The Black and White looks questionable

Well of course he wanted to shoot it fast and cheap; he shot it in his home, on his week off, with his own equipment and money. As far as why he wanted the black and white aesthetic, that's impossible to say until we see the movie. Shakespeare is almost infinitely interpretable, so we won't know what the tone or focus of Whedon's version is until we see it. It could be an anachronistic invocation of old Hollywood glamour, an attempt to create a tone of moral ambiguity(which I would generally more associate with some of Shakespeare's other plays, but like I said, you can pretty much interpret every line of Shakespeare 100 different ways), or any of a dozen other effects. Right now we have no context for the choice, so it's pretty difficult to say it's a bad one.

I think the difference here is that he didn't really have any sort of actual budget. It's homemade along the lines of Dr. Horrible, which is a great webseries, but to be fair looks like a youtube video. I think the black and white was used to make it look less lofi than Dr. Horrible.

Totally disagree.

My local theater comes up with so many stupid gimmicks to "enhance" mediocre movies that it makes my head ache. 3-D abd D-Box seating and whatnot that I am looking forward to a movie where there aren't any gimmicks or explosions or dumb crap to try to cover up a lack of story. Just the actor's ability and a good story.

It's been a long time.

At the Q&A at TIFF, Whedon admitted the Black and White was a result of the fact that set design was largely impossible because it was in his own home. The color of his house would've off-set the tone of the film, so black and white was used to help make the film feel more timeless. Ad it absolutely works in the film.

It says Market Price! WHAT MARKET ARE YOU SHOPPING FROM?!

I figured it was done to make the house less obvious. The walls look white but they probably are not. The only problem I have with it is the color timing isn't great. There are scenes where the black and white is masterful, like the party. But then there are scenes where it switches between green tinged, brown tinged and true black and white all in the same scene (when the Prince and count find out about the deception).

There's also some weird issues about filming in Joss' house. Several scenes take place in a little girls room. The scenes are wonderfully played but there's no little girl in the cast. I was pulled out of the scene thinking, "That's Joss' daughters room. "

Having now seen the movie, the black and white works really well. I didn't even notice it after a few minutes; I was too caught up in the story.

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My blog, as if you care: http://agilebrit.livejournal.com/.

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The RED can look good in B&W, IF YOU ACTUALLY DO A DECENT DIGITAL INTERMEDIATE!

This looks like Josh did the color timing himself over a weekend. Looks really cheap most of the time. No reason it couldn't have been made to look better.