Look Inspiration – Red Filtered B&W

November 23, 2015

Dan shares his thoughts on how to emulate shooting black and white with a red filter on front of the lens to give an interesting look.

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Look Inspiration – Red Filtered B&W

Emulating A Camera Filter

I learned a brand new technique for Black and White footage this week and I found it amazingly refreshing.

We were aiming to create a late 70s early 80s black and white look and the idea was thanks to the suggestion of the amazing DOP Matt North

The technique is basically called red filtered B&W and emulates placing a red optical filter over the lens when shooting for black and white.

It’s quite a simple idea but gives great results as it drastically changes the image when it comes to skies and skin tones.

I’m sure using the RGB mixer would be a smarter way of getting the “best” B&W image but we wanted to replicate real-life techniques and achieve an older look.

For the same reason, I didn’t use very many windows and no qualifiers at all.

A good source of inspiration is this trailer below for Paper Moon which was shot in the style.

YouTube video

I mention a book called The Age Of Innocence in my insight below and you can find the book here

Enjoy and hopefully you had as much fun as I did with this look!

– Dan

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Homepage › Forums › Look Inspiration – Red Filtered B&W

Viewing 5 reply threads

    • Greg Greenhaw
      Member
      November 23, 2015 at 11:58 am

      If you delete the combiner node and wire the green channel to the output you can skip the luminance node


    • michael@whitecross.tv
      Member
      November 23, 2015 at 12:31 pm

      I love this look. I’ve played around with RGB mixer and found it both more simple and controllable. Click monochrome and preserve luma then kill G and B. You now have a Red slider that can dial the effect in and out (and increase it to double going up to 2.0)


    • Dan Moran
      Participant
      November 23, 2015 at 12:36 pm

      Good point! I think I was thinking a little to visually when I built this look. I was also attended when we were building it which always makes me a little less adventurous!


    • Dan Moran
      Participant
      November 23, 2015 at 12:36 pm

      I never thought about that! I thought the combiner was essential for getting the R output only. I will add a note into the insight above explaining that. Thanks sir!


    • andi winter
      Participant
      November 23, 2015 at 1:30 pm

      great idea, thanks for sharing! love these analogue digital looks… (or are they digital analog?)


    • Jamied
      Guest
      November 26, 2015 at 4:35 pm

      I always used to just play with the R, G, or B gain (Pablo equivalent to Primary Bars, Lum Mix = 0) underneath a de-sat. That way you can blend between just red or just blue etc. I still always learn new stuff watching how you did this though, very cool thanks!

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Dan Moran
Insight # ML 0396
Type Video
Duration 11:30
Skill Level Beginner
Skills DaVinci Resolve
Categories Breakdown Technique Theory VFX & Grading
Series Colorist Inspiration: Find Your Spark!

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