Filtering color film for B&W movie

[Phillip Mosness]

Hello,

Not sure if this has been covered before, but when shooting, let's say Vision 500T for a B&W movie such as The Artist, would yellow filters still have the same effect that it would with B&W film?

Thanks,

Phillip

[David Mullen ASC]

No, you're better off getting rich colors so you can adjust the RGB levels individually in post to create the effect of color filters on b&w film.

[Alex Birrell]

I am also going to be shooting on colour 35mm in January and then finishing in black and white.

 

I was wondering if there would be any noticeable change in the image by lighting on set with light through coloured gels. For example, lighting an actor with a red gel to make them stand out against blue by eventually seemed a lot darker etc.

 

Does anyone have any experience of this?

[David Mullen ASC]

Waste of gel when lighting -- you can control contrast simply by controlling light levels of foreground vs. background, key vs. fill, etc.

 

Lighting an actor with red gel and a background with blue gel would just render more or less as even lighting if the levels are the same, unless you also used a red or blue filter on the camera, but now you are really wasting your time, losing light both with gels and with filters when all you want is to make the foreground stand out. The only time it makes sense is when doing a trick like fading from red to blue lighting, or the opposite, to reveal or hide red or blue make-up on the actor, as one version of "Jeckel and Hyde" did, but even then, you'd really have to shoot on panchromatic b&w film in the first place.

[Mark Dunn]

If you think about it you'd just get a yellow tint because the film can record the colours. B/W film can't, so the yellow filter just has the effect of darkening the complementary colour, namely green, and blue to some extent, but not as much as with a red filter, which is what you'd use to darken a blue sky. Yellowish tones would be lightened.

Have a look at one of your basic photography books.