b&w shots from my first feature

[David Mullen ASC]

I dug some shots up from my first feature made the year after film school with a fellow graduate directing, called "Riverbottom". It was like a feature-length student film shoot. We had donated and deferred gear, so we made a 35mm feature using Agfa film with about $40,00 cash I think. Deferred deal on Leonetti Ultracams. The opening was a b&w dream sequence where a homeless man who was formerly a boxer describes his childhood in a series of shots done in a boxing ring, where his boxing opponent (a cop in the real world story) plays everyone who ever abused him in his life. Very surreal. I wanted to shoot it on Double-X but since we had a deal on Agfa stock and their b&w negative at the time only came in 400' rolls, I shot this in color neg (Agfa XTS-400) with a 1/4 ProMist and optically duped it to b&w. Interestingly, this was a scene that was carefully storyboarded and shot all on the first day of the movie, and it's still the best scene in the movie.

 

The rest of the movie was in color.

 

From a DV tape copy I made.

 

 

 

 

 

Most of the lighting, besides the overhead practical, was a Chinese Lantern and some tweenies.

[Allen Achterberg]

whoa, I love the look. very inspirational. now all you gotta do is stream that with your new web space so we could all watch the first opening scene. I think I speak for everyone when i say this. no? fine <_<

[Michael Nash]

Very strong compositions in all those samples. Goes to show the value of storyboarding...

 

It's refreshing to see compositions that help tell the story, and not just the generic coverage we see all too often.

[Laurent Andrieux]

Wasn't the fact that you had color scenes as well making you choose color neg also ?

I was wondering iy you did light differently because it was color neg and not BW - thinking of contrast, basically - as I've always found that color neg printed BW show less contrast than BW neg stock... These stills look wonderfull about the contrast, I never would have guessed they were shot in color ! (or is it just the "look" of the stills again...?)

[David Mullen ASC]

or is it just the "look" of the stills again...?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yes, it's not an accurate representation of viewing a print. I wish I had more contrast; the Agfa stock with a 1/4 ProMist was not particularly contrasty, especially in a smoked room, so I was relying on the duping to b&w to add more contrast. If the contrast had ended up too low, I suppose I could have redone the b&w dupe to make it more contrasty (or duped it some more). I avoided fill light to keep the contrast in the lighting.

 

I still would have preferred shooting this in Double-X or pushed Plus-X. We had a deal on the Agfa stock and while I could have special-ordered their b&w negative stock at the time (Agfapan) I had no time to test it and it came only in 400' rolls and I had some long dialogue scenes where I wanted to start with 1000' rolls.