Sin City and 300

Sin City and 300

The film industry has defiantly advanced in it's technology over the last 50 years and is still growing to have the best technology to create films.

The has been a huge range of techniques, equipment and sets to create films, and I wanted to talk about a few in this blog, and they are - 

• Digital Blackbot
• Neo Noir Atmosphere
• Superimposition and
• Chroma Key

I want to talk about two films in particular that use these elements such as "300" and "Sin City"

Now "Sin City" has the Neo Noir/Film Noir atmosphere style which has been around for many years since the 1940's. But now has been updated and uses modern technology to create it, such as a Digital blacklot set by using H-D digital cameras and actors working on a green/blue screen set to create artificial backgrounds, which are then added in Post-production.

"Sin City" is one of the Few fully digital, live-action films to be created including the film "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow".

Facts about "Sin City's" colourisation in the film is that the entire film was shot in full colour and was converted to black and white. Sections of the film that did have colour, including clothing of the characters were colour-corrected digitally, which meant they had to heighten the contrast to show the clear deferences from the black and white.

This technique was also used in "300"

"300" also used other techniques such as Superimposition and Chroma key.

Superimposition - definition, "to print an image over another image so that both are seen at once", to give the image an overall effect or to conceal something in the image. the effect can be done using 2-D and 3-D images.

Another technique used in Chroma key which is a special effects/post-production technique
"compositing (layering) two images or video-streams together based on colour hues" (chroma range)." The technique is used to remove the background from the image/video/object, Or to create a a transparent top layer where a colour range is used to reveal another image behind it.

Chroma Key is also known as colour keying or colour-separation overlay or green/blue screen. Green/blue screens are the most effective in this technique because they differ in the hue from some human skin colours.

Chroma key can be created in software such as, Adobe After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Autodesk Smoke etc. 

There are also other films that use these techniques, equipment and sets - 

• "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"
• "Spy Kids" franchise
• "Speed Racer"
• "Avatar"
• "Alice in Wonderland"

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin_City_(film)#Proof_of_concept

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir#2000s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_backlot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superimposition

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/superimpose

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_key

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(film)#Reception