Black and white vs color

I think that it would be great to see more current black & white movies. I believe it would be much more simple to emphasize certain feelings that you want to portray in b&w, as with color you must have things percise and detailed so that nothing over powers the point the artist is trying to put forth. With b&w its all up to ones imagination to fill in the color of blood, cars, nature, ect...

__________________
one cannot live without the other...
Ive tried and realized, theres something about you, something about your ways.... mwah

obviously shooting a black and white movie is more difficult than shooting in colour, the main reason is choosing colour schemes that will stand just as much just as much as they would have in colour. and i always enjoy a black and white movie, but colour will always rule

__________________
I LUV MY KATHRYN

I haven't seen more than maybe 10 B/W movies so far, cause I've always tried fiercely to stay away from them which I now deeply regret.
Not every movie can be made better by removing the color, but some are just destined to be B/W, either cause they're set in a time when that was prevalent (Schindler's List) or cause they're just so different (Pi, Sin City). And even though color is sometimes really better/more enjoyable than B/W, that's no reason not to watch old movies since those are usually better than the new colored ones which more than makes up for being B/W.
And can you imagine a movie like "The Great Dictator" in color? That would just ruin everything.

Yeah I agree. I just watched Raging Bull again (great film!) and couldn't imagine it in colour. Scorsese's directing used black and white to emphasise certain things and the B&W framed the movie in such a way that I can't even imagine it being in colour. For colour to work it would have to be changed quite a lot in my opinion, maybe this wouldn't 'ruin it' but it wouldn't be the movie it was intended to be anymore.

__________________
Concert Tab!! MOFO poetry Been Dreaming Lately?

The three movies I'm thinking of in B&W that jumped to the front of my brain are all SO very different ... but were chosen in B&W for very good reason. And each one excels in its genre, partly BECAUSE of the B&W choice:

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: Still the creepiest horror movie out there. Even creepier in B&W.

THE ELEPHANT MAN: A truly moving movie. Would have lost all its charm and emotional clutching if it hadn't been in B&W.

YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN: A classic comedy, now over 30 years old and still as fresh and funny as the day it was made. (I saw it in the theater the day it was released!) They used original Frankenstein movie equipment from 1931, and color would have been a disaster. Even the movie poster in color didn't look right. (I had the poster, the album, and the T-shirt.)

Note: Yes, I know two of these three are Mel Brooks films. Coincidence, I tell you.

__________________
Linda's Author Website
Linda's Amazon Author page

I think in some cases its difficult important to work in Black and White, for instance, in Good Night and Good Luck, the movie would not have been the same, or had nearly the same impact if it had been made in color. In that case it was simply alot easier to get a much more effective film.

__________________
The world is spinning, but no one feels it move...you look up to the sky..and one day a spark...and the whole sky is on fire -Leonardo Dicaprio (Gangs of New York)

We're no longer called Sonic Death Monkey. We're on the verge of becoming Kathleen Turner Overdrive, but just for tonight, we are Barry Jive and his Uptown Five. -Jack Black (High Fidelity)

Shooting in black and white has become now a way of conveying tone or style. Off the top of my head, i can't think of a movie since Clerks that was shot in black and white for budget reasons. I'm assuming with the introduction of digital, color has become more affordable. I think in respect to tone, black and white is a huge factor sometimes and adds a lot.

As for the degree of difficulty with either: I know you have to really worry about lighting with black and white, don't you have to worry about lighting more with color on top of worrying about color temperature and all that?

Black and white gives much more depth to a film and less distraction.

Obviously, it's a matter of ends, means and circumstances. Clearly, there are more expressive possibilities in color, which makes choices harder.

There are definitely some films that could only have worked in one medium or the other. Can anyone really imagine The Seventh Seal having the same visual impact in color? Or Ran in B&W?

I think that color is probably harder to work with because you have more distracting from you intend to be your focus. Also, black and white films very often get the credibility of being quite artistic, just because of their pallette.