Black & White music video..

[Richard Crothers]

Hey, any help on this would be great. i'm preparing to shoot a music video with the sony z1. i'm thinking i'm goin to shoot in B&W using 50i then de-inter in post. i'm lookin for that b&w film look. (if u know what i mean) can anyone recommend different settings or am i pretty much there.

 

Thanks for your time..

[Matt Workman]

Don't actually shoot in B&W in camera. Do that in post, you have much more control getting the contrast you want by adjusting the color channels. Unless you are using a lot of in camera filters like red/yellow etc. Then it may be helpful to actually shoot in B&W in camera.

 

50i sounds good, the cine-frame mode on that camera is weird. What software are you using?

 

If you are looking for a "dirty film effect" I suggest Magic Bullet or Nattress. They both have nice color correction suites also. If you shoot it with the mind set that you are giong to use those plug-ins don't over expose too much. You want a low contrast "digi neg" to start with or you can't push it very much.

 

2cents.

 

Matt

[Richard Crothers]

wow! rock n roll! thank you...

 

i'm usin fcp.. dont have any plug-ins for it at all. i plan to get magic bullet, seems to be the best program for what i want to do.

 

thanks for the quick reply, rik

[Thomas Tamura]

You can set the color channels in After Effects -- put a color channel filter on the footage then set each channel to the same color. Red, green, or blue all yield different results, but red usually works the best. It really depends how much of each color is in the clip. You'll get much better results then de-saturating.

[Richard Crothers]

unreal! i just tried it out usin the de-sat and i was thinkin id rather stick with shootin in B&W. i'll check that out tomorrow! thanks for more great advice.

 

cheers guys, Rik.

[Matt Sandstrom]

you can use my world famous incredible super duper "black and white" plugin to mix the channels whichever way you want.

 

http://www.mattias.nu/plugins/

 

there's possibly one reason to shoot black and white though, and that is compression. having no color will leave 50% more bits for the luma channel. i haven't tested what difference that makes but if you use a filter on the camera it will also be encoded directly to luma assuming that the in-camera black and white function operates in 4:4:4, which could also mean a slight advantage. just test all options and i'm sure you'll figure it out.

 

/matt

[Richard Crothers]

more great help! thank you all.. i dont have after effects though. iv tried a few different methods. i seemt o be getting the best results from shooting b&w.. my tests arent over yet. i'm goin' to get that plug in and give that a go. thanks again for your help.

 

Rik