Look Inspiration - Red Filtered B&W

Series	Colorist Inspiration: Find Your Spark!

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.

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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Discussion
November 23, 2015 at 9:45 am #33550

Dan Moran
Member

This is the discussion thread for the Insight: Look Inspiration – Red Filtered B&W
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Discussion

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
michaelwhitecross-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
Member

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
Member

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
Member

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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Look Inspiration – Red Filtered B&W