Mel Is Back In Black (& White)
George Miller's 1981 Classic offers some of the best reasons to go back to black and white.
The Project
The Road Warrior was a slam dunk choice for conversion to black & white. It was a groundbreaking action movie in 1981, but viewing it today in the light of George Millers Mad Max Fury Road, it suffers from its dated look, most notably the costume design that reflects an 80's view of the apocalypse. No doubt the hoards of survivors raided the sporting goods store for shoulder pads and hockey masks before moving on to the food warehouses. Much of it's 1980's look is easily overlooked in black & white, and what we are left with is a dusty, gritty, well-crafted classic western with cars and trucks instead of horses and carriages. The flat landscape of the Australian desert, blowing dust, and lot's of chrome make for beautiful black and white images. It changes the mood and feel without losing any of the well crafted editing and spectacular practical stunts, crashes, and speed. This is the hight of Mel Gibson bad-assery.
Mad Max 2 - The Road Warrior — FFR Black and White Conversion Project Trailer
All rights reserved to original title property owner, Warner Brothers, 1981
Soundtrack from Mad Max Fury Road by Junkie XL, Water Tower Music, 2015. All rights reserved.
Choosing A Look Based On Max Landscape
Limiting the chroma of of an image to zero does not mean limited options for the look of the resulting black and white image. In addition, finding a black and white look to encompass an entire film can very much effect and be effected by the film in question. For a classic film noir, one with subjects surrounded by heavy shadows, letting the shadows go dark while mid-ranging the highlights might be perfect mood.
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For the Road Warrior, grit, dust, sweat, and the texture within black leather, set in the bright wide open Australian desert, calls for the widest range of grays in both highlights and shadows. The challenge this film in particular presented was finding contrast in all that desert landscape, and keeping the sky tone consistent from shot to shot. Fluctuations between shades of blue sky within a single scene may go unnoticed in a color print, but become more obvious when reduced to their gray value.
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The image variations on the left demonstrate how choosing an initial filter before grading for highlights and shadows can effect the contrast and detail available, and change the look from flat to crisp.
Original Color
Saturation 0%, no adjustments
Maximum range & detail for the final look.
This shot of Max against a blue gray sky illustrates how color can be relied on to contrast subject from background, as the warm light skin tones do the work. Conversion to gray though shows the balanced gray value they share. Pulling them apart in this case, we brightened the entire scene, and dropped the blacks so the edges of the subject separate subject from background.
Original Color
Zero Saturation
Final: Red filter with high contrast in shadows and blacks
Timeline of the first 30 minutes of The Road Warrior in Adobe Premiere.
Production Notes
Source Material
4K file drawn from privately owned HHD media disk, converted to high-bit rate H264.m4v
Tools
Adobe Premiere V23.6 — Editing , BW grading and rendering
Handbreake V1.6.1 — Source format conversion
Topaz Video AI V3.4.0 — Specific frame rate, sharpening and motion stabilization effets.
Edits
Very few edits were made to the original cut. Intent was to preserve original with a few exceptions. They include:
• Cut the original opening montage of Mad Max 1 - unnecessary for familiar audiences and outdated.
• New updated title graphics.
• Doubled the frame rate of a few shots that were speed up in original to show speed, but today look silly.
• AI motion stabilization on arial shots that showed the limitations of 1981 equipment.
• AI sharpening on several shots out of focus due to camera dolly focus pull.
BW Grading
Grading was done in Adobe Premiere using three to four adjustment layers cut shot-by-shot using auto-scene detection markers. Adjustment layers included a saturation 0%, an overall scene adjustment layer, a specialty filter layer, and a shot-by-shot final adjustment layer for an estimated 1,500 individual level settings. Shots are judged based on original lighting and imposed black and white contrast variations, luminary scope readings for consistency and the editors artistic value judgments.
Details on B&W conversion process can be found in the members page here.
Challenges Found
This 1981 classic, like many of its generation, suffer not only from the flaws a 4K master can reveal, but from what Black and White treatment can reveal. Slight differences in the tonal value of the sky from shot to shot look minor when they are all somewhat blue. But when they are all gray, those differences become more jarring, and being 100% shot out doors with wide sky backgrounds, one can quickly tell when a scene was shot over many hours in a day with constantly changing skies. Because black and white highlights texture and edges far more than color, changes in focus become far more apparent. For instance, in the scene (seen in the trailer above) where Max sits on a pile of tires and tells his helpless sheep "you want to get out of here, you talk to me.", the camera goes from a tripod still (crisp and sharp) to a pull-in dolly shot to move in on Max and the focus change is glaring. No doubt it sent the original editor into a fit, but in high contrast B&W, it's salt on the wound.
