When many people think of a green screen, they may think that it’s just used for big budget movies with a ton of special effects. In actual fact, green screen is used a whole lot more than people think. Green screens are a useful and cost-saving tool that can be used when advertising a range of products, from cars to hair care products!

To demonstrate how a green screen advert could be great for your business, we are going to use our new advert for Cycling UK as an example. LoveLove Films were commissioned by Cycling UK to create a 40 second advert to promote Bike Week, an annual event run by Cycling UK which shows the public how easily cycling can be a part of everyday life. The advert had a very quick turnaround of four weeks, so LoveLove Films had to ensure that they came up with a concept that was quick to shoot, but looked great.

Cycling UK wanted to feature an array of different biking personalities and locations within the advert which is why we pitched a mixed media world of animated locations with real life people and bikes. To ensure that we displayed a range of different cyclists in a fun and unique environment, LoveLove Films created the concept of having live action people on a fun animated background.

Cycling UK and Bike Week were overjoyed with the final advert, which ran on ITV Hub throughout the whole of Bike Week. The unique, appealing visuals and the inspiring, upbeat poem combine to tell the cycling lifestyle in a nostalgic way that will hopefully inspire adults and youngsters alike to get out on their bike.

Are you considering an advert for your company? Here are a number of reasons why a green screen could be ideal for your advert.

First of all, as mentioned before, using a green screen in your advert can give you a very quick turnaround time. In only four weeks, LoveLove Films produced Cycling UK’s advert from concept to completion. This included conceptualizing the idea, writing the script, tweaking the poem so that it worked for the advert, as well as shooting, animating and editing the final advert.

The shooting for the advert is very contained – the whole of our Bike Week advert was shot in one location, in just one day! We had almost 30 participants to shoot for this project, but because everything was happening in one studio, we were easily able to do this!

There is a limited lighting set up for a green screen shoot; as the set up for a green shoot rarely needs to change, typically the lighting only needs to be set up once per shoot, rather than several different times for a number of shots. This saves a significant amount of time at the beginning, and during, your shoot, making the process smoother and faster.
You can stay in one place! For many adverts, there will be several locations, which requires multiple set ups and moving your cast and crew around a lot. For a green screen shoot, you eliminate this need, which again cuts out a lot of time, and a lot of money as transporting cast, crew, and equipment can be costly.

The biggest factor that can hinder an outdoor shoot is the weather. British weather is famously unpredictable, and typically rainy, which can really slow down, or even halt, an outdoor shoot as you need to keep the equipment dry so it isn’t damaged (and your cast and crew dry so they don’t get annoyed!) Shooting inside a studio with a green screen can save you a lot of hassle when it comes to shoot day – and you could always edit a sunny background onto the green screen!

Shooting with a green screen is great for clients who have a limited budget. As you can animate the world around the people in the green screen, you can put anything there! There are no limits when it comes to what you can put into the background of a green screen shoot, which means that you can have a fantastic looking advert for a lower price.

Our animators love to experiment and create unique looks, which is why a green screen shoot is so great for them! Being able to mix an animated world with a live-action one created a look that really stands out (as it does in our Cycling UK advert). The mixed media content also means that you can incorporate your brand guidelines, and keep all of your marketing consistent.

All of these elements combined means that a green screen shoot is cost effective- sourcing and shooting in a number of locations for an advert can mean that the costs mount quickly, as there are location fees, insurances, transport, and potentially equipment hire to worry about. By choosing to create a green screen advert, you can have a fantastic, unique advert that is true to your brand for a smaller cost.

But how is it done?

For our Cycling UK advert, our animation team used a technique called Chroma Keying to remove the green background from the shots, and replace it with the eye-catching and exciting animation that can be seen in the final video.

The Chroma Keying technique has been around since as early as the 1940s, and the technique as we know it today was refined during the 1980s for use in news broadcasts. As you can see in our images from the production of Cycling UK’s advert below, the green background is quite literally removed from the shot, and replaced with anything you want! In the case of our Bike Week advert, we replaced the screen with a fun animated world that showcased different cyclists and environments.

If you’re interested in how a green screen shoot could work for your business or brand, contact us today at:

Tel: 0044 (0)1202 537858

Email: info@lovelovefilms.com