Colorized version?
-
strntz — 10 years ago(January 14, 2016 06:54 AM)
As long as the black and white are available for viewing, I don't see a problem.
Yes, that's exactly my point. If a dictator (say) wanted to colorize all B&W movies and destroy all B&W copies, I'd be screaming louder than anyone here.
If Leroy Neiman wanted to Neimanize his version of the Mona Lisa, I don't care as long as the original is protected. The only person who would have a right to complain is DaVinci, and he's been long gone. And I'm not convinced he's be as outraged as some people
Some folks need to learn what the definition of "deface" is. We live in a world where militants are actually
destroying
thousand year old works of art because they don't fit into their narrow minded vision of what the world should be.
There have been some shoddy attempts, particularly early on, e.g., Frank Sinatra with brown eyes in Suddenly. The technology has improved, more importantly those who are overseeing the colorizing have done a better job.
LOL. The first colorized movie I saw had a gray haired gentleman whose face tones would infiltrate his hair, so his hairline would change almost from frame to frame. Terrible. Later efforts are amazing except for the odd hues they use, but the fitment and shading today is amazing.
And I have no gripes with anyone who hates colorization as long as they don't force their preferences on the rest of the movie watchers. I used A-1 Steak Sauce as an analogy and I think it's appropriate: if someone wants to use this swill on a good piece of steak, let them. Just because I think it's sacrilege doesn't mean I think the product should be banned.
If a rapper wants to sample Nat King Cole for his hip-hop, let him. As long as the original is forever there for me to enjoy in my own way, I don't care what they do with their copy..
Thanks for the well considered comments.
Is very bad to steal Jobu's rum. Is very bad. -
momurr43 — 9 years ago(June 16, 2016 01:54 AM)
cvalance: I've decided to visit this Colorization Crash-site through you because you seem to be one of the more rational contributors, and I agree in general with your views.
I would love to be able to see every favorite B&W film of mine in the original natural colors that were there before the camera - but only in a technically good color system.
I'm always fascinated to see natural color stills from early B&W films made in the 1930s, when color films were extremely rare. (A shortlist of those I have seen: "The Sign of the Cross", "The Private Life of Don Juan", "Camille", "The Prince and the Pauper", "The Prisoner of Zenda", "Lost Horizon".) Natural color stills from B&W films of the 1940s were more common - for example: "Casablanca", "They Died With Their Boots On", "Hamlet" - but just as interesting. And in the 1950s many B&W productions were recorded in color photographs.
I'm also fascinated by natural color portraits of early stars who never appeared in a color film - everyone from W C Fields to Buck Jones.
Since early in the Silent Era, all films were deliberately designed in color, because the actors demanded it. They felt better wearing color costumes on color sets, even though almost all of the films would be in B&W. But, in most cases, we can only know through surviving costume and set designs what the original colors were like. And all this is complicated by the fact that B&W silent films are almost always on
Orthochromatic
stock, not
Panchromatic
stock, so that the tonal values are inevitably distorted. (For example, a red will look black and a blue will look pale gray.)
Natural color stills and color portraits from the Silent Era must be extremely rare, if any at all exist. I've never seen a single one. (Have you, or anyone else?) The covers of contemporary film magazines carried thousands of color portraits of the stars, but these were all paintings, not photographs. (Show me one natural color photograph among them all, and I'll be grateful.)
Even as late as January 1936 - when "
Photoplay
" apparently had the first natural color photograph (by
George Hurrell
) of a movie star (
Norma Shearer
) on the front cover of a movie magazine [see the
Internet Archive
website] - it's been claimed that there were only four (4) still color cameras in Hollywood. And it would be another two years (1938) before professional cut-sheet
Kodachromes
would be available for use in ordinary plate cameras. (Natural color portraits of film and stage stars - including Adele and Fred Astaire and Billie Burke - had appeared on back covers, inside covers, and inside pages of film magazines during the first half of the 1930s, but these were rare and in advertisements.)
With the sole exception of the French trichromatic
Gaumontcolor(1912)
system, natural color processes in early films were two-color, utilising either Red & Green or Red & Blue.
Artificial color systems included color-toning - in which a B&W positive was chemically treated to produce a monochrome image - and hand-coloring, with or without stencils, in which a B&W positive was painted with a wide variety of color dyes.
Both of these systems had serious defects. Color-toning distorted tonal values, even in a Panchromatic print, and could not produce blacks. Hand-coloring gave a hybrid image that looked like a cross between a B&W and full-color image - the result always looked unreal. (The modern Colorization systems do the same - which is one reason why their critics find them esthetically objectionable.)
The two-color systems could give very natural-looking results if the colors used were red (or a variant of red) and blue (or a variant of blue). The red could give very convincing skin tones and earth tones, and the blue could give very convincing skies and seas. (One particular American process called
Vericolor(1933)
appears to have given excellent results.) Muted greens could be produced, but only if the blue was close to a primary cyan and the red was closer to orange than a primary red - as in the
Cinecolor(1932)
process. [See the
Timeline of Historical Film Colors
website.]
Because they were limited-color systems, none of the two-color (subtractive) processes could reproduce yellow, magenta or violet. But this was not a fatal drawback - they could still produce harmonious natural-looking color images.
The ideal solution to producing an acceptable color version of a B&W photographic image (still or moving) would be the discovery of a system that could convert the image's colorless tonal values into the true color values of the original subject. This may seem impossible - but the apparently impossible has been done before. (At one time a color photograph seemed to be impossible.)
An achievable alternative would be a limited-color system using a color-toning process which gave acceptable natural-looking color, similar to the best two-color systems of the past. This would require a certain amount of matting, but a workable computer program could be devise -
renonatv — 9 years ago(December 18, 2016 06:38 PM)
Great post! Lighting is part of the director's eye and his artistic impression. This is why I would NEVER by a copy (a numbered print) of an original work of art. Varied shades, and varied colors of colors? Ew!
Black and white photographers would wait from hours to days, just to get the right shot because of the shade or lighting.
I am not a professional, but I give credit to the original intent of the artists. -
Navaros — 10 years ago(January 09, 2016 04:40 AM)
If they were to repaint the Mona Lisa, it would indeed be a crime.
Why would that be a crime? Mona Lisa is a butt-ugly eyesore which looks 100% like an ugly, obese man. Repainting it couldn't possibly be anything other than a major improvement. -
Adams5905 — 9 years ago(December 16, 2016 02:22 PM)
Ugh-I have just finished watching the 'colourized' version of this classic-it was borrowed off a friend, and it never occurred to me that anybody could have ruined this film by applying this technique. On calling her, it appears that she owns both the orininal B/W
and
this colour version, but the original has never been watched, and is still in it's cellophane What a shame-by colourizing it, all of the nuances of light and shade are ruined-also, the actors were specifically made up and lit for B/W film, which is hugely different from colour, and the result is that they look odd, as though the colours weren't moving with their characters. I shall re-watch the B/W version next week (and probably buy it off her), and enjoy it hugely Unfortunately, with my new TV, it would appear it's impossible to simply turn the colour 'down', as I used to do in the old days, when I stumbled upon colourized versions of Laurel and Hardy or Harold Lloyd films, which sort of did the trick
I've
seen
things you people wouldn't believe -
TwoThousandOneMark — 9 years ago(December 17, 2016 10:59 PM)
Colorization is lame. This film thrives on B&W, it being an overnight ghost story no less, on Christmas Eve.
The soul of this film is quite lost with colour.
my essential 50
http://www.imdb.com/list/ls056413299/ -
paul-273-129025 — 9 years ago(December 24, 2016 06:44 PM)
This as a film I have to watch every Christmas as it is a masterpiece. I recorded the film today on Channel 5HD (UK) and without realising I'd recorded the colour version as well as the b/w version. I'm not 100% against colourisation if it makes watching older more accessible to people (although I do love b/w films). But I started watching the colour version and then put on the b/w version and the difference is incredible. There is so much more detail and incredible picture quality in the b/w version. It is head and shoulders above the colour version.