Lighting help needed desperately!

[fresnel355]

I am designing a show and the whole first part is suppose to be in black and white, problem is, how do I do that? I want some help trying to figure this out, I am only using conventional lights for this design.

thanks!

-nate

[boatman]

Open whites and a lot of help from the costume and make-up departments? In my day it would have been done with an Eidophor and a whole bunch of four-and-a-half-inch image orthicon cameras, but that's another story.

[gareth]

As Boatman says, a lot of this needs to come from costume and make-up. Lighting-wise, you could help things along by "greying things up" a bit with, perhaps, Lee 202 or 201, or if you're feeling really bold perhaps something like Lee 711.

[GridGirl]

We did the opening of The Wizard of Oz in black-and-white by using chocolate (L156) which gave us that "sepia" look. Not sure if that's what you're after but it worked well for us.

[mbthegreat]

My immediate thought was high contrast, so perhaps think about angle as well. Lots of side lighting.

[andy_s]

yep, 200, 201. 202, 203. wouldn't go for open white, as unless it's plotted at high level, you're likely to get a warm yellowy feeling..

this was Rick Fisher's pallet in an Adventures in Motion Pictures Show I did relights on a few years ago , based on Alfred Hitchcock movies - the first half was the B&W movies like Rebecca, etc, and act 2 was the technicolour days - Psycho, etc, so had a completely different pallet. No moving lights on that tour, or even scrollers, and small venues with few channels - so luckily because the acts were so different we could do interval colour and gobo changes in the booms at floor level and channel hard repatches for overhead variation.

for the monochrome half, the set and costumes were black, white and shades of grey, for the technicolour half, the big white panels were removed and the costumes were also more colourful, to heighten the contrast between the two halfs.

 

I'd be slightly cautious about angles and high side / backlight to create contrast - could look great - but this to me says "film noir", which isn't necessarily the same as "black and white" - think the difference between "the Ladykillers" (alec guiness version) and black and white TV shows - or the B&W sections of "If" - Lyndsay Anderson movie from the sixties - shot like a colour film, but on B&W stock, because the budget ran out... - and pick the appropriate style as well as the right colour! (or colour correction)

[Jack]

We did the opening of The Wizard of Oz in black-and-white by using chocolate (L156) which gave us that "sepia" look. Not sure if that's what you're after but it worked well for us.

 

 

I hated the sound and look of this stuff, L156 but it is actually amazing! It gives people a really nice warm old tv glow.

 

I would highly recommend as others have using 201 or 202, with the right make-up you can achieve quite a good grey look.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Let us know how you get on!

 

Jack

[SoLiEn]

L156, L202 L201 help from make up and costume and set designers, make sure everys on the same song sheet and aware its not just down to lighting to make this sort of thing work!

 

Good luck, let us know your results.

 

also, jack, you didnt like the sound of it? what did you do, crumple it up or something? :P