Video Production

All Things Green Screen

When you have a green screen, your possibilities multiply exponentially. From basic high-quality background replacement to actually interacting with any visual reference you're displaying to the student, a green screen takes your virtual and video teaching to a whole new level. In this lesson we'll cover ALL THINGS Green Screen, from setup to software and ways to use it.

While it may seem like a luxury, if you can get a green screen behind you while teaching, it opens up a TON of possibilities — you can physically interact with lesson material visuals — and it is pretty affordable to get what you need to set it up.

In fact the most difficult thing is managing your space if you have one that isn't painted directly onto the wall, because setting it up and tearing it back down again over and over is simply A HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS. Which is why I leave mine up permanently.

Below I'll break down a few approaches to using a green screen in your home, and which one you choose will depend mostly on your available space & your budget.

If you are able to paint the entire wall behind you green, and install ceiling-mounted track lighting above it that evenly lights up the wall, this is the ultimate home green screen solution.

Obviously, we don't all have that luxury, but if you do then definitely go with it. 

Make sure to get the right shade of green paint, too — in HTML hex code, the standard color is #00b140, which is also known as Pantone™ PMS 354 C.

The next option is a little less "all-in" but doesn't involve painting part of your house green.

Instead, you purchase green screen fabric backdrop, and a mounting stand kit for it. There are several designs out there, so determine what works best for you (and check the reviews before you buy one). 

The one on the left below is similar to what I first got in 2012, and the one problem it came with is that the legs on the stands were SO WIDE that the legs themselves forced the stands to be at least 12 inches away from the wall. This meant that I couldn't use the full space of the room. (I later came up with a great "quick and dirty" solution for this, which I'll share in Option #3 below).

Here are some of the forms this type of green screen setup can take:

So when I said earlier that setting up a green screen and tearing it down again, over and over, is a huge pain in the ass? This is the setup I was talking about. So if there's any way you can keep it set up (or at least MOSTLY set up) 24/7, you'll make your life a lot easier. But of course that's not an option for everyone.

The solution to not being able to fully use all the space in my room was to mount just PART of my stand — just the horizontal bar that the backdrop hangs from, and the thumbscrews the stand kit came with — onto the ceiling using a basic combination of specific plumbing and hardware from The Home Depot to mount it.

Below are pictures showing my portable "MacGyver" ceiling-mounted setup using plumbing supplies from The Home Depot (to free up floor space that the tripod stands would be taking up).

Below are the actual parts I used to build my ceiling mounts, in case you'd like to replicate my setup. My horizontal bar and thumb screws came with a full mounting stand set which was rather expensive and that I've had since 2012 (so it may not even exist anymore), so I'm going to recommend a cheaper one that'll work the same below.

Remember, you'll need 2 of each part, because you're mounting it from both sides, so don't accidentally buy only 1.

In my experience, the hardest part about using a green screen is lighting it properly.

It needs to be lit EVENLY so that the camera sees ONE SHADE OF GREEN. If you only light part of it, then that will register as a gradient, ranging from light green to dark green, and you will have a much harder time keying out the green. So it needs to be ONE solid color. 

This means that your green screen needs its own set of lights, separate from the lights you shine on yourself.

Not only that, but it needs to be far enough away from you that the lighting on YOU doesn't cast shadows onto the green screen - because again, that would create areas of a darker shade of green and screw up the effect.

But it also needs to be close enough to you (or alternately, large enough) that the entire background behind you is green. If not, you won't be able to cut out the background and the effect will be ruined.

Early on, while you're working out your lighting, you may find yourself in a similar situation to what I found myself in during the fall of 2023...

You set up your green screen, shoot your video, NAIL IT when it comes to the delivery... and then realize that your green screen was actually really badly lit, and you're having the hardest time keying it out in editing. (In my case I had already recorded the entire video TWICE and was NOT about to do it a third time - but I didn't want to just NOT publish it.)

So I turned to an AI service I had heard of time and time again: Runway ML. They offer several AI processes (and it is a low-cost paid membership), one of them being a video background remover. 

And it worked great! I had about 20 minutes of footage to go through, so it took HOURS of slowly walking through it all a few frames at a time, just to make sure it was tracking what it should have, and correcting it when it wasn't. But it was worth it because I was able to salvage what was otherwise the perfect delivery and move on to editing (after which the video was ultimately less than 5 minutes long). 

So if I ever found myself in the same situation, I'd definitely turn to Runway ML again and do the exact same thing.

The actual effect within your editing software (and in OBS Studio) for removing the green background is actually called CHROMA KEY. You'll need to know this so you can find and load the right plugin (or, "Filter" in OBS Studio) in your software to make the background disappear in the video. Using a Chroma Key effect is often referred to as "keying" ("I'm going to key out this green," or "Once you key your footage..."). Sometimes it's also referred to as color keying.

Then by putting another image or video in the layer beneath your footage of yourself, that becomes your background. (You may need to adjust the color of yourself and your guitar, after the 

In reality, a Chroma Key plugin can be used to remove ANY color from your video. However, green and blue are the main 2 colors used because skin tones do not contain them. As soon as you start targeting reds or yellows, the subject in your video starts disappearing along with the background.

Green vs Blue:
Green is typically preferred for digital filming due to its higher luminance and less interference with clothing, while blue is often used for darker scenes or when subjects wear green. (So get Green.)

Green is typically preferred for digital filming due to its higher luminance and less interference with clothing, while blue is often used for darker scenes or when subjects wear green. (So get Green.)

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