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Question on Black and White WITH one object in col


William Blesch

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Hi there peoples,

 

I am shooting a short film using High Def. I am wondering if this is an issue to be resolved during production or during Post, with some sort of software....

 

I would like certain scenes to be completely balck and white (And or the color of old "western" photographs. I can't remember the term for that type of photo. But with ONE object such as a hat, or coat, etc. being in color. (Think the scene in "Schindler's List" with the little girl's coat.)

 

Any advice?

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one way is called Devinci Color Corrections. www.filmlook.com has a great demo dvd with samples of how this is done.

 

I guess you shoot it color, then the system automatically turns the entire from to B&W, and then you just somehow "Choose" objects to bring the color back in them.

 

I dont know how this is done, but check out www.filmlook.com and the devinci official site @ http://www.davsys.com/2kplus.htm

 

Hope this helps.

 

P.S) You resolve it in post.

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There are several approaches, depending on the shot or shots you need to have done like this.

 

1 - Don't overlook art direction: actually have everything black and white - clothes, face make-up, walls, tables etc. May be easy or too hard.

 

2 - in your HD post production, you can isolate the object (hat, coat, tomato, car, whatever, and increase the saturation of that, while desaturating the rest of the frame. But isolating that object isn't easy. Power Windows just form rough shapes - round or square - with a soft edge. You need to trace round the outline of the object - the old film term for this is "rotoscoping" - and it is very timeconsuming.

 

If you have seen the film "Hero", look at the last fight scene, in the palace. The green silk curtains were rotoscoped as their colour needed to be enhanced separately from the rest of the shot. The 7 1/2 minutes of this scene took 3 months work in post - that's at film res, so you might be able to work a little quicker (and get away with more) in HD, and your scene might have an easier object to trace than blowing, flowing silk curtains.

 

3 - putting more of the work into production to make post easier, you could consider blue or green screen work, shooting the single object separately. Easy if it's (say) a car or a piece of furniture, not so good if it's a coat being worn by a character.

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If you can avoid the color anywhere else in the frame, a good idea would be to make that one colored object out of greenscreen material so you can create a chroma key and color-correct it separately (turn it from green to some other color) and pull the color out completely from the surrounding area. You'd need a color-corrector that could pull keys.

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