up Baby where Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are in the front seats of a car and Baby the leopard is in the back seat, and in actuality the entire back section of the car and the leopard are rear-projected onto a screen behind the actors.

 

[Arrqh]

I wonder how much of the news footage is faked.

It takes time and effort to do any of this at quality, with many people working for days or weeks on a single shot. You can't just push a few buttons and have it done in an hour for the evening news.

Anyway, this is the other side of things : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPflLGEHUAI

 

[Aragorn]

I think it was the first Airplane that made fun of projection driving where the background was moving all over the place.

 

[broberfett]

I wonder how much of the news footage is faked.

It takes time and effort to do any of this at quality, with many people working for days or weeks on a single shot. You can't just push a few buttons and have it done in an hour for the evening news.

Anyway, this is the other side of things : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPflLGEHUAI

They would only use it for certain important stories. They could plan things in advance. I'm sure it would be a piece of cake.

 

[broberfett]

Here is a wikipedia article about faked photographs from the Israeli-Lebanon War a few years ago. Adnan Hajj altered photos and Reuters published them. It took some blogger in his pajamas to point it out. Reuters did not detect the "mistake" themselves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Hajj_photographs_controversy

 

[John Picard]

Aren't driving scenes always green screen?

They used to be done with rear- or front-projection. In fact, there's a scene in Bringing Up Baby where Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are in the front seats of a car and Baby the leopard is in the back seat, and in actuality the entire back section of the car and the leopard are rear-projected onto a screen behind the actors.

I think it was the first Airplane that made fun of projection driving where the background was moving all over the place.

Yep. Look at movies and TV shows 1995 and earlier for great examples. Front, rear, and even the side. A lot of in-car shots on the old Dukes of Hazzard tv series were done with a mock-up vehicle on the sound studio. Careful analysis of an old tv show or movie will show how the "driver's" motion of the steering wheel doesn't match the the motion of the projected rear window screen. That's what Airplane! was satirizing.