Black Background Technique

 

Advantages to black backgrounds

There are several advantages to filming with a black background.
They are easy to set up
They eliminate distractions
They make colours and characters pop out
Also, a black background adds a very serious tone, which works well for adult themes and serious ideas. The black Background takes away any sense of location, which forces the viewer focus on whats happening. In the first few seconds of my opening sequence i will have a black background, and a hip hop montage of extreme close up shots of clowns doing crack.

How i will create my "blackground"

I will build a makeshiftt frame out of wood and scrap metal, and i will hang sheet of heavy black fabric over it. Heavy Black fabrick works the best because unlike paper, it is non reflective, and just looks better in general.

Lighting smoke infront of the blackground

Smoke is hard to film infront of a blackground because it has a natural grey colour that only really shows up when light is reflected on it. So i need to set up a lighting source with a mirror opposite to it, so the smoke gets an equal amount of light from either side. I need to put the smoke and the light quite far infront of the blackground so that light doesnt get reflected onto that by accident.