Look Inspiration – Red Filtered B&W

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