Black & White

So yesterday was day 4 of "The Turing Enigma" shoot and today we have the day off (so a chance to recuperate after going till 4am last night). Now we have changed tic-tacs (or tactics), we are keeping up with production pretty well. I have edited 11 scenes of the 12 they have shot (number 12 wasn't finished till 4 so I'll be editing that tomorrow) and there are some amazing looking scenes coming out. The longer scenes especially are seeming really slick. Some screenshots after the break.



The film has an usual style as all the scenes set in present day are black & white and all the scene's set in the past are in colour. As the Red shoots RAW and doesn't bake in any of the settings you set on camera, we have been able to turn the saturation down as we shoot so the monitor sees black & white and my rushes come out black & white but if we for any reason change our mind, we can always go back into the settings and raise the saturation in the grade. I doubt that will happen though, as the footage looks stunning. There has been a lot of talk recently from big filmmakers like Peter Jackson of 48fps 3D being the future for filmmaking for the heightened clarity it gives to the audience. I suppose shooting in black & white is a direct challenge to that idea. When I was doing my film studies degree, I was taught photography and film isn't seen as an art form by some because of its similarity to real life. But there are many differences, like the constraints of the frame that force you to choose what to show and what not to show, or the fact that there are only 2 dimensions to the picture. It is these differences that make photography and filmmaking an art form. The pursuit of realism through 3d and higher framerates is a slippery slope in my opinion. Personally, I'm voting for going back to black & white instead.