combining B&W and colour?

[Mr Blackstock]

I was wondering if it was possible to shoot a character in b&w, and later somehow add to the shot colour. for example, a man filmed in B&W walking down the street, with police lights flashing in colour?

anyone know how to do this cheaply?
Mr Blackstock

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[mattias]

you can paint on the film with a sharpie, or simply use a compositing tool such as after effects if you're posting on video. i used the sharpie method on a short 16 mm short once, where a piece of jewlery was supposed to be red. it worked, but i guess it would be a lot harder on the smaller super 8 frame, although you don't need much precision if it's only flashing lights. you might want to consider (this is just a theory of mine) using a blue filter to darken down everything else in the scene compared to the lights, or they might become too dark when you paint on them.

/matt

[Mr Blackstock]

what about shooting the same scene seperately, one in colour, one in b&w, and overlaying the two films when transferring?

Blackstock

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[8th Man]

How much is after effects? I think it's in the several hundred dollar range. Or it's Five bucks for a bootleg from a Hong Kong computer market, which is what I did, but I'm afraid to install it in case it's a one way ticket to Virus City.
I think there is a PC version as well as Mac.

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PRM

[mattias]

> I have heard acetone (?) is used as the cleaner which would take sharpie off immediately.

good point. my project was a film school experiment, so i never cleaned it and never sent it to any labs.

[mattias]

after effects is a compositing and animation tool from adobe, available on the mac and pc platforms. the standard edition will cost you around $500, and the production bundle (mainly chroma key stuff added) $1000. an older version will be cheaper, and will work just as well for most things. i do a lot of work for an ad agency that has multiple licenses for all these programs, and i've been able to get them to supply me with copies for free (duh, i did have to work to get them for free i guess).

/matt

[ulrichsd]

I have also been curious about this technique (similarly used in Schindler's List - girl with red dress). The forseeable problem with sharpies is that if you clean your film, or (if you transfer your film to video) if transfer lab cleans your film, I have heard acetone (?) is used as the cleaner which would take sharpie off immediately.

Mattias,

Just curious about after-effects, I have heard people talk about this software on the list and was curious if it is PC or Mac softawre, about how much does it cost, etc.?

Scott

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[Mr Blackstock]

Although the computer software sounds the best for the job, it's price is prohibitive. Considering the transfer cost, the computer aided editing is beyond my reach. What about superimposing two films over the top of each other for the transfer? one colour, one b&w.

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[mattias]

superimposing would only give you a low saturation copy of the color version unless you use some kind of mask, in which case we're back to the original problem: how do you create the mask? anyway, most editing programs, such as premiere and fcp, have more or less advanced tools for rotoscoping and compositing as well, so you don't need after effects unless you want the extra power, ease of use and flexibility. and most editing programs can export to the "film strip" format, which will let you do your roto work in any paint program as well. try it.

/matt