Tweet Films that should have been shot in color

Yes...Alice Faye AND Weber & Fields in Technicolor. The movie did show biz history a service by showcasing the latter team as their vintage selves in such a slick production. Within two years both would be gone.

I have watched the Weber and Fields sequence in LILLIAN RUSSELL at least 25 times and I swear it gets funnier every time I see it.

The second film I thought of was "Them" (1954) which was planned for color and 3D and at the last minute Warner's wanted to have an old fashioned look and went with black and white and 2D instead.

Actually, the whole thing came down to money on this one. WB shot tests in color, and then attempted to shoot 3D tests, but the 3D rig malfunctioned (and had been all throughout the filming of HONDO). Producer Steve Trilling quickly sent out a memo stating they were going flat/B&W in order to maximize profits along the lines of BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. The opening titles ARE in a startling color, however, and I've heard, but never confirmed, that the film was sepia toned a la BEAST.

I'm glad the 3-D effort misfired. Spared me the embarrassment of soiled britches when I saw it in '54.

THE GREAT DICTATOR should have been in B/W allright, but still it is amazing to see this footage:

The second film I thought of was "Them" (1954) which was planned for color and 3D and at the last minute Warner's wanted to have an old fashioned look and went with black and white and 2D instead.

Actually, the whole thing came down to money on this one. WB shot tests in color, and then attempted to shoot 3D tests, but the 3D rig malfunctioned (and had been all throughout the filming of HONDO). Producer Steve Trilling quickly sent out a memo stating they were going flat/B&W in order to maximize profits along the lines of BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS. The opening titles ARE in a startling color, however, and I've heard, but never confirmed, that the film was sepia toned a la BEAST.

The memo is at the bottom of this page: http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/home/top-10-3-d-myths

Bob

Yes...Alice Faye AND Weber & Fields in Technicolor. The movie did show biz history a service by showcasing the latter team as their vintage selves in such a slick production. Within two years both would be gone.

I have watched the Weber and Fields sequence in LILLIAN RUSSELL at least 25 times and I swear it gets funnier every time I see it.

I'm a sucker for movies that capture circa 1900 performers otherwise elusive in later movies. The 1940 Bing Crosby musical IF I HAD MY WAY did similiar duty, showcasing vaudeville legends like Eddie Leonard and Blanche Ring, either in performance or cameo as themselves.

HEIDI would have done well as a color film. It was as good a film and Shirley Temple's first Technicolor epic, THE LITTLE PRINCESS three years later. Her next color venture, THE BLUE BIRD did not fair as well with or without colorl In recent years, the color ending sequence to THE LITTLE COLONEL has been reinstated, and can be seen after having been deleted from television prints for 55 years.

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Today B&W films can be colorized in film resoltuion, with a very larger pallete han the old Turner colorization.
The problem is that the sets of most B&W films was not planned to color, but for B*W. If you turn the TV saturation off while watching a technicolor film as Gone WIth The WInd, the B&W will not look great, cause many high saturated colors do not photograph well on B&W.}}

The issue you refer to is based on the lighting for Technicolor, which was more intense and generally flatter than in black and white films. This is a partial explanation for the flattening of the image when turning the chroma off. Understand also that Technicolor photography employed Panchromatic Black and White film with the camera photographing three negatives each filtered by a prism to represent the impressions of each primary color. So there would be three black and white negatives, one for red, one for green, and one for blue. The intensities of the colors were registered on the negatives in ranges of gray. The impressions from the negatives were put through a dye process that corresponded to the impressions on the negatives. This was known as "Color by addition." The intensity of some colors could also be controlled through extended exposure of a certain color negative, or extending the time in the developing bath.

Disney cartoons were photographed on a single b/w negative in a progressive exposure process where three color frames were photographed to represent each frame of animation. A color wheel would rotate in front of the lens for red, green, and blue, Then the cameraman progressed to the next cel change and then pressed the exposure button for a repeat of the process. In many Disney films, blue would be accented more for night scenes by extending the exposure of the blue negative during photography.

Normally a cartoon negative would be between 750 and 1000 feet, a Tech cartoon negative would be 2,250 to 3,000 feet. The release print would be the standard length since the color was printed using the alternating color impressions to composite to each frame. This basically explains how color was possible before the existence of a color negative film.


"In a similar way, many B&W films do not look very well after get colorized, caused it use a lot of light grays or dark grays, that do not get saturated very well, and so the B&W film can't be colorized to look like a technicolor. Another problem is the original B&W gradding scene to scene, that many people and studios insists that need to be not altered while colorizing. As consequence many scenes that look very bright, flat or contrasting, in a B&W film, are not "corrected" to a apropriated balance to get adequate for a nice look for colorization.

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Again, this is due to the lighting for black and white, which is different than what was used for Technicolor. This is not to say that effective colorization cannot be done. The existence of a full gray range should actually be an aid. The technology continues to improve. With respect to the purity issue or to colorize or not to colorize, the technique can be looked upon as a means of reconstructing otherwise lost color sequences that exist only in black and white. If production records or fragments exist showing the original colors, this can be a tool to truly restore the film to its nearest original representation. So for this, I see Colorization as a valuable restoration tool.

Lighing, grading, figurine, makeup and sets design... There is a lot of differences from a B&W and technicolor production

But all that can be done is to gradding the B&W image to became more adequate to get colors. IF you see colorized footage of constrasting WW1 or WW2 images, you will see that it do not look good.

Even if you have a prime B&W footage, shoot with B&W film from a real location, natural, with no filter, the colorization would not look perfect, but I must say that can ook very good if well done with modern technology.

Despite technologic advances some nuances are not added with the modern colorization. Many due cost.
In theory it's possible to develop a perfect colorization, but it would require much more work, complete 3D estimation of every piece and character, and tracking of patterns and textures.

There are modern colorized films that are great, like It's a Wonderful Life, and many people can say it look perfect. But for perfectionist persons, some things are not full natural yet. For use as a restoration tool, it require more advances and reduce costs even more, to allow add the color details, the little hue and saturation variation in relation of the 3D shape of obejects in relation to some light source in the set.

For example, the only colorized video I ever saw that put some color cheeck (warmer than the rest of face) was the colorized clip of The Flying Deuces. Skin color it's none of the major challenges with colorization, cause colorization uses a color spectrum. They set a object (like skin of a character) and add a color to each gray tone of the skin. This is often not enough to get a full natural look, cause human skin have many color tones.


I like some mpdern colorized films, and enjoy to see the technical advances happening.

" Again, this is due to the lighting for black and white, which is different than what was used for Technicolor. This is not to say that effective colorization cannot be done. The existence of a full gray range should actually be an aid. The technology continues to improve. With respect to the purity issue or to colorize or not to colorize, the technique can be looked upon as a means of reconstructing otherwise lost color sequences that exist only in black and white. If production records or fragments exist showing the original colors, this can be a tool to truly restore the film to its nearest original representation. So for this, I see Colorization as a valuable restoration tool.

[quote="All Darc"]Lighing, grading, figurine, makeup and sets design... There is a lot of differences from a B&W and technicolor production...]"But all that can be done is to gradding the B&W image to became more adequate to get colors. IF you see colorized footage of constrasting WW1 or WW2 images, you will see that it do not look good.]

I'm not quite sure of your depth of knowledge about film and its properties. What you describe here is not the fault of the original film and its state of contrast, but the result of having been duped from positive prints more than three or four generations. This was always the problem before the emergence of digital technology. Photo/chemical processes gain contrast in each generation that they are copied from. That is why going back to original negatives, or dupe negatives for motion pictures is the desired process so long as they survive, because they contain the most faithful photographic record retaining detail and gray range.

You use terms that I am unfamiliar with such at "gradding." I believe you refer to gray range or gradation. In any event,
while I am in agreement that b/w films should remain as they were, I fear you fail to realize the possibilities in applying colorization when appropriate. The key to the situation as I have seen is in having good resolution in the original film image.
That allows for colors to adhere to areas, with the gray range allowing for more subtle colors and a broader color palette. Because of this, there has been some WWII footage colorized to great success because of this.

THE GREAT DICTATOR should have been in B/W allright, but still it is amazing to see this footage:

It's interesting to see this because this color "documentation" brings the film making process back into reality. This also demonstrates that certain colors were used for they way they responded to black and white. They were the result of making black and white still costume tests. Note also that since this was planned for black and white, there is no real color scheme or sense of color harmony here. Much of the color used is random and gaudy.

Amen. Using first generation images is just as important when colorizing stills. I've gotten to the point where I can tell whether a b/w image is a good candidate for a color transfer by just looking at the texture.

A case in point - this is a scanned negative of Betty Bronson but evidently based on a source photo a few generations removed from an original. The skin tone is pasty and even the clothing has a muddy look:


Despite my efforts to refurbish the b/w image, a dingy quality remains that carried through to the color transfer:


A happier outcome resulted with this scan of a Valentino negative that was evidently made from an original photo. The skin tone is excellent and the image has an overall sheen. It made a beautiful color transfer:

Yes, many WW1 and WW2 survived in duped film prints, and many ones came from newsreel, and newsreel had some budget approachs to save money, like print in cheap film stock, or create internegatives using film stocks typically used for shooting and not proper intermediate film stock. Also the chemicals during war have some problems about quality. Results: Over contrasting and over grainny images.

Gradding, as I refer, it's about the exposure, film development bath timeime, the technics to try to give the contrast and brightness/darkness the director wish for the B&W film.
Anyway the problem is that a constrast B&W footage, after colorization do not look like a contrasting color film footage.

Even a pristine B&W film, scanned in film resolution, not always look very good after colorization. Colorization it's flat, and ussually do not consider some things. A scene during fog, or a bar with fog atmophere, for exameple, usually do not look very good.

Today there are modern tools for 3D estimation, and tracking of textures, and in theory this could be used to create a more natural colorization technology. But the cost would be increaseed a lot.


This colorized image, from the modern colorized version of The War Lover, do not look really very natural for me, but maybe look natural for you.




Skin tones are still a problem. The slight gray tone the beard have in many men, was always a problem for colorization.

I'm not quite sure of your depth of knowledge about film and its properties. What you describe here is not the fault of the original film and its state of contrast, but the result of having been duped from positive prints more than three or four generations. This was always the problem before the emergence of digital technology. Photo/chemical processes gain contrast in each generation that they are copied from. That is why going back to original negatives, or dupe negatives for motion pictures is the desired process so long as they survive, because they contain the most faithful photographic record retaining detail and gray range.

You use terms that I am unfamiliar with such at "gradding." I believe you refer to gray range or gradation. In any event,
while I am in agreement that b/w films should remain as they were, I fear you fail to realize the possibilities in applying colorization when appropriate. The key to the situation as I have seen is in having good resolution in the original film image.
That allows for colors to adhere to areas, with the gray range allowing for more subtle colors and a broader color palette. Because of this, there has been some WWII footage colorized to great success because of this.

The colorization is not bad. the problem is with color saturation here. The "flatness" can be overcome with boosting of hues and also slightly increasing gamma. I am sure you are aware that film prints intended for telecast were intentionally made flat because transmission added contrast.

It's not bad for a colorization, and today the best colorization company can do some bether than this example.

But in this case boosting Hues do not help much, cause you will boost in all the face, and not add more variable skin color for certain skin areas. The original colorizwed photowas even flatter, cause I tried to correct the contrast to look more adequate on computer monitor.

Like I said, the basis of colorization it's a color spectrum, a variance of coors along dark, middle range and brigth range. This have limitations since some objects, pieces, like skin, need more than that to look very natural.

3D estimation and pattern tracking it's the key for future of coloriztion. With this they will be abble to add more nuances for objects, walls, specially for situations where light source influence a lot, like sun in one side of a character, or in a certain angle, making just some area more warm, more yellow.

I like colorization, and hope the technology keep improoving.

The colorization is not bad. the problem is with color saturation here. The "flatness" can be overcome with boosting of hues and also slightly increasing gamma. I am sure you are aware that film prints intended for telecast were intentionally made flat because transmission added contrast.

I used to wish there were more classic films in color-- "The Mark of Zorro, The Sea Hawk, Charge of the Light Brigade, Gunga Din," for instance.

The dvd changed all of that for me. I have rarely seen a good nitrate print in a repertoire theater, but the few times when I did-- I was astounded at the black blacks, true greys, the shimmering silver, and the 3-D effect of it all. VHS could never reveal that.

Now I'm quite content to have my old swashbucklers on dvd, and in 50 colors-- all the many shades of grey (: ).
(Though Fox's Zorro could use a remastering due to poor contrast.)

I love film noir, and can't imagine any of my favs in color-- "Double Indemnity?" Ugh. Eddie G. never looked good in pink anyway.

When I think of films that cry out for Technicolor, the epitome of it is the 1937 Prisoner of Zenda. What is even odder about this film being in B & W is that Selznick was an early pioneer in using 3 color Technicolor, with films like The Garden of Allah, Nothing Sacred, and A Star is Born. It still baffles me that Selznick chose to put a comedy like Nothing Sacred in color (which could have been B & W without anyone noticing) and chose to film a swashbuckling spectacle such as Zenda in B & W.