Shooting for B&W

claxius

claxius

Active member
Hello. I am shooting a film-noir/mystery project and know that it will be black and white. And from what I've been told is that I should shoot it color (it'll be shot with standard 24p minidv) and then b&w it in post.

I was wondering if the scenes and especially the day for night scenes I will shoot need to be lit any differently. In other words, will the lighting look different, be better/worse, will I need to compensate if I shoot color and switch it to b&w in post.

Any opinions/suggestions/thoughts?

Thank you

Mark
 
Your light levels will not change. Shooting color or b&w will not change exposure.

However take advantage of your black and white film/movie. Back in the old Hollywood days when all films were shot black and white, directors and directors of photography would often take advantage of colors and how they contrast or compliment each other. Although we (the audience) cannot see color in black and white, we can see their shade values. Remember when you were in school and they taught you complimentary colors? Well color theory goes a long way.

For instance Red and green stick out from each other. They tend to just 'pop'. So lets say you want your lead actress to really stick out from everyone else in the diner or street scene. If she is in a crowd dress everyone in bright red, and have her in green. She will now 'Pop' out of the crowd.

I heard an old funny story which I am about to horribly try to remember, about an old Hollywood war movie where the German uniforms were bright yellow and purple. It looked ridiculous on set (in color) but on the black and white film, the colors' shades just went well together because of how the react to each other.

Here are some websites on color theory. By choosing colors you can hide elements, show elements, contrast, and all sorts of great production design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_theory
http://www.colormatters.com/designart.html
http://www.colormatters.com/colortheory.html

Another method is using color filters. These filters (depending on the color) will bring forward certain colors and contrasts. Check out this website to see what I mean:
http://www.schneiderkreuznach.com/tipps/sw_fotografie_e.htm

By taking advantage of colors you can get contrasts, selective contrast and lots of creative options you would not normally have when having to shoot color film/video.
 
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That's a great post by Prodigy, and I couldn't agree more.

A few more things you can do: First, the obvious, run a lot of tests. Noir, real noir, had a lot of deep blacks and bright whites, with not many grays. That doesn't mean to have nothing but 5k key lights on your set, obviously.

Also, you may be able to have a small TV on set that operates as a field monitor, and on the TV turn the color all the way down to see the picture in B&W to give you a good feel for what you're shooting.

Of course, if you have the time you can flip back and forth between the settings you are going to use while shooting, and the B&W feature in camera.

Finally, while Progidy's link to Schneider's info on filters is invaluable, it doesn't always apply to video the way it does to film. For example, if you put a deep red filter on a film camera, your sky will go completely black in your neg/print, but that same
red filter may be so thick that it turns your entire picture too mushy. Even a yellow filter tends to cut too much contrast out of your shot.
 
Yeah and also your lights don't have to match.

I know it was a guerilla type movie but "Clerks" was shot in Black and White initially because they figured they could get away with the lights not matching correctly, and that enabled them to do some tricks with it.

Also if you B/W it in post and you use any of the Adobe products used the "Channel Mixer" to edit the B/W rather than just desaturating or putting it into greyscale. Channel Mixer gives you more options.
 
Using the Channel Mixer is indeed going to give you a lot more control. Way more. But it may also give you surprising results. You definitely would not get what you see on a monitor with the color turned down, or your B&W setting on your camera. However, if you do a lot of testing, messing with the Channel Mixer in your tests could give you some very pleasing results you would have never suspected, or been able to get otherwise.
 
That is a great post prodigy, but the problem is DV and HD dont work the same way as film. ESPECIALLY in DV. you cant go throwing colored lghtaround with DV., you will wind up with Gnarly chroma artifacting. IF i were you i would shoot with chroma -7 and norm gamma, in CinelikeD get as much luma information on the tape as posible while minimising chroma noise.
 
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