Re: Silent movie look

[Michael Slowe] "there is a Black & White setting"

Chris-
If you're trying for the look of a silent movie in Media 100 there's more too it than just a black and white setting. Unfortunately once you apply the setting under the classic color correction mode trying anything else undoes the black and white conversion.

Assuming your goal is to stay inside the Media 100 environment, what I would do is render out the black and white footage then re-import it so you could tweak it using the curves commands. Try using curves to "crush the blacks" -- pull the lower level, ie - the bottom 20-30% further down / darker. Then perhaps trying the opposite with the top end of the range. This will give you a more limited range of grays which was the look of much of the earliest film stocks.

The available tinting option seems fairly limited so instead you might want to use Red to create an overlay track of a solid color Vary the opacity of the layer to taste to give the footage a lower contrast and a color cast which connotes old, ie. - sepia.

Old silent movie footage also often has places where it was broken and re-spliced. Try adding a few very short jump cuts in places.

You might also want to add a track overlay of dust and scratches to help sell the idea of the video being old. There is a film artifacts collection from Artbeats that has lots of good stuff like that, but there are also many other things like it online.

Now if you REALLY want to get serious and really want to achieve the look, XML your way over to Apple's Color application or another high end color grading app where you'll have an even greater ability to tweak. You'll also have a large number of pre-sets available including the ability to "bloom" the highlights further mimicking the old film look.

Like so many things in this business there's really no one way to go about what you're trying to achieve, so try a few. If you have the time experiment with as many as you can.