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Interesting documentary about the 20's in America.
They used quite quality footage, cleaned-up, and colorized. Turn off the color is you dislike colorization.

Great! Thanks for sharing.

Wish there was more genuine color footage of the 20's available, but it's still fun to see what it might've looked like.

Blocked in USA by CBS.

All Darc wrote:Turn off the color is you dislike colorization.

In such cases, there is NO valid beef - even from "purists."

The world has always existed in color. And this type of work - researched well, and done carefully - is a perfect venue for modern-quality colorization.

-Craig

Well, colorization quality in this documentary vary from scene top scene. I bet more than one company was hired, or some scenes was neer deadline and was pushed to finish quickly. In theory it can be quite better with more budget, but such documentaries have a limited cash for this.
But there are still quite nice scenes in color for this one.

The Ford-T cars, painted black, looks right, but some cars that was like sandpapered, looking like crude metal (like Laurel & Hard Ford-T sandpapered to avoid reflex showing camera crew) was colorized green, and looked not real. I'm curious to know it the "sandpappered texture" cars had painting or not. In movies that portrait the 20's, all Ford cars that had colors was smooth in surface.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _P3761.jpg" target="_blank

I wish in the WWI documentaries where they used real color footage, they could try to balance better the colors, color correct, since most times color footage was pushed to blue, purple, sometimes yellowed, or low saturation. It would be better with fine natural colors.

wich2 wrote:

All Darc wrote:Turn off the color is you dislike colorization.

In such cases, there is NO valid beef - even from "purists."

The world has always existed in color. And this type of work - researched well, and done carefully - is a perfect venue for modern-quality colorization.

-Craig

Not blocked for me in Australia by CBS, who have just been allowed to buy an ailing TV network in my country that was associated on and off by Mr Newscorp Murdoch. I get a lot You Tube songs blocked but there is always, ass a rule, another download to be found of the track. Never makes sense.

All Darc wrote:Interesting documentary about the 20's in America.
They used quite quality footage, cleaned-up, and colorized. Turn off the color is you dislike colorization.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kjqZwAAUDk" target="_blank" target="_blank"

Am I to assume this is the same "America in Color" program that was running on the History Channel (or someplace similar) recently? If so... yeah...it was pretty neat. I found the home movies to be the most compelling. From an historical perspective -- seeing everyday life from such a bygone era was quite moving.

But adding color to familiar or otherwise already historical footage (such as busting up kegs) is still interesting -- yet at the same time somehow disruptive. Perhaps it's better to say, colorization in this setting does tend to remove some of the vintage and mystique. It brings these events closer to reality -- which is the point here. And as compelling as that is, the people and the times don't seem quite as different from us anymore... which I suppose is part of the joy for me in old movies and music. The escape into another world -- similar enough to our own as to welcome me, yet different enough to make me stay. Reality dialed down a few pegs and altered, perhaps.

I see your point, Red.

But I think Art and Documentary are two separate animals. And in documentary, reality IS the goal.

This kind of augmentation is not new either. In the era of the landmark history series THE WORLD AT WAR, colorization was not available yet - but silent footage was foleyed.

And it helped bring the events back to life.

-Craig

I agree, very true. The concept of injecting life and more reality into historical artifacts is exactly what things like this are attempting to do -- and what we all find intriguing. More so, I was also opining on the other potential facets with which we may view vintage material and how it affects someone who might enjoy viewing history for its simple properties -- and what we lose if enhancing becomes the norm.

But now that I'm thinking about it... it's what's coming on the horizon that may be worth mentioning. Technology is no longer limited to enhancing old footage, but becoming more able to create it -- basically from scratch. We received a little taste of this when stars of yore began appearing in modern TV commercials, hawking goods. But that was just a tease.

We can (or soon will be able to) regenerate perfect replicas of people and places. We are already used to seeing films with CGI landscapes, inhabited with CGI characters, crowding out live actors. In this context, the potential to now entirely reanimate history becomes something we may have to consider.

May I tee up Carrie Fischer's latest performance in the upcoming Star Wars? Toss in Artificial Intelligence and we may soon have to contend with new films directed by "Chaplin Chaplin." I'm sure there's a way I can work in all this talk of robot "companions"... but I'll leave that to the realm artificial intelligence for now.

One more complete episode, now the America 30's in color :



30's it's not silent, but I prefer to place here instead of open anotehr separated topic in Talking ABout Talkies.

wich2 wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 06, 2017 8:43 am

All Darc wrote:Turn off the color is you dislike colorization.

In such cases, there is NO valid beef - even from "purists."

The world has always existed in color. And this type of work - researched well, and done carefully - is a perfect venue for modern-quality colorization.

-Craig

Would depend if the result is what one had before the process was applied. Some time back my late partner and I watched a colourised DVD of the Alastair Sim SCROOGE, but turning the colour down. The film has a rather peculiar look to it. Perhaps technology has improved in this respect. And the best option for some of us who don't fancy the idea is not to watch in the first place.

One could also debate the pros and cons of colouring postcards and front-of-house stills, not to mention its use in movie posters, although they were originally designed as colour artefacts, but using b/w materials...