how to make one thing black and white?

[Nikolas Bäurle]

Bret, Ihad to use slice X to sharpen the subject and blur the background for one of the clips of a youtube fashion blog I’m shooting for a German Soap actress. One of the few times I’ve misfocused. She actually moves her arms alot. Slice X does get lost, but it still worked well, blurring the shape helps. Its not perfect but you do need to look closely to see imperfections. Her fans won’t notice. When it goes online I’ll post the link and see what people think.

But even Mocha needs some manual re-adjusting. I actually got a better result using the regular After FX tracker for a 4 point track a few months ago, and a Videocopilot fire under skin tutorial i was doing worked perfectly for one clip I used but got very lost on another clip. Of course, having limited Mocha experince.

“Always look on the bright side of life” – Monty Python

[Craig Alan]

Just in case you can’t solve this one technically-

You might consider a compromise of sorts depending on your intent/concept.

You could easily switch to b/w in any POV shot on the protagonist or from the protagonist or any variation of this like CUs of the protagonists or certain scenes etc.

Don’t know if it serves your needs but it would be really simple as opposed to really hard.

You could also dupe each clip, attach dupe as a connected clip to original and then crop/trim the section you want in B/W so that the combo above and below has his portion in B/W and the rest of the shot in color. This is not just him but the portion of the shot with him.

Or you could do this and have him dressed in b/w and just color correct the mid tones (skin tones) so that he appears colorless. That would leave most of the b.g. in color but he would appear b/w. You could have his hair dyed black or gray. You can also help this process with lighting and shooting him for a soft look with heavy contrast in the b.g.

This can be keyframed as well. The hard part will be perfect key framing within FC to follow his movement.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Maisie Payne]

thanks everyone. I decided to use slice x and its looking good! however please could someone help me with key framing. Here is a video i found which is similar to the effect i want to create https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZtWhrDlM48 so using slice x please could someone tell me how id fade from a colour to black and white? or black and white to colour? obviously as I’m using slice x its just a specific thing fading out like in this video, not the whole shot. thanks again

[Robin S. kurz]

What they did in the video is something entirely different. And they clearly knew in advance what they were going for, how to to did and shot accordingly. They just used simple monochrome colors that are easy to pull a color matte from. So unless your subject is but one color, there’s no comparison. But they will simply have cross-faded from the color matted version to the black and white version. No rocket science or key framing needed.

[Maisie Payne]

okay, is it possible with something thats not all one colour? although mine mostly will be fading from something that is one colour to b&w