A Study of Black and White Filmmaking 

Ad at the end of your BLM video.

This essay has far deeper issues than that, buddy.

He isn’t even the first onscreen death. That would be her family. Then the people at the cliff. Bad example.

You should do a video about representation about cars in films

What's wrong with the Harry Potter scene at 1:04? It stutters hard

indian people also wear white on funerals

Was it in Egypt that black meant order, life or fertility?

Here in Ireland black cats are also seen as a symbol of good luck

Where i live black Cats are a Bad Omen and White Symbols cleanliness and purity I guess thats Just normal with some exemptions Here and there around the world

@@bendover2684 I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to the statistics of the black and white dichotomy's meaning for 7.5 billion people. The first problem would be the question of from when the statistics would begin, because meanings change over time. Next is the second problem that what is considered to be held under the meaning of black and/or white also changes from culture to culture and era to era. For example, the idea of white people is a relatively recent invention; and while the Irish are currently considered white, there was a time when they weren't held under that category. Finally, the third problem is the demarcation of people into groups. Would we divide people into groups based on their nationality, religion or cultural inheritances, etc? Taoism and Christianity use the dichotomy in very different ways, and Asian countries have a lot of Christians and Taoists. Then there are the more esoteric groups that don't appear on censuses. To simply assume that your understanding of the dichotomy is the norm around the world is cultural arrogance. That's a problem I have with this video. There's nothing wrong with only studying the symbolism of America and England in cinema, if that is what you want to do; the problem occurs when you don't clarify this, and extend the symbolism to be culturally universal.

indeed, tho the design of darth(dark) vader seems intended to be mainly black and dark, because he's a dark person inside i.e. youngling serial murderer dark. I don't think it's a race connection given his troops are all white clad, officers sitting around are all white, and the galactic empire was literally patterned after nazi Germany.

I love movies that are colored in red. I want to own a whole room filled with red. Red lights. Red walls. Red floor. Red everything. Itd be nutz.

@@MicheallikeMJ it would, just like you, after spending extended amounts of time within it.

@@Hoichael My bedroom used to have red walls and it didn't drive me crazy

Exactly. Humans have been sitting in front of a campfire for thousands of years and the light from the fire provides comfort, warmth and safety; walk 30 feet away from the campfire and you'll see how dark the forest really is. This has been ingrained into the DNA. You could of course argue that fire is a symbol of Hell, it's evil because it destroys everything etc.

@@Hoichael Could you explain the science behind your argument?

This is exactly the film I was going to mention - such a powerful use of black and white.

Well this all seems to be pondering on the idiotic Riots.

@@bendover2684 And virtue-signaling to boot!

Ben Dover spoken like a Klansman

@@bendover2684 it's horrific you think that, people have died, for goodness sake.

how is it strange he didn't mention that? like.. there is so much media out there to discuss why on earth is it weird he didn't mention batman

@@EmileFeik His point is that he's cherrypicking to support a thesis, and a silly one at that.

M. Gustave H. He’s talking about film overall. The only one cherry picking is you

@@roua9882 He's applying a cherrypicked theory TO film overall. To say that this applies to all of film is absolutely ridiculous.

How could he add Batman references when he's referencing Se7en and David Fincher.... Again....

Absolutely agree the idea also that black and white tropes of good and evil come from race a real reach also. I'd argue it came from religions and myths. Long before most white people meet a black person we had this idea. Light is considered safe the day time is not full of predators unlike the darkness. Alot of kids have a fear of the dark not because they're racist. Old paintings portray this trope alot. I think a better title for this is how the B&W format was used for racism.

@@wanwan3994 I get where you come from, but you shouldn't assume that your black and white meanings are universal; In my country black is associated with maturity and fertility, because that's how the earth looks after it rains. In Asia white is associated with death, not black, and is the preferred color at funerals. I think the point is to try and question our view of the western symbolism of colors, that was used to misrepresent race issues. It'd be much more interesting to see that canon be defied rather than followed, don't you think?

@@wanwan3994 I would argue that black and white thinking/symbolism gave birth to western racialism, and not the other way round. While black and white, separately and together, signify many different values, there is a tradition in the west of "white good" and "black bad" symbolism that stretches farther back in time than the recent invention of whiteness as a racial identifier.

@@EEEEeee2748 I'm not saying it's universal but he was clearly talking about American made movies. The tones they used of black and white would be for a American audience/from a view point of what the person grew up culturally knowing that made the film. So I have no reason to bring up any other culture because it doesn't matter to the point.

the problem is that, whether you recognize it or not it is creating subconscious bias. most Americans fail racial bias tests, even Black ones. Tony might be hanging the style out to dry, but it is a conversation that needs to be said.

Then make your own video 🤷‍♀️

@@charatrice6272 Why would he make a video adding onto this when theirs already a perfectly good place to in the comments section?

@@charatrice6272 I do believe a comment section is one of the places you can ask a creator what you'd like to see.

You could do that, but I think this video is pretty much just about American Films, fairly mid-high budget ones. To creators like "Inside a mind" (in which they're American) usually forget the world exists and everything and everyone lives in the glorious land of the GOD BLESSED US OF A 🇺🇸.

antiblack racism is not just an american phenomenon lol

I found myself asking this too, all the shade(as it were) is being thrown to 'black and white racial symbolism' which is not actually intrinsic to the medium, yet the title questions literally the entire medium. i feel click-baited by this premise.

Yes! This.

Or any Kurosawa movie

I know plenty of black & white movies that are fantastic like Dracula(1931), Frankenstein(1931), The Mummy(1932), The Invisible Man(1933), Bride Of Frankenstein(1935), The Wolfman(1941), Psycho(1960), Fort Apache(1948), Casablanca(1942), Night Of The Living Dead(1968), & Stagecoach(1939). Every movie I've just are great black & white films. They don't need an once of color.

Seek only evidence to support the conclusion. Ignore all discomfirming evidence.

iirc he did mention it in a separate video more specific to the meaning of each color, maybe he wanted to bring to light lesser-known examples? but I think it still fits his opinion on binary symbolism because the use of color in that movie was more geared towards the hope of breaking free from the regime and looking to the future?

​@@adalester9 I don't really think he meant that all B&W films are bad per se, just that color can add another dimension of symbolism for progressive messages. I wouldn't be surprised if he meant this video as a tribute to the BLM movement

In Midsommar

Exactly! A beautiful example of how political views can affect your sense of reality: since 'now you see it' tried to analyze the movie from a racial-sensitive point of view, he saw exactly what he wanted to see.

@@alexmir1763 Or it was offscreen, so he forgot

@@TheRiptideRaptor He happened to forget what happens in the very scene he is analyzing?? come on. You are basically saying that while he accused the scene of racism, he forgot what actually happened in the scene - which just happens to prove him wrong. I like most of his videos, but there's no saving this one. He decided to make a pro-BLM video and he did just that - and the rate at which he lost touch with the facts once he decided on the intended political message of his video is alarming. Edit: and the guy doing the killing literally wears the black guy's friend's FACE. You cannot miss this detail while watching the scene.

And how is supporting brown people (because we are not even the color black) Politcal? we are freaking humans nothing is is ever good enough for yall. I know half of yall dont care for BLM but dont be mad cause he does. And I must be slow because I also would not count the off screen death in Midsommar . The director did that to show the evil of the cult. He literally did that on purpose! But yall will convince yourselfs that anything that clearly shows racism isn't racism . . . Can we at least as fans of this channel just enjoy it 🤦🏾‍♂️

Jonathan Böcker I didn’t watch the video because I always felt this guy conflates everything to racism. So I’m gonna guess that he’s done it again.

Yes it's more of a mislabeling of black people as 'black', because they're not black at all, brown is closer to the truth.

@@petef15 and white people usually are pink, not white

@@Chris-rg6nm yeah, but the concept is "light" vs "dark", of which black and white are the extremes.

Where exactly did he state those tropes were born from rascism?

He was the most logical one of them all, this is why they kill off the black guys in movies, he see the danger his white friend don't see.

He was not even the second or third to die. The first to die was Simon who the cult said left in the middle of the night because he didn't want to stick around. The girlfriend, Connie, was confused by this and went after him and she disappeared. Later on, you find out that they were both murdered by the cult. Then came Mark. And then, finally, Josh. Josh was in the building when someone wearing Mark's skin as a suit attacked him. Out of the group, Josh was second to last to die. Christian died after him.

@@mekkio77 The first death shown was his, though... so it kind of runs in the middle between following and averting the trope.

don't forget the family in the opening scene. or the two elders jumping off the cliff

joppippoj They are clearly not main characters though

Christ, I've watched some dumb RU-vid videos in my time, but this one must surely deserve a medal for achievement in the field of wrongheadedness.

@@neonatalpenguin I don't see why people are hating on this video so much... it makes fine sense to me.

@@kayj312 I mean, I've already given an example of what's wrong with it. I can breakdown the full video if you like, but that would involve me watching it through again and you reading the subsequent text wall, and I don't think either of us are keen on that prospect. In summary, though, it's a fallacious (often self-contradictory) argument, from a completely Americo-centric POV, that is laid out poorly by way of huge leaps of logic, convenient ignoring of examples that don't fit the thesis statement, disingenuous linking of completely disparate ideas and blatant untruths. The shame of it is that many younger viewers, like yourself I'm guessing, will watch this completely uncritically, be persuaded of the argument based almost completely on the fact that it's one of those videos where a calming voice talks with seeming authority over well edited clips, and thereafter will use it as a wholly incorrect basis to dismiss a huge chunk of film history, which is an outcome I actively resent.

Easily the worst video I've seen from this channel. Bad enough and, as neonatalpenguin put it, wrongheaded enough to prompt an unsubscribe.

@@derfanddarf1 Then unsubscribe, we won't miss you......

Not only that, according to comments, example of black guy dying first is wrong and half of what he says feels like biased bullshit. I like his videos usually, but this seems strange and I disagree with many claims he made.

@@kaksspl I think the woke race talk had you squirming.

Also very biased films as majority revolve around race or racism to critique b&w films as a whole lol.

This video is emblematic of a lot of what is wrong with the current climate.

Exactly. This is unfortunately sloppy argumentation. The power of the video essay allows for enhancing arguments, not resting on non annotated shots to communicate abstract concepts on behalf of the author. That's the point of video essay, to explore what's going on in the shot we all saw and argue what's going on here. While not I don't think it's accurate, I think that what he intended here was that the mixing of colors, both in a unnatural (meaning we never see something like that in nature) textured collage fashion and literally mixing all the colors together greats a discomfort. Like the child who mixes all their paints together to then be sad & unsettled that the all the beautiful colors have turned into a muddled, muted mess. However I think the discomfort also has equal weight on the textures, morphic and reflective qualities of the materials and not just the colors. This is why some people call Annihilation beautifully horrific. There's lots of aesthetically pleasing qualities to the imagery and even the qualities of the "corruption" that happens to the DNA of organic matter in the area. But you also know it's a source of danger, it's mysterious, it's invisible & intimate in it's threat, sneaking in and mixing up the building blocks of what make you, you. There's a grace & subtlety to it, but explicit from the beginning of the film that it's dangerous. Perhaps like Anglerfish, the beauty is to entrance & lure prey into it's jaws. That shot though did everything but rest on the visuals of "mixing colors" for the discomfort. But the entire film reinforcing and building up the threat, the ideas, the allure, the mystery. It perhaps also leverages our unease with alien shapeshifters. Things that have so much power & control. That are so intrusive and intimate. It plays on being fooled. It plays on privacy. It plays on luring. It plays on the reflective light shining in her eyes like she's under a spell. It plays on the emotion on her face as she shares into the beautiful abyss. It plays on lots of things, and the visual depiction of mixing metallic fluids & refracted color was picked to play into all of that, at to be alluring & beautiful - clearly something the film wants to play with. Also pretty sure a motive for that visual was the metaphor of reflections, refraction, prisms, organic physics/biology (something the film plays with elsewhere) and infinite possibility & immense imperceivable power/awe. (also something 2001 lightspeed sequence plays with).

There are specific shades and hues of colours in colour theory which can make people uncomfortable and there's a psychology sphere which studies common affects different colours has on people, it's not that everyone *knows* colour means discomfort it's that almost everyone *feels* that, not with all colours but specific ones in a specific delivery of such colours and they mostly common among people of one group or culture and it ties deeply with our survival past and culture coding

@@alinaschumacher3 Indeed, and I really wish he would cite these studies!

i think it's more that in juxtaposition with the normalcy of a primarily desaturated setting, color seems out-of-place, foreign, or threatening

The color red is associated with blood and that can make us feel uncomfortable. Or a color that is foreign to the environment can make us uncomfortable (e.g. someone wearing a bright green jumpsuit in an environment where everyone is dressed in darker colors). But yeah he fails to elaborate on a lot of his points.

Well said.

It's like you didn't even watch the video...

@@MaiaPalazzo I did watch it, did you. He says that good guys typically wear white while bad guys wear black. He shows Star Wars as an example, which it doesn't really fit because of the stormtroop wearing white.

@@LuxiBelle it does, cuz they're the empire trying to be seen as the good guys.

@@LuxiBelle he was referring to darth Vader.

@@LuxiBelle I think the contrast is supposed to be white clothed Luke vs dark clothed Vader? (and even later, Rey and whatshisname)

its a 14 minute video what do u expect

@@ThaMango421124 yeah, but it's not really that informative. Just some opinions. Cool, but this channel has better videos

he is compressing over a century of film history into 12 minutes. It is going to be reductive.

@@LuxiBelle see my comment above

@@BowarePL I'm not sure anybody would click a year long video - which it'd have to be to fully cover everything. He covered the views old film makers had on how colour worked, which I found informative.

Schindler’s List , Citizen Kane and the original psycho film are my favorite black and white movies

Bergmann's Persona comes to mind

@William Magee I understand that, but I don't think he made a good case for it. I would even make the opposite claim. Not having color simplifies the picture. If you want to make a movie entertaining, it is easy to rely on action, beautiful scenery etc. If you shoot in black and white, that is not possible. Rather, because of the lack of visual beauty, and because you can not distract people as easily with action, you have to put much more focus on the story and character arcs. And that is why 1) movies are much more action focused and less philosophical today and 2) most modern black and white movies are pretentious pseudo philosophy and not action movies

@William Magee i accept that, thank you for the comment :)

you're right about josh, but still, the first to die is connie's boyfriend. who's black)

Dr. Uncanny I’ve read that people think he may have been dead and it was Christian hallucinating that his lungs were still moving. I personally don’t buy that explanation, but it’s possible.

i mean the empire thinks their the good guys

Probably had to edit the footage so that WB wouldn't nail him for copyright.

@@jonahkirkhartericson5387 i think the clips are suitably short to evade copyright it just looks like an encoding error maybe in the render or he put the glitched one in as a placeholder and forgot

Seriously The watchmen spoiler took me way by surprise

@@DirtBlockDigger it finished airing more than six months ago

stephwashere doesn’t matter

@@stephwashere not all of us are mindless consoomers that watch everything when they release, 6 months isn't a long time

Well, yes. But that's just color theory, isn't it? Picking the right palette to tell your story in and whatnot.

Wdym?

I mean, don't, I feel like this video could bring some interesting discussions though I do have some issues with it myself

*slowclap* 👏 wow. I think i have some arguments to keep to my self.

A muddled mess of inanities designed to cash in on #BLM

Trash

i agree with you, but the part where he mentions that historically lightning in film was optimized for white faces is the only brief moment where he brings up a actual argument with substance. Black actors didn't play lead roles or any other parts at all in Hollywood movies, they did not have the economic or social power to be considered a marketable audience so they also did not get included into any form of conception. And those classic Hollywood BW-films shaped and defined the medium up to this day. That's something we can argue about. But that's not a problem of tolerance but a systemic, social and economic one, and it sure as hell is not "culture says: white good, black bad" because he's unable to grasp the concept of composition and contrast.

@@francojosemuertes4273 I understand what you're saying.The argument for or against monochromatic movies has nothing to do with racial representation in motion pictures. You can't defend or deny one with the other. This video is such a stretch because it is trying to equate artistic limits and creative choice with class and racial social ideologies - when in the end the creator of the video can't seem to comprehend that film isn't supposed to be real life, so obvious we are going to control color and composition in a way that best tells our story. The point I was making with the lighting is no matter if our lighting principles are racially biased, exposing a face has nothing to do with color and everything to do with the amount of lumens coming from the light source, and obviously darker skin would require a higher lux to be properly exposed. But that has nothing to do with color in film and everything to do with exposure in film.

Exactly.

Is he a first on-screen death?

also: there's a great 50's Indian trilogy called the Apu trilogy. It's in black and white and exclusively stars dark-skinned people. They're lit beautifully (as was the main character of 'Roma'). It was the lighting techniques Americans often used, not something inherent to the medium of black and white.

this video made tons of sense, I guess it's not something you'd pick up if you didn't take film classes

@@kayj312 To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand this video

I wish this were satire

probably should remove that Egyptian art at the beginning of this vid as a representation of black=bad white=good

They were probably built in a time when that area was green.

@@TheWatchernator???? They literally called themselves 'the black land' it's kmtr or something in hieroglyphs.

Saw it in feburary in a cinema. One part where the alchemist stands in front of a projector explaining the holy mountain. It was like Jodo was at the back of the room blocking the projection, it was *the* most magical moment I've experienced in a cinema.

they're dressed in white though

Well said, I learned a lot from this guy and idk any RU-vidrs who haven’t made an error or lapse in judgment. What determines if they stick around is how they continue themselves afterwards, so we’ll see if he takes any comments/criticism into effect

Seriously... there’s a *lot* of racial issues surrounding Hollywood’s history and present that could, and should, be addressed. Heck, I’d argue that even the issue of light/dark symbolism and it’s potential to promote racism is worth analyzing. But to tie it to black and white films? That’s really, really reaching.

Yes.

I was gonna say something like that

This video isn't against black and white films as a concept wtf are you on about?

The essence of modern art. well the title and the thumbnail makes it seem like it is a video critiquing the concept of black and white movies because they’re racist and/or bigoted, so I thought this would be a fun comment

@@abg5381 What's it against?

Oh my god that was just last year...? This is the longest year ever...

Don't worry he didn't, he got it wrong like almost everything else in this video.

don't waste your time

The Giver would be a great example if he ever returns to this subject/analyzes with a different focus.