Advice - black & white on HVX/M2/Canon primes

W

WindyCityCameraND

New member
I am the cinematographer on an upcoming short film shoot, titled "Rendezvous," which the director and I have decided to shoot in black and white. One of our several influences for this look is the contrast between the two opening scenes of the film "Casino Royale," to emphasize the difference between the paranoia of one character and the steel resolve of the other as both of then talk to each other on the phone.

I have read several articles on shooting in color and desaturating the image in post, but I would hugely appreciate any advice on specific techniques used for this method. What colors should we avoid on set? What settings work best in the scene files?

Thanks,

John Klein
www.windycitycamera.com
Panasonic HVX200
M2 Red Rock/Canon lenses
28mm t2.8/35mm t2.0/50mm t1.8/85mm t1.8/100mm t2.8/135mm t2.8/28-105mm t3.4-5.6
 
The whole point is that you shouldn't have to avoid colors on set.
Definitely use a monitor every shot. Exposure is super critical. Plan on pushing contrast in post. Shooting color and going black and white gives you three levels and gamma curves to play with but shoot conservative.

Using no chroma in your final product makes special effects MUCH easier, from greenscreen through any roto, especially if your FX person is there to design the shots.

edit
*Whoa, I'm Jon Kline. Somebody work out the odds on that one.*
 
Ha! How about that?

Thanks for the reply!

I understand the flexibility we have in color correction nowadays with pulling out colors and such, but nonetheless I'm looking for as clean an initial image as possible. I had read in a couple of articles that such colors as kelly green adversely affected one's ability to desaturate the image in post. Any experience with that?

I'm obviously going to have to up the contrast and crush the blacks a little bit; I'm also hoping to have the Magic Bullet: Looks software that will help me in applying a more stringent film curve.

Also, by "no chroma" do you mean setting level and phase to 0 or to -7?

Cheers,
John Klein
www.windycitycamera.com
 
No, capture all the color data you can. I just meant that all the color data is not essential to the final product. Basically, you can use a green screen AND a blue screen if you want. Most software now will let you do almost anything anyway, but it can be nice to have two different alpha channels, or be able to put your talent in bright green gloves for a special effect, knowing you don't even have to recolor them afterward. Plus greenscreen work can be pretty sloppy in B&W and still look good. If you were using an NTSC cam, you might have to watch for blooming reds, but I haven't seen that happen with the HVX.

If you were using more compression (like MiniDV) then you might get some jaggies if you wanted to use all three channels in the final output. With 4:2:2 DVCProHD it should not be as noticeable.

Magic bullet will do very good things for B&W footage.
 
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