Here's one for ya!

S

Shauno

Active member
Hello Gang,

I'm looking towards my next project and I was wondering if it was possible to shoot a scene where just one character in the scene is black and white?

The way I can think of doing it is to mask out (is that the right word), and decolour the person in AE.

The only other way I can think of doing it is through makeup.

Can anyone better me on that with a suggestion?
 
What you're describing is one good method. Another is, if the scene allows for it, compositing with a chroma key. That might only be for some shots.
 
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Ok, so what about having the black and white piece of footage at high framerates whilst having the colour footage at normal speed?
 
TheDingo said:
I think it would be easier and maybe more interesting to pull this off as a practical effect.
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You mean with Makeup and such? If you do, I agree, would prefer to do it in camera.

But then, I'm stumped for speeding it up.

Need to make the character look like an old Black and White character..
 
nothing said:
Way easier to do in post than in camera. Compositing is your friend.
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You think? I don't know you know... I mean, you are surely talking about Rotobrushing each frame and desturating the character frame by frame. But could this same process double up to make the character move at a higher frame rate?

This is the crux of the problem, as I see it. They in essence themselves, two processes, how I perform them is in itself, the problem.
 
Rotobrush in After Effects CS5.5 will do the B&W effect in pretty fast manner. Not sure about the frame rate stuff.
 
If you want two different speeds you would have to have two different sources composited together. You can use a green/blue/black screen for one, or you could lock the camera down and make sure it never moves for the second take. What makes it hard is the compressed relatively low quality of a lot of current cameras, and the lighting. Getting the lighting to match two takes, especially if they are shot in different locations is very hard. Compound that with upping the light needed when you do overcranking.

Still, they do this stuff every day. Do tests.
 
Just my 2 cents, but this is how I've done something similar (the high shutter speed and different color grading).

Shoot your shot without the desaturated subject.

Bring in your portable green screen and get it behind your talent in whatever manner you need to and shoot the shot with them.

Even if their feet or some part of their body goes off of the green screen, you're talking about a lot less work to rotoscope that one part.

This is the super simplified version. If you're speeding up the footage and or having the desaturated talent interact with people in the scene, you're going to have to very carefully set up the shot and time it so that your talent can interact with the other talent. But this way you don't have to worry as much about lighting. Just make sure that you're not blocking off the lighting from behind with the green screen, and your lighting is locked down from your previous shot, and your talent will look like they belong in the scene. Though, as I type that, I guess you are going black and white on that actor, so lighting matching isn't nearly as important.
 
It might be possible with different types of lighting.

I was shooting a high-school concert that took place on the floor of a gymnasium. The gym had sodium-vapor or some other horrendous lighting instruments. But for the concert they had additional incandescent lighting that lit just the orchestra. The video had the appearance that the musicians were in color and everything else was monochrome.

You might be able to do just the opposite, with the background lit conventionally and the character lit with some form of pressurized lights.

Jim
 
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