Jonathan Zielske

Are you sure that you are not just seeing a faded print, Print stock sin that era were not all that stable. Mind you most of them fade to Pink.

it was part of Melville's distinctive visual style. i am uncertain as to how one might recreate that dull, washed-out but still contrasty look without color timing in the processing stage or the telecine stage. i can't imagine that his films weren't graded to look the way that they do.

here is a good representation of the look, as well as a botched transfer by criterion: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdcompare2/cerclerouge/cerclerouge3.html

Evan, here's my $0.02:

 

- No matter what film stock you use, b&w in many lighting situations requires special lighting technique. You cannot depend on different colour shadings to separate elements from each other.

 

- There is no shortcut to "classic black & white" because there are many different styles. Look at some DVDs - look at A BOUT DE SOUFFLE, THE HILL, THE HUSTLER, SHANGHAI EXPRESS, MANHATTAN - totally different stylistic approaches. What do you intend to do?

 

- Most b&w stocks are available in 35mm, so get a still camera and shoot some setups like you would when shooting the movie. Print or scan your negatives, anything you can do in Photoshop can be done later with digital film tools.

 

- Do the same with color neg and desaturate it digitally. Do you see a difference, and if so, which one do you prefer?

 

- Two reasons for shooting b&w movies in colour used to be the lack of decent b&w lab work in many locations and the finer grain structure of high speed color stock compared to - as Karl said before - some very old b&w emulsions. Do you have a lab that does quality b&w work or not? If not, color negative may be the better way to go.

 

Filmotec stocks

 

From my personal experience, I recommend Filmotec-Orwo's b/w negative stocks, both the EI 100/21 and the EI 400/27 types give excellent results. I definitely prefer the Orwo to Eastman's b&w stocks. There used to be some problems with certain Arricams (do a forum search), but I heard this was fixed. I never had any problem running Orwo through Konvas, Debrie and Arri 2C cameras.

 

Do some tests and decide what you like best. To find out more about classic b&w lighting techniques, read PROFESSIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHY by Charles G. Clarke and PAINTING WITH LIGHT by John Alton, both classic texts available as reprints.

I was having some issues with my account. Anyway, Orwo BW film is intriguing, but can you go into detail about the purchasing/processing...process? Are there any examples of this film around the net?