4 Tips to Ensure Successful Localized Green-Screen Video Productions

Green-screen video is used in promos, educational multimedia, corporate announcements, customer-facing how-to’s, marketing collateral – and in just about all kinds of online digital media. The costs of green-screen shooting and post-production have gone down dramatically over the last 20 years, and this has been one of the factors in the dominance of video on the web. As companies expand worldwide, international audiences are clamoring for this content as well – which means that the transcreation of green-screen videos, and multilingual soundstage shoots, must be a part of any organization’s multimedia localization strategy.

This post lists 4 tips to ensure your localized green-screen video shoots are successful – i.e., that they’re done on time and on budget.

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Green-screen shoots can be as cost-effective as dubbing

You read that correctly. While video dubbing doesn’t require a soundstage, lighting, or make-up and hair, it can be labor-intensive, in particular for corporate and e-Learning content. (More about that in this post.)  These kinds of videos, on the other hand, usually feature a presenter over a green-screen background, sometimes with relatively simple office setups – which means that they lend themselves to quick, cost-effective shoots on a green-screen soundstage.

As an example, look at the following green-screen still from a localized e-Learning scenario video:

Switch out the actors, clipboard and pen, and you have an entirely new scene in a different language. Add a localized background during the editing, and you’re in a new locale altogether as well. Even scenes with a few more elements – like a desk and chairs, laptops, or any other office supplies – can be re-staged in front of a green-screen relatively quickly if the shoot is run properly. On top of that, script translations for re-shoots don’t have to be timed to the English-language video, so that these projects can usually support transcreation.

So, yes – green-screen transcreation can be as cost-effective as video voice-over. But only if the green-screen shoots are done right. Here are 4 tips to help you do that.

Before we go on – if you’re not familiar with the shooting process itself, check out our post Green-screen for Multilingual Video Suites, which has a workflow overview.

1. Think in terms of shoot days.

Shoots are generally priced by the day of work, in part because that’s the fee structure for soundstages and equipment rentals. Most film professional fees – including directors, cinematographers, sound recordists & mixers, on-camera actors, lighting technicians, hair & makeup, production assistants, teleprompter operators, and script supervisors – also charge daily rates. This means that any successful green-screen shoot has to get as much as possible out of each work day. Fortunately, corporate video and e-Learning scenario suites generally have large numbers of videos with relatively simple setups (like the one pictured above), which can be spread over a few days on a soundstage – maximizing cost-effectiveness.

2. Schedule, re-schedule – and then check the schedule.

Schedules on film and video shoots are usually done in 15-minute blocks, and detail every cast or crew member needed for each part of the shoot, as well as props, set dressing, special lighting rigs or effects, and anything else needed to complete a particular shot. This is the single most important element in making sure that a video production runs on budget and on time, and must be done by a trained professional. Moreover, shoot scheduling is especially difficult if you’re recording multiple languages in a day, since you’ll have to switch in and out multiple teams of native-speaking talents, script supervisors, and bilingual directors. Allow enough time in your pre-production (the preparatory stage) to develop the schedule, and review it multiple times to make sure it’s air-tight.

3. Always know what you can do if you get stuck or finish early.

This simple tip will really save you if you run into issues on a shoot. If you run ahead – for example, if you finish shooting a scene 15 minutes early – you should have a list of things you can do with the additional time. This could be shooting stills, switching out drives for post-production, giving the crew a break so you can keep working later on, or even moving to the next scene. If you can knock out a task scheduled for later in the day, it’ll give you flexibility if you run into issues later on. Which you will almost certainly do, so you must have contingency lists for when that happens as well. For example, if you’re missing a prop for a scene but the talents, director and all the crew are ready, you need to know if there are shots that don’t have the prop in them, and possibly start with those.

Again, the key is to have a sense of what tasks you can move to if things go really well – or not so well.

4. Hire a professional production company with experienced directors & producers. 

Video productions are difficult to get right, and multilingual ones are even more so. The shoot day pricing can be pretty unforgiving. Go over, and you’ll get hit with overage fees. Finish three hours early, and you’ve lost valuable work hours – though this is a much more preferable scenario. This is why you need to hire a professional studio with experienced producers & directors, as well as tested talents who have the stamina to read a teleprompter under hot lights, possibly for hours, without making a mistake, and looking composed the whole time. JBI Studios, of course, has a decade of experience with multilingual green-screen shoots, as well as an in-house soundstage that can accommodate corporate, e-Learning, client-facing and marketing productions.

Finally – don’t forget to factor in post-production

A full-service studio will also be able to provide the post-production – the video editing, compositing (adding the background, basically), sound mixing, and any additional voice-over recording needed for the final videos. It’s crucial to secure these services before starting the pre-production, and to have your editor speak with your supervising director to make sure that they get all the shots needed so the videos cut together. For this reason it’s particularly useful to have a studio vendor that has capabilities for both production and post-production – as is the case with JBI Studios, which has a soundstage and full video editing suites. Not only does having one single vendor make the whole process more convenient, but it also allows for more a coordinated transcreation, production and editing workflow – which again, is absolutely necessary for this particular kind of multimedia localization production to deliver on time, and on budget.

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