What’s the best way to make footage black and white? Thoughts on stylizing it?

[Craig Alan]

Other variables would include increasing the dynamic range in color correction. adding a filter to give it a sepia or other type of look and then applying only the amount that you like. There are also plug ins for black and white looks. You might want to play with subtle speed changes to emphasize a certain feel. You also don’t need to completely desaturate the image but leave a hint of color that might prove interesting or color correcting to a certain hue like giving it a warm or cool look. The right music track can help dull images as well. Faster cuts can help. Maybe if you post an image people might make some interesting suggestions.

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.

[Mark Suszko]

If you mean to make it have a “film noir look”, or “chiaroscuro”, plug-ins and color correction can only take you so far: that look is mostly based on the original scene lighting. you really need to have shot it that way in the first place.

[Noam Osband]

I don’t mean film noir. That would have been lovely though. I’m just thinking of anyway to make it interesting.

I’ll post some stills this afternoon to show what I mean.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Noam Osband]

So here are four screen grabs for my project. Two in color and two totally desaturated with Color Correction 3-Way. You can see the subject has a dark beard.

The thinking for black and white is just that the actually image is so bland, and making it black and white is a way to try and make the interview more interesting. The film has lots of color photos and b-roll so it will contrast.

Any thoughts on how to stylize this?

[Mark Suszko]

That’s probably not going to help if the material isn’t inherently interesting.

But once you make it B&W, you might add some step-frame to it and then drop a pen and ink or cartoon filter on it to give it the look of a drawn animation. That by itself isn’t much, but now that your background is just white, you can manipulate his head shot into new framings and fly type quotes of what he’s saying, or visuals.

If you’re going to manipulate the shot, make it for a particular *reason*; use the visual to add a subtext or emotional layer to the words. Just dropping random weird plugs and filters on an interview doesn’t make it more sexy, just annoying.

[Noam Osband]

Mark, thanks for the comment.

I think I wasn’t entirely clear. The interview itself is great and I’m optimistic about the project. I just want a way to make the interview shots more interesting. That’s why I’m going black and white. I don’t want to make very stylized i.e. animation. I want to make it black and white. I just wonder if there are any other effects that might add subtle texture to a black and white shot. thoughts?

thanks for all the comments. This thread has been great.

[Mark Suszko]

In that case, try some of the look plug-ins from crumplepop, like platinotype.

[Noam Osband]

It seems like they dont have plainotype any more for FCP7. Am I wrong? I went to their website and didnt see it

[Mark Suszko]

https://www.crumplepop.com/fcpx-plugin-platinotype/

on sale too

[Noam Osband]

The problem is that’s for FCPX. I’m running FCP7.