Modern Noir Collection

[one69chev]

Hi everyone.  Happy Wednesday.  I have been working on a project and I would like to share it with the community, but I am not really sure where and if it qualifies.  I did attempt to upload it to the spleen, but it is not exactly a fan edit or preservation.  Basically it boils down to my love of old black and white Noir films.  I have taken some of my favorite films and created stripped down iso's in black and white to replicate the classic Noir feel.  My first five films are done, the first being No Country For Old Men, in my opinion a perfect Neo-Noir film from the Cohen brothers.  So the list looks like this:

No Country For Old Men
Unforgiven
Minority Report
The Game (1997)
Raiders of the Lost Ark

And admittedly, Raiders may not be 100% Noir, but it looks badass as a black and white film.  Anyway so that is my question/request.  Any input would be welcome and I have included a quick shot as an example.

Thanks!

[PDB]

Interesting stuff. Good luck with the project.

[one69chev]

Thank you. I am not sure where to upload them or if there would be sufficient interest. Any suggestions? Per spleen regs, i could not post them there as they were not strictly speaking edits or preservations. Maybe the blu would be a better choice...

[spoRv]

Maybe the blu would be a better choice...

I think so.

[deleted user]

How did you do the B&W conversion? Just 0 saturation and more contrast or did you do fine-tuning for each shot tuning the amount of luminance from each colour channel?

[one69chev]

How did you do the B&W conversion? Just 0 saturation and more contrast or did you do fine-tuning for each shot tuning the amount of luminance from each colour channel?

Great question.  I am using a fairly inexperienced but I wanted to try something new, so I found that for me, turning saturation to 0 looked pretty good.  But after some advice from spoRV, I re-worked No Country by adjusting the contrast quite a bit for a better result, while trying to find a good balance for the blacks and whites.  Unfortunately, I do not really have the time to devote to a shot by shot project---2 teenagers, my beloved wife and a full time job prohibit that right now, so I tried to do what I could to the best of my abilities.  If I can get another program with more features and practice a bit more, I might consider doing something shot by shot.

[CSchmidlapp]

The 'No Country' frame grab looks very dynamic. Nice.

Ive tried a few films out by dropping the saturation and boosting the contrast, mainly in real time adjusting my Graphics Card settings as I view.
L.A Confidential was a good one that would fit nicely into your collection.
Spielberg's War of the Worlds was another I remember looked great.

Good luck with your projects good sir.

[Beber]

Blade Runner, I believe, qualifies for a noir look. Especially the original with Deckard's voice-over.

[one69chev]

The 'No Country' frame grab looks very dynamic. Nice.

Ive tried a few films out by dropping the saturation and boosting the contrast, mainly in real time adjusting my Graphics Card settings as I view.
L.A Confidential was a good one that would fit nicely into your collection.
Spielberg's War of the Worlds was another I remember looked great.

Good luck with your projects good sir.

Thanks!  L.A. Confidential is actually next on my list and would make a perfect Noir film; I had also thought about The Usual Suspects as well.  I just received my HDZeta Blu Ray of L.A. and plan to add that to the list once I get a bit of free time.

[Jetrell Fo]

I love seeing fans being able to learn about something like this, so that if they too want to try, they do. Thanks for sharing your ideas and passion with us here.