Friday Night at the Movies with Adam Kiss

Hello everyone Adam Kiss here again. As you all know by now Marc and I have a shared love of films and today I'm going to talk to you about the subject of color vs. black and white in film. It’s a big subject and looking forward to getting into it

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So obviously in the modern day most movies are done in color and most people are shocked or upset if they realize a movie is in black and white. Movies over the past 100 years have been done in both black and white and color—there are so many black and white movies and there are so many color movies. Essentially in the silent era up until the mid-1930s everything was in black and white. There is debate on what was the very first feature length color film but it's not the Wizard of Oz like most people think. I know that Robin Hood was in 1937 with Errol Flynn and that was in color. Also the original A Star is Born with Frederic March was in 1937 and that was also in color. Gone With the Wind which some people assume was the first color feature was in 1939. But even before those first color feature films there were obviously shorter tests and shorter films in color dating back much earlier in time than that and certain forms of color photography had been around much earlier as well.

The point is that at the beginning, black and white was basically all that could be done in film and then when color started being an option in the late 1930s, it was very rare and only used by the most expensive productions. Gone with the wind was using all five technicolor cameras in existence for its production.

Then as technology advanced in the 1940s and 50s it became more and more common until suddenly there were more color movies than black and white. By the time the 1960s came around, shooting in black and white was either an artistic choice, or done for very low budget films, but most films (in my experience) were in color. Black and white is easier to shoot and light because you can use more “unrealistic” lighting setups with more harsh and high contrast light and it will look great, whereas in color it will look “fake” and “lit”. Black and white lighting is particularly good for “noir” films, although certainly in the modern day “neo-noir” films are done mostly in color. 

I personally love both black and white and color. I love vibrant colors—especially because in my film projects I depart from the dark and “gray” color scheme of most modern color movies. I like bright colors in my films, and in my recent film: My Last Words we used very vibrant colors reminiscent of older films, but I also included some black and white sequences that were useful in telling the story. So I had the best of both worlds. But what do you think? Do you prefer color or black and white in film?