What Can You Shoot On A White Wall?
Why A White Wall Works Better Than A Green Screen For These Shoots
When trying to shoot an isolated subject — be it a person, an interview, or a product — many productions default by going with a green screen. However, using a white-walled studio is often a better choice, and in many cases, saving you time and money.
What can you shoot on a white wall instead of a green screen or a white backdrop? The following are ideal for studios offering white walls:
Products
A white wall is the ideal place to take isolated product shots, whether they’re for photos or video/film. In a green screen environment, the production team would have to either drape a white background while handling lighting that’s not naturally optimized for the situation or composite it out in post-production. Using a permanent white wall avoids both of those efforts, expediting from the perspectives of time, budget, and energy.
Talking Heads
Talking heads are used for many things — remote feeds for broadcasts, product descriptions, corporate interviews, and anything else where a subject matter expert or interviewee needs to be clearly seen and heard. A pre-built white wall gets the majority of setup accomplished with from the start. For most studios with the wall already established, the lighting should be already optimized for the environment, saving you time and money. While many talking heads are shot on green screens, this eliminates the need to composite a white background and creates a more natural look for lighting.
Anything That Needs A Clean Background
What else benefits from a white wall? Anything that needs a clean isolated shot, something where the subject stands out clearly. This could be functional (i.e. filming a sitting dog in a controlled environment) or artistic (i.e. photographing something that needs a sense of stark clarity). Regardless of the purpose, a white wall is guaranteed to deliver results in a fast and efficient way.
Benefits Of A White Wall
The common theme from the info above is that a pre-built white wall gets you up and running faster. At Meets the Eye Studios, we’ve been asked about a white wall enough that we decided to convert Studio B into a space with a seamless white wall — this saved time and money over the previous option of painting the cyc wall in Studio A. “Best of all,” says Meets the Eye founder Marshall Spight, referring to benefits over green screen shooting or setting up a white background “you can skip the post-processing and the keying — and that saves you money.”
For productions looking for a white wall in the Bay Area, Meets the Eye offers one more benefit sure to make life easier. “The wall itself is a sophisticated acoustic wall,” says Spight regarding the Studio B white wall. Numerous acoustic enhancements have been made to the structure (double layer of drywall, visco-elastic adhesive, acoustic tiles on ceiling, etc.) all leading to better sound isolation and less bounce.
To get a close-up look at the large white wall in Studio B — and the rest of Meets the Eye’s many features, including one of the Bay Area’s largest pre-lit green screens and a commercial-quality kitchen — contact Meets the Eye today to schedule a free tour.