Black & White....

I

indigo

Well-known member
I`m trying to get a decent black and white look out of some HVX footage but every thing that I`ve tried just gives me a flat `grey`. I`m NOT looking for Just back and white but blacks that go from true black through the shades of grey to true white.
Any advice greatly appreciated!

Indy... In Tokyo, Japan
 
In MB, there is one of the presets called BW Crunch I think? I've used that often when going for a look similar to "Sin City".

Or, use some form of B&W/desaturation filter and adjust the contrast as needed.
 
When I've shot B&W film, Still Camera, I always got better results by being on the over-exposed side rather then under-exposed side.

Not an expert with B&W, (or anything for that matter), but I'd suggest make sure you are fully exposing the image when shooting to get a better natural contrast range. Then adjust in post to your liking.
 
I hate to be the one to deliver possibly bad news, but did you light for black and white?

A lot of people shoot color not realizing that if they plan on converting to B&W in post, certain objects may turn into mass shades of gray with NO separation. The problem is the differnt colors share the same luminance values. For example, a red apple in front of a green box. In color, its fine, no need to worry about separation, but pull that color away... and you might find yourself with a black box and no apple in sight! Good color to B&W conversion depends on good lighting, lighting that pays attention to how much light objects in the scene actually bounce back to the camera.

When shooting for a black and white effect, always use a spot meter to check the scene contrast.

As for post, if its really milky, just use curves to remap the luminance values, thats usually good enough, if you want better control, use RGB curves along with master (meaning the curve controls all channels at once) curves to create deeper blacks, brighter highlights and more separation in your mid tones.

Never shoot overexposed either. If you wanna blow stuff out, do it in post, much more controlled.

Hope that helps!:grin:
 
One good tip I heard was that you should usually apply a filter in post to get black and white in digital.

For the DI in... geez I think it was good night and good luck (YES IT WAS! I just checked); they filmed it in color (easier to light, etc. I dunno, not a film guy here) Scanned it in, and found that it was better to filter it, rather than pull the color.

Most people, to get black and white, color correct, and desaturate to get it colorless. With a filter, you preserve the detail that the color information retains, but still get it black and white.

So, it'll depend on your post process, but that's the idea, and I remember doing a little think in AE based on this and from the limited work I did and remember it did make a difference.
 
Well one thing about 'Good Night and Good Luck' was that the sets were painted in black and white so it would be easier to get what they wanted.

But it definately has to be lit in a certain way to get a good effect. A monitor with only the "green" cable of the componant in will give you a good approximation. It will definately look a little strang in color, especially if you want a lot of contrast.
 
I forgot to mention this, if you shoot in color and do not light for B&W, you can always experiment with removing different channels and desaturating everything (ie, desat, then pull out the red, green, or blue channel, or maybe remove two at the same time). Experiement with it. Keep in mind, if you want a real "True" black and white, you need to eliminate the red channel and keep just the green and blue.

Why?

Traditional (I suppose you could say normal...) black and white film is only sensitive to green and blue light. Ever wonder why dark rooms have red light bulbs? Now you know!:thumbsup:

Hope that helps!
 
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I recently shot a trippy music video with the HVX in b/w...I had a monitor on set that I could pull all the color out of to light accordingly(simply a CRT with chroma balance). Then in post we did a color correction in FCP but just left a little green in, I thought it worked well:

http://www.adsantell.com/aj.mov
 
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