Is there a problem with black, white, or red cars?

[Tom S]

When the recruiters near me want extras with a car for TV shows or movies, they always state no black, white, or red cars? Is because it would draw attention away from the main characters/cars or is there a reason why these colors are disqualified?

Specifically, I wanted to use a white SUV in an indie feature. Is there a reason not to use this color?

 

[Bob Gundu]

Same goes for clothing. White can blow out, black can get crushed, and red usually appears pixelated. Its less a problem with red colours today than it was in the past.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Gee, it's not a problem to me. We run into black or white or red cars all the time in feature films and TV shows, and they're fine as long as they're lit and exposed properly. I've done plenty of car commercials where they used those colors. I have to admit, though, I think silver cars are used more often in commercials. But I have very definitely worked on some black Mercedes commercials, so there's one example. I did a BMW commercial about 12-13 years ago for Janusz Kaminski that definitely had some (but not all) white models.

If anything, the chrome and reflections on the cars is harder to control than the car color itself, because of the specular highlights, and we do work at keeping those under control. I've done plenty of commercials where we did multiple passes that got re-assembled in VFX so that each section of the car was exposed under optimum conditions. With finished commercials, we can use external mattes or complex tracking windows to optimize the car color and make it "pop" compared to the background, which is kind of the whole point of the commercial.

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

I don't know about broadcast codecs, but some codecs, especially JPEG, don't like pure colours such as red. You lose a lot of resolution and the whole thing is a mess. I'm sure you've all seen that.

 

[Terry VerHaar]

Doesn't just about every film that has a rich person with a driver, spies, or well-heeled crooks end up with a black SUV in it? LOL