One of the cheapest and easiest ways to make an incredible-looking environment for your talking head video is to use a virtual set.
A virtual set relies on chroma-key, or green screen effect. You videotape your host in front of a green background and then replace the green background with the virtual set. The virtual set can be anything…a still picture of the North Pole or a digital image specially designed to look like a large television studio.
- You can buy fantastic-looking virtual sets that will give viewers the impression that your studio is huge, expensive, and high-tech, when in reality you are videotaping yourself in a tiny spare bedroom.
Lighting should be bight, diffused and even. The background should be a little brighter relative to the talent. Any shadows on the background will create problems. You combine the two video elements either with a video switcher or with video editing software.
Lots of virtual sets can even make it look like your host is sitting behind the digital desk if you position everything correctly. This helps makes it look very real. A well-lit green screen composited properly with a virtual set can indeed look real. However, this is not always a simple thing to actually achieve.
Any virtual set you get, except perhaps for the most simple, is going to have to be fiddled with along with the placement of your host and any on-set objects, like greened out blocks to mimic desks or other furniture, in order to make it look natural.
Using a virtual set is definitely easier than building a real set, but be prepared to tweak details of how everything is arranged, or your on-camera people might look like they are floating on top of the set. To avoid this problem, pick a virtual set that doesn’t have any furniture, like a desk or sofa, that needs to appear functional.
As you can see in the above screen capture of the virtual set offerings from Adobe stock images, some have a green screen monitor for you to fill in with whatever you wish. This gives you two green screen images in one shot. If you operate with a small video switcher, it might not handle two.
If you don’t use a virtual set, you need a real one. This means real furniture, real backgrounds and real props. All well and good, but real objects take up space and are heavy to move. 🙂
- Using virtual sets can greatly increase the variety of your programs and the ease with which you switch from one look to another.
If you want to read more about how green screen technique works, you can check out this VPT article.
Have fun with green screen and virtual sets!
Thanks for reading Video Production Tips.
Lorraine Grula
