Colorizing Films and other acts of Blasphemy!

[BegintheBeguine]

fftopic: But seems like a good place to get my question answered. I know I am 20th century but I was told Widescreen dvds are for Widescreen television sets, which surprise surprise I don't have? Thanks to anyone who can give me the correct information.
Do I remember correctly about 20 years ago James Stewart testifying against the colorizing of classic movies?

 

[Mike in Seattle]

fftopic: But seems like a good place to get my question answered. I know I am 20th century but I was told Widescreen dvds are for Widescreen television sets, which surprise surprise I don't have? Thanks to anyone who can give me the correct information.
Do I remember correctly about 20 years ago James Stewart testifying against the colorizing of classic movies?

You were told wrong, m'dear. With the widescreen DVD, you get the whole picture, side to side. You'll have, as was mentioned, black areas at the top and bottom of the screen because movies were made for a viewing area of different proportions than a standard TV screen. The viewing area of a TV screen is 4:3 - it's slightly wider than it is tall. But modern movies are filmed in a format that's a lot wider than they are tall (16:9 or 1.85:1 are the common ratios) meaning they're almost twice as wide as they are tall.

In the full-screen version, they're cutting off the left and right edges of the picture, or as was mentioned, "pan and scan" which means the projected movie is refilmed onto video with the camera aimed at the area of the screen where the most action is happening, then moving with the action or to new action happening on the screen.

Rent or borrow the widescreen version of a movie you're familiar with - or better yet, the widescreen version and full-screen version and compare. TCM runs a little mini-documentary from time to time - I believe one of the explanations they use is if you watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, you're missing two "brothers" in most of the dance sequences.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Thanks, Mike, I've seen those documentaries but then why do they continue to manufacture full-screen dvds? [huh] I guess whoever told me wrong info thought widescreen=widescreen tv made sense.

 

[Mike in Seattle]

Thanks, Mike, I've seen those documentaries but then why do they continue to manufacture full-screen dvds? [huh] I guess whoever told me wrong info thought widescreen=widescreen tv made sense.

Some people want the picture to fill their TV screen, top to bottom, side to side. As someone else mentioned, some people say "I don't like those black bars." But after you see a few films, you realize what you've been missing.

 

[photobyalan]

Bartenders, do we need to see this kind of obscenity in the Lounge? I apologize for even quoting that filthy language.

Sorry. I'm washing my mouth out with Wild Turkey.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Seems like a niche market, but

Some people want the picture to fill their TV screen, top to bottom, side to side. As someone else mentioned, some people say "I don't like those black bars." But after you see a few films, you realize what you've been missing.

The ONE consumer group that still gets its way, and it is for an inferior product, huh! I'm still mad they've virtually quit making vinyl records and are on the way out for VHS tapes. Still have 4 rotary dial phones at my house, though, mwahahahah.

 

[Jack Scorpion]

Oh, come on. Let them colorize all Marylin Monroe's movies. You phillistines.

I think it is mind-boggling that someone in the movie biz is capable of deciding that an older movie should be altered at all. I still rant at the horror that was Star Wars Special Edition, and most people thought that was an improvement. For someone to even suggest that manpower be allotted to the colorization of a B&W flick...

 

[Jack Scorpion]

The ONE consumer group that still gets its way, and it is for an inferior product, huh! I'm still mad they've virtually quit making vinyl records and are on the way out for VHS tapes. Still have 4 rotary dial phones at my house, though, mwahahahah.

I still think VHS is a superior technology than DVD. DVD's rot on the shelf for gosh sakes. Film is still more exact than digital information and I never rent a VHS from down the street to arrive at home and find it unplayable!

 

[CharlieH.]

I think it is mind-boggling that someone in the movie biz is capable of deciding that an older movie should be altered at all. I still rant at the horror that was Star Wars Special Edition, and most people thought that was an improvement. For someone to even suggest that manpower be allotted to the colorization of a B&W flick...

Well, it was George Lucas who added all the CG to his own movies, so that doesn't sound like much of a crime.

 

[Doh!]

I still rant at the horror that was Star Wars Special Edition, and most people thought that was an improvement.

I'm not so sure it was most people whom thought they were an improvement. I don't know how the sales were last year when Lucas finally released the unaltered versions onto DVD, but because they didn't go on sale at the same time as the "Special Editions"* there wasn't a level playing field to compare them.

*(kinda like the Special Olympics, if you ask me.)

 

[Mr. Rover]

Can your sould withstand the shocking images of the TRUE story of... "The Coloured Casablanca?!?"
Good thing Citizen Kane escaped Ted Turner's crayons.... if only because Orson himself was still around at the time.

"Are my eyes really brown?"- Rick Blaine

 

[Quigley Brown]

If I didn't like how a colorized movie looked I just turned off the color on my tv.

 

[Trampilot]

Love this thread.

Even before the advent of DVDs I championed the cause of widescreen videos and refused to buy pan and scan films.

As for colourisation - utterly deplorable - I do not see the point of it. Would you honestly want to see a colourised version of The Big Sleep - a film which gradually gets darker and darker? Having had a small history of film making I know making a b+w film is far harder than colour. The majority of colour films made through the 30s, 40s and 50s were brightly lit to show off the colour schemes. Inversely, b+w films live and die by the mood of the lighting.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

.

If I didn't like how a colorized movie looked I just turned off the color on my tv.

Ah, but it throws off the tonal qualities as well; there's the rub!

 

[HadleyH]

I agree that film noir looks better to the eye in black and white.
But I'd love to watch all the musicals from the 1930s fully colored. Sometimes color helps the whole thing ,sometimes it does not...

 

[CharlieH.]

But I'd love to watch all the musicals from the 1930s fully colored. Sometimes color helps the whole thing ,sometimes it does not...

I thought the same thing when I fisrt saw Top Hat and Swing Time. Then I though "how do you colourize the BLACK water at the Lido" and that the only colours visible in the Swing Time numbers would be people's skin.

 

[HadleyH]

I thought the same thing when I fisrt saw Top Hat and Swing Time. Then I though "how do you colourize the BLACK water at the Lido" and that the only colours visible in the Swing Time numbers would be people's skin.

Wow, you lost me there CharlieH lol lol What Black water?? and what with the people's skin?? I don't understand, I'm just a simple soul . lol

 

[CharlieH.]

Wow, you lost me there CharlieH lol lol What Black water?? and what with the people's skin?? I don't understand, I'm just a simple soul . lol

In Top Hat there's a venetian style hotel with a black water canal- the water was tinted black so it would photograph better.
And most of the numbers in Swing Time are at a nightclub called the SILVER Sandal and everyone wears tuxedos or silvery gowns. Not a very colourful scenario.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Here's kind of a twist on the colorization question. Now, I'm no advocate of indiscriminate use of the process -- I was even full enough of my own righteous outrage to write a pointed letter to Ted Turner back in 1985, telling him exactly what I thought of the idea. But what if there *were* instances where it was possible to justify its use?

I'm thinking here of films that were originally shot in color -- but which exist today only in murky black-and-white prints. There were dozens of features made in two-color Technicolor in 1929-30, some entirely in the process, and others with Technicolor musical numbers or other sequences -- but when these films were released to television in the early fifties, the preservation prints were made only in black and white. Subsequently, the color prints and negatives were junked -- so the black-and-white copies we have today of these films don't in any way represent the way they were intended by their makers to be seen.

So -- would it be justified to use colorization to reconstruct these films? If technicians knowing the oddities of the two-color process could come up with a palette approximating the original, and if thru research and study they could come up with a reasonable idea of what the original color design was like -- would it be appropriate to "re-colorize" these films? Or should they be left as they are now, as a demonstration of how careless the studios have been over the decades with their own products?

 

[CharlieH.]

That's sounds like a fascinating possibility and it would be a perfectly justified reason to use the process. However, it would require some very exhaustive research to even come close to what the films may have looked like. I doubt there are any surviving props or costumes from this kind of film to draw some reference.