|
Post by ianphillips on May 14, 2017 19:24:16 GMT
I remember DWM describing the B&W Pertwees as looking like independent films from the early 1960s. I'm sure even modern TVs can have the colour turned down to get the same effect. The only problem with that is that black and white and color differently are lit differently during filming so a lot of modern films look way too dark to be properly enjoyed in B/W.
|
|
|
Post by Richard Marple on May 14, 2017 21:40:39 GMT
I remember DWM describing the B&W Pertwees as looking like independent films from the early 1960s. I'm sure even modern TVs can have the colour turned down to get the same effect. The only problem with that is that black and white and color differently are lit differently during filming so a lot of modern films look way too dark to be properly enjoyed in B/W. OK I see
|
|
|
Post by ianphillips on May 14, 2017 23:39:45 GMT
The only problem with that is that black and white and color differently are lit differently during filming so a lot of modern films look way too dark to be properly enjoyed in B/W. OK I see Also, modern films aren't shot to the strengths of B/W films, which rely a lot on shadows and tones and such. Most modern films probably wouldn't look horrible in monochrome, but they would look nowhere near as good as a film designed to be seen in black and white would. Some notable exceptions to this are Raiders of the Lost Ark (not really recent, but well into the color era) and Mad Max: Fury Road, both of which were lit for both black and white and color.
|
|
RWels
Member
Posts: 2,862
|
Post by RWels on May 15, 2017 7:12:07 GMT
But does that apply to television cameras as well?
|
|
|
Post by ianphillips on May 15, 2017 12:09:03 GMT
But does that apply to television cameras as well? I'd think so because it has to do with the lighting rather than the camera.
|
|
|
Post by Richard Marple on May 15, 2017 12:22:14 GMT
IIRC early colour (probably both film & electronic) needed a lot more light to work effectively.
|
|
|
Post by ianphillips on May 15, 2017 13:54:32 GMT
IIRC early colour (probably both film & electronic) needed a lot more light to work effectively. I'd think most early color would work in black and white for two main reasons a. Most directors will have begun their careers in B/W film and so are used to that and light their color sets the same. b. A lot of people still had B/W only tvs so early color had to work in both formats.
|
|
RWels
Member
Posts: 2,862
|
Post by RWels on May 15, 2017 13:58:14 GMT
But does that apply to television cameras as well? I'd think so because it has to do with the lighting rather than the camera. Yeah, but then again, different cameras and initially a different storage medium (tape). I'm cautious to say anything definite.
|
|
|
Post by lousingh on May 18, 2017 19:10:26 GMT
There could be improvements done to the early conversion Pertwees, by using chroma dot recovery mixed with the original colour from the returned NTSC episodes or home recordings, but we have them in colour so they are low priority. Converting back to PAL from NTSC took a lot of work, so then to reconvert to NTSC would make them practically unwatchable as the others have said. I would say the episodes that could be improved are the following Doctor Who and the Silurians Inferno Terror of the Autons The Dæmons [except the original episode 4] Add The Ambassadors of Death to this list. If you want to get a handle on the differences, use the scenes with The Master in the lead up to the cliffhanger to Episode Three of The Daemons. In the last scene, you can clearly see beads of sweat on Roger Delgado's brow, but they are nowhere to be seen in the parts that came from NTSC.
|
|
|
Post by brianfretwell on May 21, 2017 19:07:33 GMT
I'd think so because it has to do with the lighting rather than the camera. Yeah, but then again, different cameras and initially a different storage medium (tape). I'm cautious to say anything definite. I think the cameras then needed flatter lighting to give good pictures as they couldn't cope with shadow areas well so the lighting was to suite the cameras. I'd say it could been done in a more interesting way but not with the time allowed as it would have had to be single camera and changes to lighting between shots. So a combination of lighting needs of the cameras, lighting set ups available in the time and the need for multi camera shooting.
|
|
|
Post by Ed Brown on Jun 2, 2017 21:17:05 GMT
You get a good impression of the effectiveness of the b/w tv cameras of the era from watching almost any Troughton episode from Season 6. And especially so in 'The War Games', where the studio camera scenes, recorded by electronic tv cameras, sit alongside a great deal of scenes that use location filming with actual movie cameras; IIRC the location filming in that serial is more extensive than in any other Troughton or Hartnell story.
Watch 'The Mind Robber', and you can see in the studio scenes how frequently the electronic EMI camera tubes overload under the powerful studio lights, because the light levels needed to be so strong for the fairly insensitive 405-line electronics to register a satisfactory signal. Flaring is common, wherever the light is reflecting off a shiny surface, because that intensifies the light beyond the maximum limit which the camera tube was designed to cope with. Kleig lighting, common in the movie industry, was very much what the 405-line system used - and benefited from.
The Pertwee era colour cameras were much more sensitive, having to record coloured images, so in-studio the BBC engineers could set much lower light levels for those cameras. Thus a comparision with the 405-line b/w system is not really fair: the different technology of 1970 onwards made tv production diverge much more from traditional movie-making than the 405-line system had. With colour, the contrast between light and shade is less; but in the b/w era, film - such as the old film noir - relied heavily on a huge difference between light and shade for its effect.
|
|
|
Post by Robbie Moubert on Jun 4, 2017 19:01:25 GMT
Watch 'The Mind Robber', and you can see in the studio scenes how frequently the electronic EMI camera tubes overload under the powerful studio lights, because the light levels needed to be so strong for the fairly insensitive 405-line electronics to register a satisfactory signal. Flaring is common, wherever the light is reflecting off a shiny surface, because that intensifies the light beyond the maximum limit which the camera tube was designed to cope with. Kleig lighting, common in the movie industry, was very much what the 405-line system used - and benefited from. The Pertwee era colour cameras were much more sensitive, having to record coloured images, so in-studio the BBC engineers could set much lower light levels for those cameras. Thus a comparision with the 405-line b/w system is not really fair: the different technology of 1970 onwards made tv production diverge much more from traditional movie-making than the 405-line system had. With colour, the contrast between light and shade is less; but in the b/w era, film - such as the old film noir - relied heavily on a huge difference between light and shade for its effect. Doctor Who switched to using 625-line cameras with The Enemy of the World.
|
|