Colorizing B&W vs. Colored (1 Viewer)

[Tony J Case]

For me the reason is easy. Its not because of any artistic standards or anything - but simply because the end product looks like ass! Even the more modern colorization processes - the Night of the Living Dead release that came out just a couple of months ago for example - looks unnatural and washed out. It has this uniform "sameness" to it, this bleached pastel color.

Horrible.

 

[Mark_TS]

colorizing:
good points: a new master has to be struck that is in top condition-cant use dupes or battered prints-if BOTH versions are made available-we all benefit.

bad points: the director and camera man had to light and use "color" in the sets in a different way, so things could be seen properly-things that would NOT have been done if it was actually filmed in color-

hence, colorizing a BW film makes it look very artificial, or 'odd'...

and yes-BW was part of the feeling of the show, and part of its history
(if originally filmed that way)


my vote: no colorizing

 

[Gordon St Pierre]

Heres an interesting look at a (new?) way of colorizing in the digital realm .

http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~yweiss/Colorization/

 

[JohnMor]

I agree that colorization in theory is wrong, as it CAN violate the original intention of the director/cinematographer, although not always as witnessed by John Badham's desaturation of the color of his 1979 Dracula.

However, the system used on Bewitched was remarkable in that it kept the original grey-scale, so that turning off the color did indeed replicate that original B&W image. The color matching to the first color season (season 3) was done so well that if I didn't know the episodes like the back of my hand, I would have thought they were filmed in color to begin with. I was so amazed at the faux color that I was actually (I hesitate to say this here) slightly disappointed that the DVD release will be in B&W instead of color, like the Japanese sets Sony released.

However, this is an isolated exception.

 

[Tory]

No it is possible. There is a glazing process, thin out a color and make it transparent and put it over the painting. I've done it in some paintings and it gives a stain glass window look but the effect is entirely different than the original black and white piece and can come out looking much like those horrid colorized versions of Laurel & Hardy I have seen. It is OK on a stagnant picture by choice of the artist but over moving pictures it seems a desecration and disrespectful plus a waste of space on a DVD> We are getting less 3 Stooges now due to the horror.

 

[LaurenceGarvey]

Make-up tests on the male leads in SOME LIKE IT HOT showed that their makeup did look garish in color, so the film was shot in B&W. Marilyn Monroe had to give her permission, as her contract called for the film to be made in color.

 

[BernieV]

B&W photography should be considered a separate artform from color. Until recent advances in color film technology, the depth, resolution and contrast available with B&W film simply couldn't be matched with color dye transfers. The best color cinemetography ever developed actually used B&W stock [the three-strip Technicolor process]. Read this commentary about classic B&W films to learn why cinematographers like James Wong Howe are considered masters who perfected the art of lighting and composition with B&W. Would Ansel Adams' work have nearly the same impact if he'd used color?

Television suffers by comparison with film and perhaps colorization isn't as big a drawback on video, but there are some subjects that will always look better in B&W. Film Noir can't be duplicated in color. Serious dramas that were filmed in B&W look cartoonish when colorized. TV shows filmed in the 60's perhaps aren't the best examples of B&W programming, but they're part of an era and should be preserved in their original form.

 

[Jeff#]

I'm opposed to ALL colorization, and in the 1980s it was a fad for TV series and movies that for the most part thankfully died out. It was no longer commercially viable, or else we would see a lot more today than we do.

I love the films and TV shows I do because of the QUALITY of them -- not because they are filmed in color or black & white. As for film noir, The Outer Limits is the ultimate proof that B & W and color worked in both the 1960s and 1990s.