Shooting color stock for B&W film

[Andres Pardo aka Gral Treegan]

Hi!

Im collecting stock for a new project that will be B&W. Most of the stock I have is 16mm color. Im not a DP by the way.

When im start shooting B&W super8 I remember using a yellow filter to "add constrast".

 

Because the final result will be B&W I need to consider some camera filetring? To have better results when turning color to B&W.

Because of the low budget the stock will be transfered directly to HD Pro Res, no grading at that step.

 

Bests!

Andrés

[Will Montgomery]

Good Night and Good Luck was shot on Kodak Vision 2 500T and the color was later removed in post. They did this because there isn't a fast enough B&W stock (only Double X 200T at the time). I think it would have looked better on Double X but it certainly would have been grainier.

 

Since you'll desaturate in post, you'll have all the control you need at that point and I don't think filtering will make much difference.

[David Mullen ASC]

The color contrast filters (red, yellow, green, etc.) don't work in terms of adding contrast to certain colors when using color negative film for a final b&w image, you're better off actually capturing a well-saturated image so that you can brighten or darken select colors or color channels independently of the other colors in color-correction before removing the color. So if you capture a rich blue sky, for example, it's then easier to turn it a darker blue in post before turning off the color completely, for the effect of using an orange or red filter in real b&w photography.

[Andres Pardo aka Gral Treegan]

Thanx Will and David!

[Mark Kenfield]

I read a while ago about Deakin's work on The Man Who Wasn't There, they shot colour negative instead of B&W stock because the development of B&W stocks hadn't kept pace with colour stocks in terms of grain, speed and tonality; so shooting colour negative gave them more to work with in the DI.

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, in terms of grain, speed, and dynamic range, color negative stocks are now superior to the b&w negative stocks for motion picture work, which date back to the 1960's. On the other hand, many people shooting b&w want a retro look and there's nothing as authentic-looking as Double-X b&w negative...

 

B&W negative has a different anti-halation backing compared to the heavier rem-jet on color negative -- it's less effective, which is why you get that ring halation around car headlamps and candles with real b&w negative.

 

In terms of grain, modern 500T color negative is less grainy than Double-X, which is 200 ISO.

 

Deakins used the lower-contrast 320T stock on "The Man Who Wasn't There" because the conversion to b&w wasn't digital, it involved printing the negative onto hi-contrast sound film stock (developed to a lower gamma however), so they needed to start with a lower-contrast original.