Why are green screens green?
In: Technology
Blue used to be the go to choice and this was because on colour film (actual film) blue really stood out. Colour film was more sensitive to blue. This made the blue screen really obvious and easy to work with so you could remove it and replace it with your SFX.
Today digital cameras are normally used and they are especially good at picking up the colour green. This makes green stand out the best and so it’s easier to pick out the green screen and remove it for the SFX/CGI/whatever.
However, if you need green in your shot, say an actor’s costume, or trees, etc then a blue screen is still used. In fact, the sky is a natural blue screen and has been used in movies to add another sky.
There is another reason to choose one or the other. Because green registers so well there is a higher chance that the green screen when brightly lit will spill onto things that you don’t want to remove. For instance, actors may get a green tinge and that’ll either ruin the shot or make it a lot harder to cleanly edit.
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