TubeTape paint is a little less reflective than the Rosco paint, which means that you can shoot your greenscreen closer to your talent without having as much reflected light (or spill) hitting your talent. (Normally, you want to try to key your talent with at least six feet between them and the greenscreen.) We actually tested this paint outdoors less than two feet from our actor and were still able to get a pretty good key. (We were keying in the gun hand of a shooter who we wanted to pass through in post to get a kill shot on our target for an early FX mockup test.)
Here’s the sticky wicket. Buying TubeTape’s ChromaKey paint will yield more consistent color than if you mix the paint yourself in a DIY manner. Additionally, you can get cloth backgrounds from TubeTape that match the paint, which is a great way to get consistency, and it’s easier to clean up than Rosco’s paint.
However, TubeTape’s paint is not as easy to use as Rosco’s and it’s actually more expensive per foot. Why do I say that? Well, both TubeTape and Rosco’s gallon of paint will cover about 300-350 square feet of surface. However, the coverage I got when testing was about the same for one coat of Rosco paint as for two coats of TubeTape paint. Obviously, since you have to go over the surface twice for the TubeTape paint, you’re going to be looking at only 150-175 square feet of completed surface. As such, to stay competitive, TubeTape needs to lower their price to reflect this difference. Considering that Rosco’s paint runs about $73 per gallon, a price point for the TubeTape paint of $25-$30 would be one that would cause more people to go with the TubeTape version, despite the fact that it’s not quite as easy to use. Additionally, it would then only be about twice as much as mixing the paint yourself in a DIY fashion, which would get more of the DIY people to switch over, as well!
TubeTape makes some amazingly high quality greenscreen equipment and does a great job of distributing training about how to use it properly. Their new foray into paint is an excellent starting point, but they either need to lower their price point or change the chemical makeup of the paint to require a single coat to stay competitive.
