Black and White video shoot

[Rick Wise]

Yes, you can mix any color lights for B&W. The only effect you’ll see is slight darkening or lightening of vivid colors; a red shirt lit with tungsten lights will look a lighter shade of gray than if lit with daylight-balanced units, but only slightly.

If you light well, compose well, and have compelling content, then B&W will work fine for YouTube or anywhere else. You will be helped by the release of Roma, which is in B&W.

Rick Wise
Cinematographer
MFA/BFA Lighting and Camera Instructor Academy of Art University
San Francisco Bay Area
https://www.RickWiseDP.com

[Mark Suszko]

If you’re really going to deliver in monochrome, lights are a secondary issue…(colorist joke). you should know that your colors for things like walls, clothing, props, etc. are all going to need tweaking. Because the contrast of standard colors is not the same in B&W. You can see old color behind-the-scenes stills in things like the B&W Flash Gordon serials, where he’s actually wearing bright Pepto Bismol pink, and even color amateur footage of I love Lucy, where they used lots of pink in unusual places, because it “reads” correctly in terms of value and saturation.

https://www.thewrap.com/watch-rare-i-love-lucy-behind-the-scenes-color-footage-video/

[Chris Pike]

Question: Is it better to shoot in black and white and shoot in color and covert post to black and white. ( I use a cannon 5d Mark iii)

[John Sharaf]

Think it out, in a color camera, what is color but the b&w picture plus saturation?
Turn say down to zero in camera or in post and you have b&w
Some cameras are available in b&w versions in very limited numbers (like Leica, ARRI, RED)
These cameras use ALL the pixels in b&w mode, so are SHARPER than dumbing down from RGB pixels

[Mark Suszko]

It’s still a color sensor, you’re just telling the intervening electronics to only record luma info. If you decide to do the B&W effect in-camera, consider taking along old-time yellow, red, orange and green filters to help control or bring out contrasts. This can also be done in post with color-correction curves and histograms.

If you shot in color and did the B&W in post, you preserve a lot more options, in case you change your mind or another purpose for the footage comes up. What I might do in this situation is bring along an external monitor and set the *monitor* for monochrome, to get a sense of how the shots will look later, and to test out the effects of the clothing and lighting color choices you make on the set, as well as what the color lens filters can do for you… but I’d shoot in color originally.

[Todd Terry]

There’s little to no practical reason not to shoot it in color.

Mark beat me to the point I was about to make… it’s like a haircut, you can always take more off, but you can’t put it back if you change your mind. Shooting color will give you the maximum flexibility. What if you later change your mind and the project just doesn’t work in monochrome? Or you find a super desaturated look works better, with just a hint of color? Or you want to repurpose the footage down the road for something else? Having a full color version is the way to go.

I can think of one scenario where shooting BW might be to my advantage. IF I was doing a project for a client, where the client wanted it in BW and I absolutely positively knew that BW was indeed the best and only choice, I might shoot BW if I was afraid that the client might change their mind about that way down the road and I had a personal vested interest in keeping the project with my BW vision. Then I might shoot BW just to “lock in” that decision. Which is a tiny bit evil, but I might do it anyway. Then again, I still probably wouldn’t.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Mark Suszko]

Evil or not, color or not: it gets billed the same.. 🙂