Hollywood Film Effects: Creating a Black and White Film

The art of screening a film in black and white is one that is becoming popular again as a backlash against the over-saturated images permeating TV and film. There is also a misunderstanding of what it means for a film to be black and white versus a film that is monochrome. Monochrome generally refers to an image being one colour and white while black and white is actually the harsh contrast of black and white. Most early films were in fact monochrome, showing shades of grey. It was only in the late 1970s that films started being produced that were deliberately designed to be black and white.

Screening your film in black and white is a double edged sword, though, and film audiences will want to know that there is a good reason for the black and white usage. A common one is to make the footage appear to be from an earlier time in history. Another use is for a "not in the world of the film" style, a dream sequence, or a memory sequence. Finally, black and white is often used to simply cover up poor lighting design during a shoot, in which case the whole film will probably be screened in black and white for continuity.

Understanding how black and white can look can open up more opportunity for you to create a mood with your film that colour cannot achieve as well for the simple reason that colour can tend to overwhelm the viewer. Black and White, in this article will refer to the most extreme use of black and white with minimal grey in the image.

A soft black and white image is one that traditionally looks like an image with the colour removed. This is also known as "de-saturated" image to some editors. While this does present a "black and white" image, the contrast is not high and so the image appears "soft".