DVX Black and White

[townhobbler]

Greetings all. After seeing "Sin City", the capbilities for digital black and white now seem wide open.

Has anyone done extensive testing with black and white for the DVX100A? Possibly through a green screen or just a black background?

[Zardoz]

Just a little. My avatar was done while testing the DVX and a blue screen. The DVX looks very nice and crisp in b&w. What did you have in mind?

[Zack Birlew]

Remember, they shot in color first then turned to Black and White in post. That's how they got the single or dual color only scheme. They also did a lot of funky things like using pinkish paint for blood in some parts, I'm guessing that's how they pulled off the white blood stuff. Like Zardoz asked, what are you wanting to do?

[townhobbler]

I'm trying to get the contrast levels similar to those in "Sin City" or, better yet, those of the Animatrix short "The Detective Story." I will be shooting both interiors and exteriors.

For the interiors I'm trying to decide whether to green screen it or just use a nonreflective black background (is spandex cheap?).

For the exteriors, I doing tests to see how much we can see by using practicals without pushing the gain since I'd rather not have a grainy image. Thus far, I've been impressed at how versatile the 100A is.

Also, does anyone have any suggestions about which colors are better if your looking for alot of contrast (other than black and white, of course).

Thanks ahead of time....

[MattC]

One word of advice, even if you shoot in color and de-saturate in post, you should turn the color on your field monitor off so that you can see your lighting and contrast in B&W. Believe it or not this makes a pretty big difference is your are going for very dramatic B&W effects.

Matt

[disjecta]

I'm just finishing up a film I've been working on (I've already posted the first two acts earlier on this forum). Anyway, I put together an old 40's style trailer for it that makes absolutely no sense but was fun to do. It's all black and white...done in post.

http://www.pinelakefilms.com/trailer.html

[Zardoz]

Very nice. Love the music. As much as I like 2.35:1 widescreen though, I think your project might be better suited in 4:3. It's a bit odd seeing b&w like this in such a wide frame... But anyway, I always find retro stuff like this very interesting.

[Super Trooper]

That was awesome disjecta.

[disjecta]

Yeah, the 2:35:1 was not representative of the retro look. The actual film is in color with that ratio so I wasn't going to frame it differently, particulary given that I just put the trailer together for fun.

but thanks for the comments...I really just wanted to give people an idea of what b/w looks like shot on the DVX

[John C Lyons]

nice job.

dare i ask why the one little girl doesn't run away?