BLACK & WHITE TECHNIQUE
“I didn’t really see the point of shooting monochrome, since shooting in colour allows you to achieve the same look but with more flexibility,” he admits. While Papamichael shot Nebraska in colour, he admits that this wasn’t his say. “It took Paramount a while to finally agree to black & white, and they said we would also need a colour version. That ultimately meant we couldn’t shoot black & white film stock. ”I settled on ALEXA and tested various colourists before deciding to partner with Skip Kimball. I scanned the black & white that we did on the test and set the contrast and look to the film stock in the DI at Technicolor. I then told Skip to match the ALEXA to look as close as possible to the film.” Kimball told Papamichael that the more saturated your image is, the more those colours can be used. “I have more control if the elements in the frame are primary colours,” says Papamichael. “I didn’t really have very much time to do DI work, so during production we decided to work that way. There’s a white garage in the movie and I said to our production designer, ‘If you paint that red, I can make it any shade of grey we want.’ I also said to the wardrobe team, ‘If you give me red checkered shirts you can still have your patterns, but if it is either rich blue or red I can really control those for each scene.’ They didn’t really do it though because it didn’t look good in colour.” ELEVATING PERFORMANCE Skin tones are one of the most difficult elements to capture in black & white cinematography. DOPs need to rely on IT SENDS the imagination TO A WHOLE other level than colour ”
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DEFINITIONMAGS
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