Black and White shooting

M

MeAgain

Carbonite Member
And now, for my 100th post....


I'm shooting a BW movie on the DVX100. I don't want advice how to light it- I need advice on specifically any settings or precautions I should take with the DVX itself before shooting.

I'm using the original DVX. I don't get what Chroma, Gamma, and a lot of the other settings do and their impact on BW shooting. I'm not going for a contrast look, but a softer, more natural lighting (I'm using a lot of afternoon sunlight), if that helps.

I've had people recommend I use CineGamma, others say I shouldn't use that for BW, etc, etc-

And also, what precautions should I take capturing it? People have warned about the artifact problems and how they transfer from color to BW, and that I should clean the footage up before I suck the color out in post, but I don't quite get that either. I'm not even sure how to deal with those jagged lines that result from certain colors. It's beyond me.

I've seen some BW threads on here, but a lot of it is has to do with the actual lighting. I just need to know some good values for scene files, how to deal with the codec, etc...any help would be greatly greatly appreciated.
 
hmm...i dont really do anything special for my Black and white stuff. But then i go for contrasty. for natural you may just want to keep everything more or less zeroed out except detail coring and master ped and maybe cinelike d.

the higher the coring the more noise smoothing
higher the master ped the more washed out it will look and low will look more crushed and contrasty.
cinelike d will give u most dynamic range
you can lower detail level also.

these settings will help flatten the image then in post u can crush the shadows to your desired level and add sharpness if you want.

http://www.vimeo.com/6851949 look on this...at the end theres a little B+W part. I didnt do the settings like i gave you above...however witht eh settings i gave u above u can get whatever look you want out of it in post from flat to really crushed blacks. this clip was more contrasty already in the camera settings and i added some grain to it.
 
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+1 for Cinelike D for lower contrast, hence more options for contrast levels in post.

Shoot in colour, then remove colour in post. That way, you can effectively add red/ yellow filters or whatever in post, and have more control than a real filter in front of the lens.

Having said that, having a b+w monitor would be very useful to check lighting and contrast, which is hard to do on on a colour monitor for what will become b+w.

Watch "The Man Who Wasn't There" and then the "making of" on the DVD. Roger Deakins talks a lot about how they achieved what is some of the classiest B+W footage I've seen, albeit on 35mm.
 
what u can do also for reference is keep ur VF on black and white and ur LCD on colour. I do that alot. so u can check the exposure and contrast and get some idea how it will look.
 
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