I've just finished a screenplay set in 1964, but being a writer rather than a filmaker I could do with some info on how this film could, hypothetically, be shot. In my head I imagine it to have a retro look and feel to it, with the same slightly grainy quality as those great British kitchen sink dramas of the sixties: Billy Liar; Saturday Night, Sunday Morning etc. etc. Could somebody please let me know how I would be able to achieve this without stepping into some sort of timewarp?
Cheers
the most important thing i would guess is to get the colour pallet right.
like if you were shooting a movie in the 70s, you would want a lot of golds, and browns... earthtones. for the 60s, i guess a lot of psychadelic colours.
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Thanks but that's not really what I was thinking of... i meant i dont want the actual look of the film to be of high cinematic quality - I want it to look kinda faded and old, like a tape somebody found in their attic. The story itself is very simple, about a boy and his goldfish, so i dont want anything too fancy that might overpower it. Is this effect even possible or is it just something I dreamt up?
First it's gotta be black and white or really whacked out color (look at the JFK Assassination film for an example of the odd color). Second you might want to add some of that reel to reel sound you get from a high school film projector and the number countdown at the beginning to get the feel at the start. Third buy a lot of vintage cars to populate the background...
RJSchwarz
I'd recomend for the color de-saturating it a bit and mabe mixing in a bit of yellow, yellow and gold just make people think that they're watching an old film for some reason.
Make Love Not War!
Make Love Not War!
I would recommend that you look up some information on color correcting old photos and then go in the opposite direction! Articles on photo color correction will tell you what is wrong with the color of an old photo and you can just create this distressing on your new images.
Here is a tutorial on color correction in Paintshop:
http://www.chipchapin.com/DigitalPhoto/
You can find plenty of these types of tutorials through any search engine. Most will use Curves or histogram features in Photoshop. These same features are available in most editing/post production apps (Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, etc.).
If you really want an education in color correction, I can?t recommend highly enough ?Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction? by Dan Margulis. While focusing on prepress and Photoshop, the information in the book is extremely useful to a filmmaker?s understanding of color. I haven?t seen anything else that really comes close.
Hope this helps.
Dan Rahmel
Author: "Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking"
http://www.cvisual.com
