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I'm going to play devil's advocate, but maybe this is what it's supposed to look like, and years of fading and wear (I doubt TV animated productions used successive exposure, because they were notorious for cutting costs everywhere) have distorted its appearance?
And I looked for some pictures of "Grinch" animation cels for reference and I found one:
Animation Cel
And this site:
http://www.animationartgallery.com/achuckjonesgrinchorig.html
Has many more cels; the colors look like the Blu-Ray to me.
I'm guessing some long-needed restoration has been performed.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
MatthewA 
I'm guessing some long-needed restoration has been performed.
Frankly, it seems this way to me too. There were some similar dramatic color shifts on many of the restored Looney Tunes shorts, too, and the anecdotal evidence of the original cels seems to indicate the Grinch was green
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Douglas Monce
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I think it might be likely that the print that we have been looking at all this time, was color timed so that it could be run an old tele-cine machine. As such it would be likely that the colors would be somewhat muted to accommodate the limited color range of the NTSC system. I'm talking now about the days when a film print was run live for national broadcast.
I agree with others here who suspect that this is what the colors were supposed to look like all along.
Doug
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jack Theakston
You don't think it's perhaps possible that the animators had an idea of how certain colors photographed and tweaked their palette accordingly, do you?
It is possible. We all have this same discussion with every Disney reissue. Unfortunately, with Chuck Jones gone and without a color video of the 1966 Broadcast (fat chance) we'll never know; the lab work was done at Metrocolor (whose reputation was better than that of DeLuxe and Pathé, but not nearly as good as Technicolor's) and the network's 35mm main feed prints and 16mm backup feed prints (2 each for East Coast and West Coast) would have faded by now. Supposedly there were no IB Tech prints (properly color balanced or otherwise) done for TV because they are too contrasty to run through a telecine, but I've heard rumors that all of Disney's TV shows were printed in IB until the dye-transfer lab closed.
It is also possible that neither one is accurate. Personally I was not impressed with the old DVDs and will definitely check out the BD.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Paul Hillenbrand
That is so COOL!
Back in 1977 the Television Special: "Holloween is Grinch Night" was aired (which I recorded on 2" Ampex Video tape). That special has the same color scheme as the "Dr. Suess: How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (Blu-ray) and ALL THESE YEARS, I thought that
it was the one that had the whole color scheme wrong.
Now I surmise that some technician thought the original classic feature would look better with the Grinch having a "more natural" greenish-brown fur, recording it with his interpretation of the tint palette and for ALL future NTSC releases, there you have it .
Paul
I'm impressed that you taped that on a 2" Quad machine. Those things were as big as refrigerators and the tapes were the opposite of cheap. Did you work at a TV station? If more people had your foresight a lot of shows might still exist in some form today.
Of course the other Dr. Seuss TV specials were animated by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, not Chuck Jones, and for what it's worth the Grinch was white in the book.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Paul Penna
Wow. Originally pigment paints on celluloid, photographed on who knows what kind of color film emulsion, transferred to video with 1966-vintage telecine and video tape for original broadcast, then viewed on 1966-era phosphor CRTs - who knows HOW the thing is really
supposed to look?
It wasn't even transferred to video back then. It was a print run through a film chain, which had a video camera attached to it, which sent the video signal to the control booth, which sent it out to the network feed. Studios didn't start transferring filmed TV programs to tape for the networks until the mid-1980s.
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Douglas Monce
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jack Theakston
That's the "print the myth" story, but it's not exactly true. Many network programs were done on Eastman stock because they were sending out a signal feed and only needed four prints (two 35mm for the west coast, two for the east). Making new matrices for what would essentially be one-offs would be cost prohibitive.
.
I know that in the 60's, NBC used 2 35mm prints for the west coast, and 2 16mm prints for the east. This was because the 16mm prints could be produced faster and put on an airplane to be shipped. I don't know if this was the procedure for the other networks or not.
Doug
"I'm in great shape, for the shape I'm in."
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... but yeah, a few looks at the original cels show he was always supposed to be bright green.
