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Bleach bypass, also known asskip bleach orsilver retention, is a modification of traditional film processing that is used to achieve muted colors but rich blacks. It generally involves the weakened or partial omission of thebleaching function during the last stage ofprocessing of color film. By doing this, thesilver crystals that produce an image in photochemical film stocks are retained in the emulsion alongside the color dyes. This effectively results in a black-and-white image superimposed on the three color separations unified by the final print of color film stock. Film printed in this way usually have reducedsaturation andexposure latitude, along with increasedcontrast and more prominentgrain.[1] It usually is used to maximum effect in conjunction with aone-stop underexposure.
Bleach bypass can be done to any photochemical step in the process, be itoriginal camera negative,interpositive,internegative orrelease print. For motion pictures, it is usually applied at the internegative stage, as insurance companies usually are reluctant to have the camera negative bleach bypassed, or the interpositive (a "protection"/"preservation" element), in the event that the look is agreed to be too extreme, and the cost of the process for each individual release print is most often cost-prohibitive. The effect, however, will render slightly differently at each stage, especially between the camera negative and interpositive stages.
Bleach bypass generally refers to a complete circumvention of the bleach stage of development, and is the most commonly offered service among laboratories.Technicolor'sENR andOZ andDeluxe Labs'ACE andCCE processes are proprietary variants which allow the film to be only partially bleached, giving thecinematographer a more finely tuned control over the effect rendered by the process.
The effect can be simulated withdigital intermediatecolor grading.
"Bleach bypass", as used in this context, was first used inKon Ichikawa's filmHer Brother (1960). A former chemist, cinematographerKazuo Miyagawa invented bleach bypass for Ichikawa's film.[2][3][4] Miyagawa had been inspired by the color rendition created byOswald Morris forJohn Huston's 1956 film ofMoby-Dick usingdye-transferTechnicolor, and was achieved through the use of an additional black-and-white overlay. Actually, this is a throw-back to pre-1944 Technicolor, which incorporated a silver-containing "blank receiver" with the silver image printed from the green separation negative, but at 50% density, upon which the color dyes were imprinted by utilizing "imbibition"; this concept may have been employed here, but at a different density.
The technique remained largely overlooked by Western cinematographers until its use byRoger Deakins in all release prints for the movieNineteen Eighty-Four.
The effect subsequently became a standard option in film labs around the world and saw widespread use before the near-universal adoption ofdigital cinema in the 2020s. Practitioners include cinematographersRodrigo Prieto,Remi Adefarasin,Darius Khondji,Dariusz Wolski,Walter Carvalho,Oliver Stapleton,Newton Thomas Sigel,Park Gok-ji,Shane Hurlbut,Steven Soderbergh (as "Peter Andrews"),Tom Stern,Vittorio Storaro, andJanusz Kamiński (notably onSteven Spielberg'sSaving Private Ryan[5] andMinority Report).
