BLACK & WHITE TECHNIQUE
AN ODE TO THE FRENCH NEW WAVE In Nouvelle Vague, Linklater and Chambille wanted to recreate the look of Godard’s Breathless
© JEAN LOUIS FERNANDEZ
In recent years, however, there has been renewed interest in the style, with several Oscar nominated B&W films released in the last decade. Opting to shoot in monochrome usually comes down to several factors, and brings with it a set of unique technical challenges. CONTRAST CONTROL Colour filters transmit certain colours while absorbing others, and are an effective tool for controlling contrast in black & white images. As most scenes contain a range of colours, DOPs can use filters to enhance tonal separation and shape the visual impact of a shot. Black & white was always at the core of Nouvelle Vague , the latest project by David Chambille, AFC. While the majority of the film was created using digital camera technology, Chambille also shot on film using Ilford HP5, Kodak 5222 stock and the ARRI 2C camera. (This was mostly during the test period, and
during the shoot it was used for grade references rather than actual footage.) “Richard Linklater’s main concern was to make a movie that could have been shot during that period,” says Chambille. “We really wanted to embrace the kind of stock and lenses they had at the time and the texture of that moment.” Chambille was pleased when the director asked him how well he knew that era and what his ideas were to achieve the look of the film. “I was happy because shooting in black & white would allow me to dispense with the gels and simplify the process, but also because I personally love that era and know a great deal about its context – the lives of those directors, the economic and technical constraints and the style and aesthetics of the time. I was eager to share my passion for the cinematography of that period with Richard, and I had a lot of ideas about how to help him achieve that look.”
Chambille used colours on-set and in wardrobe to control tonalities. “We tried to mimic exact scenes from Breathless ,” he says. “It wasn’t easy to find the same stuff, so we had to use colours to easily adjust in black & white and get the exact right tonality. We had a blue skirt, green curtains and a red desk. We adjusted the tonality using colour choices and filters. Sometimes, we used a red filter to increase overall contrast. For exteriors, a green filter brightened the scene.” SCULPTING WITH LIGHT Papamichael argues that maintaining consistency is easier when shooting in monochrome because the colour temperature changes throughout the day. On Nebraska , he worked with a LUT. “I was operating off my monitor and the lighting was set to the black & white contrast level I intended for the final print,” he says. “I found it helpful working without the colour separation and
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