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Black and White Rules! (?)


Guest David Lawrence

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Guest David Lawrence

I would be interested to hear other's views on this, almost all my favorite movies are b/w, Dead Man, Stranger than Fiction, Dead Reckoning, Ball of Fire, Shanghai Express, All About Eve, Sweet Smell of Success, Grand Hotel, The Man Who Wasn't There, Dr Strangelove, Paths of Glory, Touch of Evil, Kiss me Deadly, Double Indemnity, Petrified Forest, The Women, Im Lauf der Zeit, Big Sleep, Only Angels Have Wings, As You Desire Me, Brief Encounter, Nosferatu, Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Roman Holiday, I could go on and on....

 

I also love many color movies for many reasons and from many eras, but the majority of the ones that resonate with my filmic sense are black and white masterpieces, the glow of the silver screen, the matchless tonality of skin, the magic of cinema for me is there, just think Shanghai Express, Shanghai Lilli surrounded by feathers, her cigarette smoke wafting up, pale against the background, Marlene's face trancendently illuminated against the black feathers...

 

David Lawrence

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I like it for the reason most people that come from still photography like it. It strips the image down to its essence of light and dark values. Sometimes that also helps the emotional meaning of composition and subject become clear.

 

However, I can't say I prefer it over color, because color gives you the additional demension of blue and yellow (cool and warm) which are so important at relating the tone and mood of a picture. It's like (is) having two more demensions of values to play with.

 

Some of my favorite black and white peices are; "Wings of Desire" "Schindler's List" and "Jules et Jim"

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Guest David Lawrence
I like it for the reason most people that come from still photography like it.  It strips the image down to its essence of light and dark values.  Sometimes that also helps the emotional meaning of composition and subject become clear.

 

However, I can't say I prefer it over color, because color gives you the additional demension of blue and yellow (cool and warm) which are so important at relating the tone and mood of a picture.  It's like (is) having two more demensions of values to play with.

 

Some of my favorite black and white peices are; "Wings of Desire" "Schindler's List" and "Jules et Jim"

 

Interesting you mention wings of desire, as when Solveig Dommartin ignites something in Bruno Ganz, the film changes from b/w to color, and in schindler's list, the little girl with the 'red' coat and the candle flames are in color...

 

Blue=cool=emotional cue?

Yellow/gold=warm=emotional cue?

 

I agree these color casts have a deep-seated influence on the viewer, and I recognise their position in the filmic laguage, but I personally love the challenge of cueing the viewer to the 'mood' with the talent, remember in b/w it is often left to the composer to drive the mood via the score.

 

It's funny, how I can be transported by delight at watching 'Dead Man' and yet many find it boring and 'hey, there's no color!' but it rewards involvement on the part of the viewer, pitching it's message/story/feel as if you were a personal friend of jj, and that's a really nice thing to do.

 

Perhaps I delve tooooo deeply into movies looking for the 'raison' of the director, this analysis leads me to question the 'great' ss for his directorial intent in Schindler's list, and yet experience rapture at something as brutal as Lilya 4ever and preach it's use in film schools!

 

must be some of that 'passion' showing :)

 

David Lawrence

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B+W is an option or an effect, real life is in colour so why make films in black and white. This post reminds me of people who take their holiday photos in black and white because they think they look 'arty'. dont get me wrong i like B+W films and i've shot commercials in B+W, but using B+W now (when we have the option to shoot colour) is just like using any other colour effect- sepia, desaturation etc.

 

Keith

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Maybe you don't, David, but I refuse to go anywhere without my personal orchestra.

 

LMAO! :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

Remember the ending of Godard's Every Man For Himself, when the score kicks in and the camera slowly starts panning left revealing a full orchestra in an alley way!

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Because movies aren't real life.  We don't have editing and background music scores in real life either.

 

Damn this weed is strong i could have sworn thats the London philamonic in my garden. My point was that in my opinion black and white is only a treatent (as it is no longer a necesity) so whereas you look back to old black and white movies you are often apreciating thier look which was not an absolute choice by the filmmakers. If we now choose to use B+W that is what we are dooing. Then again one of the great things about B+W is that to the untrained eye it creates an impression, its different to what joe public shoots with thier dv cameras or snaps so it seems stylish. Off the top of my head La Haine would have not seemed so stylish and hip if it had been printed in colour (as it was shot).

 

Keith

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Guest David Lawrence
Because movies aren't real life.  We don't have editing and background music scores in real life either.

 

You know what I REALLY want in real life is an excellent screenplay!

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I love black & white -- color can be overly "emotional". Can you imagine "Dr. Strangelove" being as bleakly funny in color? Trouble is that when movies were made in both b&w and color, you could choose whatever best suited the story.

 

Now b&w is so rare that anytime you make a feature in it, it's a BIG STATEMENT -- it's hard to not seem arty, even if you're just using it for the visual effect it creates, the graphic nature. Although personally, even with a recent b&w film like "The Man Who Wasn't There" you get five minutes into the movie and you just watch the movie and stop thinking "hey, this isn't in color!"

 

I can't imagine "Elephant Man" in color either. Lynch was researching what colors Merrick's skin had and he basically gave up after awhile, figuring that it could be unpleasant and distracting to deal with the skin color issue on film -- plus b&w was so much more fitting for that Victorian setting.

 

I just saw Sam Fuller's "Forty Guns" at the Aero Theater, 35mm b&w CinemaScope on the big screen -- that was a treat!

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I just saw Sam Fuller's "Forty Guns" at the Aero Theater, 35mm b&w CinemaScope on the big screen -- that was a treat!

 

I'm envious! I've been trying to see that film for awhile, I'm a big fan of Fuller and B&W Scope films. I keep hoping someone will put it out on DVD soon.

 

And speaking of B&W Scope films on DVD, Criterion has a Japanese samurai film called "Sword of Doom" coming out soon, has anybody seen it? It seems like there were more Japanese films from the 60's that were done anamorphic and B&W than in the U.S., which is interesting. They also have such a strong graphic quality, I'm thinking of "Branded To Kill", "Onibaba", "High and Low" or any of Kurosawa's samurai films from that decade. I'm realizing also that most of my exposure to these films has come through Criterion DVD's.

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I just saw Sam Fuller's "Forty Guns" at the Aero Theater, 35mm b&w CinemaScope on the big screen -- that was a treat!

 

Well I'm jealous !

 

Here's an interesting experiment: watch a color film (eposdic TV show, whatever) on TV and - slowly - turn down the chroma (color) - see how much information you actually find yourself missing. During a period I was shooting a lot of B&W I would do this with "Miami Vice" - a show that was ostensibly half about the color, visually - and I'd find the color really wasn't as important as I might have thought.

 

Although B&W is some kind of accident of technological history, it's hard not to speculate that it does metaphor (bad grammar !) some aspect of our system of seeing.

 

Am I the only one who is much more forgiving of unmotivated sources in B&W than in color ? ... I'm not even quite sure WHY I am...

 

-Sam

 

p.s. A lot of my exposure to the classic films now put out on DVD by Criterion came from 35mm prints distributed by Janus - who were the parents of the Criterion owners I think.

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I'm very much wanting to work with black and white over colour these days, although I have been seeing some colour photographs in recent days that are so incredibly controlled in their palette, as to act on me in somewhat the same way that b/w does. In any case, in terms of film and video as art forms and not mere would-be imitations of reality, I think it's very important to have worked exclusively in b/w for a period. It can only improve and inform your understanding of colour.

 

I've been watching many many silent era films in the last month or so. B/W, tinted and/or not. Some are just out to tell the story, seemingly without overt regard to the monochrome nature of the medium, some seem to use it brilliantly (Expressionism, of course, of course). I work mostly in DV right now, but am experimenting to make the very most of it as a black and white medium.

 

some favorite black and white films:

 

Mad Love: the films of Evgenii Bauer (1913-1916?)

The Fall Of The House Of Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928)

Institute Benjamenta (The Brothers Quay)

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto)

Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky)

Raging Bull (Martin Scorcese)

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I love black and white as well and would love to shoot a film on it. I understand that it, as all other cinematic effects, can be misused or used as a copout sometimes (i.e. making video look like film). Unfortunately, the pressures of the marketplace don't allow filmmakers to use black and white even when it is totally appropriate. Furthermore, an added benefit was that black and white USED to be considerably cheaper to shoot (you could pick up short ends of 35mm B&W for under a nickel a foot even ten years ago).

 

- G.

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Black and white is also a cheaper way of creating a period look. I saw "Color of a Brisk and Leaping Day", a low-budget b&w movie set in the 1940's and they were able to incorporate vintage stock footage fairly successfully into the movie, driving shots of Washington D.C., Los Angeles, etc. And the b&w look was instantly evocative of the period.

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If you want to see a nicely shot b&w movie, put on 'Entrapment' lit by Phil Meheux and tune out the color on your tv set. This film is lit like a b&w movie, with lots of separation and it just looks so much nicer in b&w.

 

The same goes for 'L'Humanité' which is a film that bothered me when I started watching it in color. It is obvious that they didn't care about colors at all, making evrything look very bland. But as soon as you make it b&w and crank up the contrast a bit it looks very nice. Not what the filmmakers intended, I know, but it works.

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they were able to incorporate vintage stock footage fairly successfully into the movie, driving shots of Washington D.C., Los Angeles, etc.  And the b&w look was instantly evocative of the period.

 

The Russian miniseries "17 Moments of Spring", which was filmed in 1973, used the same method with great success. It was a story that took place in the last days of World War II, about a Russian double agent who was in the Gestapo, in reality working for the Soviets. They cut in a lot of interesting stock footage, including footage of the major Nazi's and combat footage, to great effect.

 

- G.

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