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A way to color black and white film stock?

ABHunter4L

ABHunter4L

Hello everyone!

I have a question that may or may not seem idiotic! I am a film student who is currently experimenting with 16mm black and white film. I am using Kodak Plus-x.
I would like to color one object in my film. Just one balloon I was wondering if it would be possible to go through each frame (Pain-stakingly) and with a marker color the balloon in. Is this possible? Or do you have any other suggestions? Thanks!
 
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How to color one object in black and white film stock

Hello!

I am currently a film student. We are working with 16 mm black and white film. For this project I am using kodak plus-x film. I want to be creative and "wow" my film teacher. In my film I want a certain object to appear in color. For this film it will be one balloon. Could I pain-stakingly go through each frame and manually color in the balloon with a marker? This may be a stupid question lol. But it's all I can think of! If this is how I should go about it, what type of marker should I use? Please tell me wether or not this will work, or if you have any other suggestions. Thanks!
 
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Back in the day, when the film was being edited, they had people actually paint the film to color a certain person or object. You can see examples of this in "The Great Train Robbery", which came out in 1903 and is often regarded as the first film with a plot. Anyways, you can probably digitally paint it with whatever editing program you have. Or, you could go old school.
 
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If you are working with after effects, it would be pretty easy to make a new solid object and then mask off the shape of your balloon. Then, just animate the mask to go along with your balloon (it won't be changing shape that much, so would be pretty fast).

Just set the solid object to overlay or color or something like that .
 
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Depending on how you did your shots and art direction, you might be able to simplify the entire process.

Like if you want 1 RED balloon or only the color red to show up, you can adjust the channels in your NLE or in a post program and turn all the other colors off but that one color. If you did art direction and lighting well, you can easily isolate the one object by default.

If you only want a single object and everything is colorful, you'll have to create an animated mask to follow it in every single shot.
 
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I am actually doing the same thing right now. I am making an experimental film both with clear leader and my archive footage. With getting details I used sharpie markers. I also have a friend doing a similar effect by coloring it in with acrylic paint. With getting the whole film stock colored (so it appears red and black or some other color than white) I was told the best solution is using fabric dye like Rit. I am also experimenting with soaking the film stock with food coloring or tea bags to see how that will turned out. If you make a mistake or want a different look you could scratch away at the emulsion with a razor. I hope this gives you some ideas for current and future film projects.
 
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I am very familiar with Stan Brackage. During my experimental film class we watched the documentary called Brackage and that's when I really got creative with this type of work. I never researched Len Lye but I am going to look him up in the near future. Thanks for the recommendation.
 
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