The Movies and Black hats

[Warlock]

In the Golden Era movies, I can remember very few black or black looking fedoras. Is my memory faulty? Was that color that rare then? Was there some other reason?

 

[Steve]

Being shot in monochrome, they probably avoided them for aesthetic reasons.

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

I've seen plenty of black-looking hats in black and white movies, but they might have been dark colored like navy blue, dark brown, etc. [huh]

 

[Doh!]

Being shot in monochrome, they probably avoided them for aesthetic reasons.

That makes perfect sense. Even the Superman costume that Kirk Alyn wore in the original serials was really colored brown and yellow because it read better on b&w film.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

The Lone Ranger's mask was purple when they shot with black and white film. If purple looked black then what did black look like?

 

[Steve]

The Lone Ranger's mask was purple when they shot with black and white film. If purple looked black then what did black look like?

Too dark. Have a look at my avatar, the hat is silver-gray but comes out much darker in a well-lit environment with even exposure.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Tha't what I thought. It comes out like an inky hole. Now I remember when I was a model we did some black and whites where I was wearing black and white and it flopped miserably. The black was just too dead and black and all black just got swallowed up into a dark background.

 

[MrNewportCustom]

The Lone Ranger's mask was purple when they shot with black and white film. If purple looked black then what did black look like?

It looked like an absolute void. Imagine the Lone Ranger looking out at you from a black hole.

I've done lots of B&W and color photography, and it's very dificult to keep detail in anything that's black or white. I've managed it, even with black and white in the same image, but it took a lot of bracketing in the camera and/or dodging and burning in the darkroom.

In theold movies, blood was usually depicted using chocolate syrup (You'd've thought it'd been catsup, eh? lol ) Red tends to photograph very dark in B&W, so, who outside of the set would know?

Blue photographs light, even well into the medium shades. The first time I photographed a gal in a medium blue silk dress, I was surprised when the dress looked white in the finished picture. The dress was about the shade of the background in Doh!'s avatar of Dick Track (see above) but not quite as rich.


Lee