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There’s a stigma surrounding black and white films.
Many audience members today attribute a lack of colour in a movie with being pretentious,
inflated and sometimes even visually
boring - reserved strictly for film students, hipsters or cinema nerds.
I don’t think that has to be the case.
For that reason, in this video I’ll look at some contemporary films shot in black and white
with the hope to uncover some of the reasons that the directors and
DPs advocated for deciding to shoot in monochrome.
To set the stage I’ll go over a brief history of colour photography in cinema,
break down the justifications for shooting black and white from four modern movie
examples and uncover why I feel black and white is still a valid contemporary format.
Early 35mm gauge motion picture film stock
could only record monochromatic colour based on the luminance of what was captured.
This meant that shadows recorded black and highlights recorded white
with a spectrum of graduated shades of grey in between.
Cinematographers lighting for black and white photography therefore only had to focus on
the contrast and quality of the light being captured, eliminating the variable of colour.
When later film stocks began introducing red, green and blue layers through methods such as
Technicolour, cinematographers began to contend with capturing films in colour.
The introduction of Eastmancolor in 1950 allowed colour capture in one 35mm strip of film,
simplifying the process.
With its increased ease of use and decreasing costs, 35mm colour
began to grow in popularity until, by the 1970s, almost all films were shot on colour stocks.
While this became the mainstream, some filmmakers still elected to shoot black and white film
for budgetary or for stylistic reasons. With the advent of digital cinematography today,
the choice of whether to shoot in black and white or colour is now exclusively a stylistic choice.
The perceived financial limitation of black and white (at least in the eyes of studios)
has meant that monochrome films have become few and far between, usually
either being financed by independent means or by auteurs
with a proven track record who are able to convince studio heads.
However, it does seem that with the rise of streaming, companies like Netflix are more
willing to take risks on black and white films and support the vision of established directors
wanting to shoot in black and white more than major production companies.
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Coming off the topic of history, one clear stylistic reason for choosing
to shoot in black and white is to evoke the style of an older filmmaking movement
and the philosophy that comes with that movement.
DP Sam Levy, who shot Frances Ha,
describes this as part of the motivation for the style of the modern film:
“Noah [Baumbach] was interested in making a black and white film with
a small crew and minimal equipment, in the production style of the French New Wave.”
The French New Wave movement emerged in the 1950s and visually built on the rejection of
filmmaking conventions, experimentation and ideas of simplicity executed within a low budget model.
Films from this period were predominantly photographed in black and white.
Just as many French New Wave films experimented visually with rough low budget techniques,
Frances Ha did the same, in a modern way, by electing to shoot the film on a Canon 5D.
“I shot a series of tests with the 5D to better understand the camera
and its dynamic range of exposure.”
“Along the way, Noah and I discussed using alternatives to the 5D, such as 35 and 16mm film,
the Alexa and the RED, but we kept coming back to the 5D. Especially
after seeing our 5D tests projected. It was simply the best format for this project.”
Levy found the video noise in the midtones reminiscent of boosted film grain
which would occur when enlarging Super 16 to a 35mm print.
Although they recorded on the Cinestyle picture profile
which widened the dynamic range captured, Levy still had to be careful
to not push the H.264 digital codec too far, where it would begin breaking up.
So, using black and white to embody a past film movement
is one reason for electing to shoot modern movies in that style.
Another reason is using age appropriate technology to capture a period specific visual language.
Cold War is a historical drama set in Poland and France between the 40s and 60s.
Łukasz Żal shot it in black and white for director Pawel Pawlikowski
to create a photographic link to the past.
“We watched different films and archives, and realized quite soon
that there was no colour in Poland at that time.”
And yes, before everyone in the comments starts saying that the film was shot digitally and
therefore isn’t period accurate, I’d counter that in this context, the medium of black and white
has a strong enough association with that period of history for it to still be valid.
Although they wanted to shoot on 35mm, the budget didn’t allow for it.
They overcame this by shooting tests in pre production on both the Alexa and on 35mm.
“We [graded and] found a look we liked on 35mm; then we decided to find an equivalent
on the Alexa and master it to the point where it would be hard to distinguish [from 35mm].
For shooting, we created LUTs — one for day, the other for night.”
Their choice of a 4:3 aspect ratio also evoked the format of older cinema
which was specific to the period of the time.
Żal notes that there was also a secondary reason for electing to shoot in black and white.
Black and white is of course not a realistic way of portraying events,
like cinema, it acts as an interpretation of story and feeling by a creative team.
“We felt that black and white allowed us to create our own interpretation of this reality and
stage our own vision of it, less naturalistic and mimetic. It’s much more interesting than colour.”
So black and white can be used to paint a story in a more expressionist way with bold,
stylised framing, imagery and lighting which elevates the story outside the bounds of reality.
Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma argued the antithesis of this for electing to shoot in monochrome.
As he notes:
“It was conceived in black-and-white, but not for any nostalgic or expressionistic reasons.”
Instead of using the conventions of black and white photography, Cuaron hoped to play against
them by creating a contemporary, naturalistic portrait of a character drenched in memory.
To do this, he took a more modern approach to the cinematography by shooting on the large format,
high resolution Alexa 65 with Arri Prime 65 lenses, building on the sharp,
widescreen look recommended to him by his long standing DOP Emmanuel Lubezki,
who was unavailable to shoot the project.
“I wanted a naturalistic, very soft light with no grain.
I wanted it to be a film where you are in 1970, but shot in a more contemporary way. It was
about the moment and it was about trying to portray the intangible, like in life.”
The minimalism and simplicity of black and white became a way of visually representing memory
without becoming nostalgic.
Emmanuel Lubezki describes it as if “The camera becomes
almost like a consciousness revisiting the story.”
Shooting the movie on an Alexa 65, which has a colour sensor
and then desaturating the image in post production also came with its advantages.
Colourist Steven J. Scott explained how even though they were grading the film
in black and white, having the colour intact in the original image made it
easy to isolate and manipulate certain colours in the grade.
For example if there were two colours which translated to similar shades of grey,
such as a piece of clothing and the sky, he could use the original image to isolate
the colour of one and manipulate it to a different shade of grey.
This use of modern technology became a useful tool
when paired with the old medium of black and white.
Finally, black and white can also be used as a
way of paying homage to the filmmaking processes of old.
Mank, a film which chronicles the writing process of Citizen Kane,
pulls from some of the techniques Tolland used to shoot the original.
Like Roma though, Erik Messerschmidt chose to shoot the film in widescreen
on modern technology, which is a favourite of director David Fincher.
The film was shot on the Red Monochrome 8K Helium sensor with sharp Summilux C lenses from Leica.
“It still pays homage a bit, I guess, to black and white cinema, or at least black and
white cinema of the period, but in technique and sort of approach, it was more modern.”
Part of this head nod to Citizen Kane
came from shooting Mank at a deep stop of T/ 11 for most of the film.
This meant that more of the image remained in focus across the frame.
Shooting at such a thick stop meant that plenty of light was required to expose the image.
Another golden age technique which Messerschmidt employed was shooting
some exteriors day for night, a technique he had previously used on Ridley Scott’s
Raised By Wolves (which I happened to work on as a crew member).
This involves shooting during the day, ideally in full sun with lots of light,
and then adding a day for night look up table to the footage.
The easiest way to identify day for night footage is to look for
areas of highlights or raised midtones in the sky.
“What I learned in the testing process particularly for the black and white version
of day for night was I had to add so much fill light to the actors' faces to read them
that in many cases they were uncomfortable and they would end up squinting.”
“So we had sunglass-tinted contact lenses made for both of them for that sequence.”
What all of these case studies indicate is that shooting black and white today
has clearly become a stylistic decision above a practical one.
It often involves reinventing the medium by shooting with modern cameras, lenses, techniques
and aspect ratios while at the same time paying tribute to the monochromatic format of old.
Although some may still feel that using black and white is still pretentious,
I’d argue that it’s just another stylistic choice available to directors and cinematographers.
No different than choosing to shoot handheld or on a tripod.
Like any creative decision it must come from somewhere, whether that’s analytical reasoning,
a practical consideration, or just an artistic 6th sense that black and white is right for the job.
What are your thoughts on the video? If you found this informative or
interesting please it a thumbs up and if you have any comments let me know below.
Until next time, thanks for watching and goodbye.