you watch old movies from the black and white era, it looks great
even more modern ones look good - schindler's list, man who wasn't there
then you watch twin peaks s3 or lighthouse and something's not right
i'd say it was old heads dying off, loss of technical knowledge - but lynch is old, did great black and white in the 70's, meanwhile black and white scenes in tarantino's latest all look right
is it digital film? is it my TV?
Is it just me or has black and white got worse?
Leo Adams
Brandon Mitchell
>i'd say it was old heads dying off, loss of technical knowledge - but lynch is old, did great black and white in the 70's, meanwhile black and white scenes in tarantino's latest all look right
I'm going to assume based off the factors you've listed and taking them as accurate, it has to do with digital.
Brody Young
funny to think how much time people spent placing all the little set details, making up the actors, processing the film, etc when I'm just going to watch it on a lossy stream with big jpeg squares over most of it
Anthony Lee
Eli Price
Cinematography and proper use of lighting play a big role. Watch the man who wasn't there, a great modern black and white film
Gabriel Rogers
yes, that's why i think loss of technical knowledge plays a part
lighthouse is made by (relatively) young people, which might explain why it didn't pop visually
but as i said, what's lynch's excuse in recent twin peaks?
i'll add there was that climactic game of thrones episode set at night where much of it looked shit - not black and white but still
Nathan Sanchez
ty, this guy understands
low contrast, that's what i was getting at
Christopher Rogers
Black and White noir was heavily inspired by German Expressionism.
and so the light play a big part in that. it's more of a style not exactly the lose of technic.
Angel Gonzalez
Twin Peaks season 3 is so problematic for me. It reaches pinnacles of utter greatness and then it descends into total Jerry Lewis unfunny clowning with Dougie and the Casino hag. The episodes Lynch did himself though are really powerful.
I'm glad you like Cinema Noir though. I think that directors should be forced to film nothing but black and white for the first 10 years of their career before they're allowed to touch color. Even Kubrick had difficulty using color. 2001 was excellent color work but I found Clockwork Orange's color sense to be not right. Hitchcock did some superb color work after an English career using black and white.
Fellini was the master of color and black and white.
Scorcese showed himself to be the master of Cinema noir in Raging Bull. He really pulls off some magnificent handling of different film stocks with oily inky blacks in the 1940's sequences and then he switches over to these really fine silvery film stocks for the 1950's.
I disliked the Aviator and the Gangs of New York however on a lot of other grounds. The Aviator was needlessly cartoonish at times with its use of color.
Daniel Harris
compare Hollywood black and white to the European black and white and you'll know what I mean.
Say the French new wave. They shot stuff outside of the studio and so the lighting are all natural, compare that to Hollywood stuff where the lighting is carefully place to create strong contrast and shadow
Angel Thompson
Renoir's Beauty and the Beast.
Isaac Turner
they shot that in studio, I should've pick better example.
Jackson Cox
a style that depends on technique though
and a style that modern black and white throwbacks are explicitly trying to recreate - especially eggers, he even used old-timey aspect ratios but he couldn't get old-timey lighting, makeup, contrast? somethng's not right here
i've seen one of them french movies and i remember it looking pretty good
it was the one where he's killed a policeman and his girlfriend's american
based user understands, cinema is a visual medium, the look of the film matters more than anything
aviator and gangs of ny do have something wrong with them, i thought maybe digital colour correction? it all looks a bit cgi-ish
as for twin peaks i was of course specifically talking about the black and white scenes but even the colour scenes don't look as good
i think maybe lynch got sloppy in his old age and/or was just cashing in - case in point, dougie: pretty sure dougie is just his old ronnie rocket screenplay shoehorned into the twin peaks universe because no-one would give him funding for it
Brayden Harris
>a style that depends on technique though
I don't get what is this suppose to mean. modern black and white aren't trying to recreate the old hollywood era of black and white.
For example The Lighthouse. I don't know how can you sit here and pretend that it wasn't a good black and white movie and something wasn't right. when it fact it look really good. compare it to like Frances Ha where it feel like regular shot movie with black and white filter.
and The Lighthouse aren't really trying to recreate the hollywood black and white, the movie was obviously influenced by Ingmar Bergman movies.
youtube.com
this scene is great. you got the contrast between the shadow but yet the lighting is believable.
Carter Walker
more example of good modern black and white movie
>Ida (2013)
youtube.com
>Cold War (2018) same dir.
youtube.com
>Hard to be a God (2013)
youtube.com
black and white movies aren't getting worse. the technic is still there, but people just choose not to use them.
some director are just lazy and simply want to put black and white filter over the film because it's le classic.
Liam Ross
>>a style that depends on technique though
>I don't get what is this suppose to mean.
it's a stylistic choice to film a movie in black and white, but the style can only be done properly with the proper level of technical skill, which is not necessarily available anymore
>modern black and white aren't trying to recreate the old hollywood era of black and white.
that's exactly what they're trying to do: black and white in the modern era is done solely to ape old movies
nothing wrong with that as long as it looks good
which it doesn't, in the lighthouse
your scene's a good example, it's too dark, i can't even see their fucking faces half the time, and even when they do step into the light, their faces look grey rather than white
i suspect he's given them smudgy make-up because he thinks "dirty face" looks more realistic, or maybe thinks these guys should be tanned
you say the lighting is believable, i think you're onto exactly what the problem is there: too much emphasis on "natural" and "real" these days - i wouldn't be surprised if eggers tried to film it with only "natural" light, and that would maybe account for it
just my guess anyway
William Cook
>some director are just lazy and simply want to put black and white filter over the film because it's le classic
or maybe they don't realise that a black and white filter doesn't look the same - they dont know they need to light and dress the scenes differently - because they don't have the filmmaking/technical knowhow
but as i said, david lynch does have that knowhow, and yet he queefed out all this low-contrast digital shit 5 years ago, so idk
Gabriel Murphy
old DOPs had to be very careful with light ratios and composition because the barely had tools to give them feedback
modern DOP don't even care on how to light and frame to guide the audience's attention
Adrian Roberts
I think its because people dont shoot b/w anymore, they shoot in color and correct later. For b/w contrast and lighting are super important, and you cant have for example a green and a red jacket at the smae darkness because they will look the same. If youre not used to it, youll think "in color it looks great, lets just take the chroma out" and then it looks bland.
Bentley Smith
yes thank you
but david lynch did it right in the 1970s (with no money) and got it wrong in 2017 (with $100 million dollars)
did he just forget how to do it? did he stop caring? did he never know, and always rely on some DP/lighting guy who's not around anymore? or is it something about digital film that makes it hard to shoot in b/w?
Camden Murphy
>what's lynch's excuse in recent twin peaks?
1. Lynch doesn't shoot his movies 2. Lynch likes the digital look
Jason Gray
>Lynch doesn't shoot his movies
come on, he doesn't hold the camera but he's making executive decisions regarding the look of the film
he's got eyes, don't he? (maybe he doesn't anymore, maybe his eyes are bad)
>Lynch likes the digital look
i guess this is the question: can you make a b/w digital movie that looks as good as ye olde b/w films?
Sebastian Thompson
>can you make a b/w digital movie that looks as good as ye olde b/w films?
sin city comes to mind, but that actually was a bit low contrast with grey faces
Eli Myers
It's digital
It's dps not knowing how to light for b&w
It's dps not even knowing how to light for film anymore
It's getting lazy because 'you can do it in post'
Nobody gives a shit about lighting anymore
Digital is the death of the medium
Even Mank looked like shit compared to CK/Toland and Fincher is the one guy who can do digital better than most
Benjamin Parker
>black and white film is superior to digital trash
wow who would have guessed