For a series of profiles on working cameramen, to be publiced on this site, we conducted an interview with Robby Müller. Here's a short preview of that conversation.

Robby told me that he received a phone call from an American DP asking him what to do, the caller wanted to make a film that had to look like a black and white film. What should I do? He asked Robby. And Robby says: '... shoot it in black and white, of course! Best thing to do is to use the years of expertise of what is more than 100 years old!
I have a long experience in black and white. Starting with photography, I developed my stuff myself. I know about development. You experience the strangest things, working with black and white. With that film 'Dead Man' from Jim Jarmusch we wanted it to be 'super black and white'. We ordered the material at Ilford. The most friendly people in black and white. The film didn' fit into the camera. Different perforations. We had to send it all back. We had to gather our material just about from every place we could find then. We couldn't find enough, from that Double X material.'  Robby told me that he didn't like the stock, found it 'very uninteresting material, greyish'.

"They made this double X for us and normally it is about 250 asa and now it appeared to be 400 asa. Every time our film was overexposed. There was nobody who could explain us what was causing this! Nobody at the lab knew it. The only thing I could do was lower my exposure, give the film less light. And that was annoying. We where working with enormous contrast. Bright sun and dark shadows. And we needed something extensive to catch up with it. Now it turned out to be a gamble. Later, much later I received a very interesting answer on my question. From a man at a German lab. An old rot in the business. 'Logical!' he said, 'that is always like that. When the negative hasn't been stored long enough, the negative needs time to mature. Just like an apple.' Only then, some time after we shot the film somebody told me that! People at Kodak they hadn't got a clue! All the black and white people are dead now! They are all young people now. And black and white is in their perception from a lower order.'

 
Thanks to Edwin Verstegen at 'Het Raam' for lending Sony A1-HDV camera