Advances In Cinema Tech Overcoming a Strange Racial Divide

barlevg writes "Since the birth of film, shooting subjects of darker complexion has been a technical challenge: light meters, film emulsions, tone and color models, and the dynamic range of the film itself were all calibrated for light skin, resulting in dark skin appearing ashy and washed-out. Historically, filmmakers have used workarounds involving "a variety of gels, scrims and filters." But now we live in the age of digital filmmaking, and as film critic Ann Hornaday describes in the Washington Post, and as is showcased in recent films such as "12 Years a Slave," "Mother of George" and "Black Nativity," a collection of innovators have set to work developing techniques in lighting, shooting and post-processing designed to counteract century-old technological biases as old as the medium itself."

Comments

Nonsense

[msobkow]

Film is not "biased" towards people with "light skin." Quite frankly, I don't see how any visual medium that's designed to capture an accurate colour spectrum could be racially biased.

I think this whole article is a trollish attempt to inject a "racial issue" where there is none.

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

"Film is not "biased" towards people with "light skin." Quite frankly, I don't see how any visual medium that's designed to capture an accurate colour spectrum could be racially biased."

The error in your comment lies in the second clause - "designed to capture an accurate colour spectrum"

Very few film stocks were designed to be accurate; most were designed to be pleasing.

Many were designed with a certain colour profile or palette in mind. Some very general examples: Kodak films usually had a red/yellow bias, making things in a dreary, grey, northern climate look more saturated, at the expensive of making vivid colourful things in a tropical environment look cartoonish rainbow vomit, other films, like velvia, over saturated all the colours, and crunch all the shadows into a deep black, so sunsets would appear breathtakingly beautiful.

Nearly all of these types of film took into account that 90% of the time, they would be shooting people - so they had to make skintone look good. But they only really designed it for white skin tones.

Re:Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a phrase, for years, nay decades, used among colorists, video engineers, camera operators and lighting designers/directors, to describe human subjects of significantly dark and contrasting skintone: LRP = Low Reflectance Personnel. It wasn't/isn't racial, it was/is descriptive without being so. All skin tones, regardless of race have their challenges...for instance the same 1/4 cto filter I use for some black actors to warm the blue skin cast is the same filter I use for white actors with too much magenta pigment.

The writer of the article, besides trying to get her race card stamped, seems to be hugely ignorant of the industry in general and the technology used in filmaking then and now - it's one thing to decry (as it shoud be) the portrayals of blacks as "caricatures" (although what do you say about cartoonish white guys like Jim Carey, Arnold Schwarzenegger and our pal, Larry The Cable Guy), and the use of white actors in black-face. It's quite another to make the claim that the industry as a whole discrimated against blacks and people of color by rigging the technology. Ain't nobody got time for that - or, as the Mob would say, "there's no percentage in it." Apparantly the author has no concept of this industry, which is all about making money, and, as we all know, comes only in green, gold and silver.

Back when the motion picture studio moguls (and their Mob financiers) saw that talkies were all the rage, studios invested heavily in the best sound technology money could buy, and made it all back on "the musical." Al Jolson may have been in black-face, but Lena, Ida, Dorothy and Pearly Mae weren't, and a lot of the sound technology from Westrex, RCA and Siemans was created to capture their subtle and resonate vocal range, not belters like Jolson.

Now that HDTV and digital distribution is all the rage, they're again investing and developing technology to exploit the market. In this case, as better processor, sensor and lens technology comes into the market, less use of color correction in lighting will be needed, ergo less labor costs for technicians in production or post. It's all about the Benjamins, man...if it makes it simpler to shoot dark skinned actros, then I predict you'll be seeing a return of the "blacxploitation" film...as long as there's a market for it.

Seriously, quoting an assistant professor from Howard (that is renown for it's film school - not) isn't exactly a qualified source or proof of "discriminating" by white man's technology. Additionally, the alleged quote from Steve (I wasn't there, but I saw it as a kid in the theater) McQueen isn't valid if it's attempting to make the racial case. In the 1960's you had limited choices for film stock and even less if you wanted to shoot at night. You had to light everything with big Brute carbon arc lamps or risk looking like it was shot in a closet...and those suckers generate heat. So, of course everyone was sweating - black, white, actor, crew - it's not like today where we use led, hmi and xenon lights that are far more efficient and cooler than the old 220v carbon arcs.

Oh and, by the way, the "vaseline" on the skin of dark persons trick? Been using it and teaching it for years, and it works on white skin too...baby oil is better for females, but really, anything that'll cause the skin to reflect light...fashion shooters have been using it for years as well to highlight muscle tone and shape of faces and body parts. That trick is really to cause pop since, after all, we're really only shooting in 2d and need separation/contrast for detail - and the only way to get that when skin tone contrast/gamma is fighting you is to make the details shine and reflect.

And, for the record, as the line in Blazing Saddles goes: "Are we black? Yes, we are..." and I've been shooting film and video of folks who look like me for the last 50 years. And folks that look like you, too.

Re:For real?

[dwywit]

Sounds unlikely to me - although some films were produced to "enhance" skin tones. Kodak had a specialised film made for weddings and portraits, and I can't remember seeing anything other than caucasians in the example brochures. You can enhance any part of the spectrum you want, but enhancing caucasian skin tones would negatively affect other parts of the spectrum. Besides, it's a creative decision as to how a film should "look", so it's largely up to the director, art department, and editor what the finished product looks like. You can have blue & orange (the current fad), or wash it all out a la 70's westerns - there's lots of ways to influence the final product - choice of emulsion, choice of lighting, and choice of post-processing, to name a few.

Not just black-vs-white

[shameless]

This reminds me of when they were developing the original pilot for the original "Star Trek" series. They wanted to know how the green-skinned Orion slave-girl would look when filmed. They covered her in green makeup and shot some test footage. It came back from the lab with normal pink European flesh tones. So they tried darker makeup. Still pink. They tried the darkest, densest makeup they could find. Still pink. It turned out that the lab was oh-so-helpfully "correcting" the color for them. I think this speaks volumes as to the article's premise...

It's real.

[kylemonger]

The film bias is real. The January 2006 issue of Popular Photography featured an article about different film emulsions sold outside the U.S. that better capture skin tones that are darker/different than caucasian. They shot a black model using Kodak Portra 160NC and Kodak Ultima 100, a film "tailor-made for shooting Indian weddings." They used the same lighting, adjusting exposure only for the 2/3 stop difference in film speed. I quote:

The negatives were dramatically different. Ultima 100 produced visibly more detail in Dionne Audain's skin than did Portra 160NC, especially on the shadowed side of her face. In matched prints, not only was that shadow more open, but there was a much better sense of texture in her hair and black sweater. The surprising thing is that, despite Ultima 100's higher minimum density, it seemed to have more snap overall than Portra 160NC.