How do you find a DP - with special requirements?

[j1clark@ucsd.edu]

Hire me...

www.[URL="http://www.ryanpatrickohara.com/download/blackwhiteI.pdf"]ryanpatrickohara[/URL].com/download/blackwhiteI.pdf

www.[URL="http://www.ryanpatrickohara.com/download/blackandwhitep2.pdf"]ryanpatrickohara[/URL].com/download/blackandwhitep2.pdf

In your 'part 2' you refer to a response letter form Kodak, wherein it was claimed that their 'customers' had 'asked for 'classic' stock'... this reminds me of when I was young, and very active in photography, printing my own B&W, and chose Ilford or Agfa paper over anything 'Kodak', because they had this ugly 'brownish' cast, as well as a certain 'flatness' when compared to the Ilford or Agfa... the reason given... 'customers had indicated they preferred the brown/flat paper'... I have no idea who their customers were, but amongst the my group, and any other photographer who printed their own B&W... Kodak was not a choice at all...

For the Wife's wedding biz we always used Real(tm) B&W film and papers, and probably from about 1995 on, used Fuji Neopan 400 (still not movie... unfortunately...) for negatives... We had tried the 'shoot color, desaturate... with really bad results', and even tried an Ilford B&W (well really more like a 'monochrome'...) emulsion that used C-41 processing, with similarly 'less than results'... there just wasn't a effective substitute for shooting B&W on B&W...

These days in digital, I'd probably go to the effort to understand how use 'color mixer' type tools in After Effects (which I use for 'B&W', but see if I could match up color response and contrast curves 'better').

That all said... the output is, at least for me... going to always be some form of computer display, and so, there the problem becomes how 'dark/light' and how 'neutral' the viewer display is for 'B&W'...

 

[David G. Smith]

Hey guys, I'm serious, I will keep folks on this board in mind . Right now, I'm trying to anticipate all problems as I'm building up my budget, which is an interesting exercise... every time I think "OK, this is the budget!" I find some new expense and need to grow it again, lol.

Oh boy, tell me about it. That is the very tough part about "Micro-budget" or "No budget" filmmaking budgeting. There is tipping point/quantum leap amount where you go from paying for "Nothing" to paying for "Everything". The budget triples at that point and it is still too little to pull the project off.

 

[stefancolson]

Hire me...

www.ryanpatrickohara.com/download/blackwhiteI.pdf

www.ryanpatrickohara.com/download/blackandwhitep2.pdf

No, hire me!

In all seriousness, while I doubt there are many younger DPs out there with significant amounts of B&W experience, someone with a good grasp of different lighting styles who's willing to do their homework and some tests can do it. You just need someone who will commit to researching and practicing on their own time to a point of being able to pull of the desired result. I'm sure there are many DPs in LA who can do what you're looking for a rate you can afford, it just means that it'll take more work to separate the good candidates from the background noise than if you had a much larger budget.

 

[Gary Huff]

Shameless.