Is there any way to decrease a stock's latitude?

[Christian Janss]

I'll be shooting inside a short pedestrian tunnel and it needs to look black on the inside leading out to blown out light outside. Kind of like a near death experience of entering the "light".

 

I'm planning to shade as much light out of one end of the tunnel, to keep the inside as dark as possible, and shoot the other direction where the sunlight will spill in.

 

I'd like to do something that will decrease the latitude of Kodak's 250D or 50D (this will be on 16mm) so the light will really blow out and the darks will stay dark. Does anyone know any tricks that will do that?

 

Thanks folks-

Christian Janss

[David Mullen ASC]

I wish people, when asking these sorts of questions, would tell us if this is for print or for scanning/telecine work -- it makes a major difference in how we answer the question.

[Daniel Madsen]

how about photochemically to start.

[Phil Rhodes]

Bleach bypass will increase contrast - either crushing blacks or clipping whites depending on whether you do it to an interpositive or a negative element, respectively. Push processing will also make blacks denser. Both techniques increase apparent grain, perhaps a lot, but then any technique to increase contrast will make grain more apparent. You can use a polariser for what can be a pronounced increase in contrast, but only on exactly the right subject. Otherwise, you can't really decrease dynamic range - you can choose to shoot a stock, such as reversal, which has inherently high contrast, or you can shoot high contrast subjects, particularly under sunlight, or with little or no fill, and try to control your production design to the effect you want.

 

I find questions like this are best answered with strong encouragement to work from production design backwards - you can only shoot what's in front of the lens. The reason Alien Resurrection looked great was down principally to the fact that it was shot entirely on sets constructed, painted and dressed for the express purpose. The cinematography, not to knock anybody, can only do so much.

 

Phil