Creating a B/W filmlook?

D

dnyph

New member
Hallo everyone

I am looking for someguidelines on how to create a B/W filmlook in FCP 5. My original footage is shot on dvx100b.

What i have started out doing is simply to desaturate the entire thing. It makes it look rather flat. Is there any advice other than tweeking the contrast, gamma and use trial and error?. If you have some settings i might be able to use as a startingpoint that would be great.

Thank you for your help

peter haselmann
Niebieski Rekin Productions
Denmark
 
dnyph said:
Hallo everyone

I am looking for someguidelines on how to create a B/W filmlook in FCP 5. My original footage is shot on dvx100b.

What i have started out doing is simply to desaturate the entire thing. It makes it look rather flat. Is there any advice other than tweeking the contrast, gamma and use trial and error?. If you have some settings i might be able to use as a startingpoint that would be great.

Thank you for your help

peter haselmann
Niebieski Rekin Productions
Denmark
Click to expand...

The real 'simplistic' approach is to desaturate and boost contrast to get a 'bw' filmish look...

"Real" black and white film has a film response to various colors, and so a better approach would be to do some calculations, and 'weight' the R, G, and B channels respectively, to attempt to match a given BW film's color response, gama, etc.

Unfortunately most consumer/prosumer video cameras don't record RGB at the same bit depth... so, perhaps just taking the 'green' channel, and snaping up the contrast may give you 'impressions of nostaligic BW'...

What is also true, is that many people don't really have an eye for 'BW', and so create a flatter image in the first place... for example, in 'color' your brain says red and blue are 'very different', but when viewed monochromatically, they may be the same reflectance, and so have essentially the same value of 'grey'... yielding a 'flat' image...
 
I've been really happy with the black and white looks that I can get with the Magic Bullet Looks plug-in for FCP. It is not too expensive either. It lets you add grain, vignettes, blurs for DOF-style effects, and has some nice curves adjustments as well.

Anyways, it seems to be a better tool for creating black & white than FCP's built in effects. I'm not sure why MB Looks makes a better black and white, but maybe what j1clark described is going on in the software.

I'm not sure how you lit your film, but I always feel that black and white needs a slightly different lighting style. For example: maybe a more pronounced separation light to make the objects in the various foreground layers to pop out a bit more. Also, it may just be me but I've always thought that black and white did look a little flatter in general than color movies or video. Maybe it's just the nature of the beast?
 
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