Film colorization
Colorization is a film alteration process that involves adding color to a black and white film.
Colorization make-overs
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During the late 1950s and 1960s, black and white cartoons were redistributed in color — the colorization process was done by tracing the details of the previous black and white incarnation onto new animation cels, and then adding color to the new cels.
With computer technology, studios were able to add color to black and white films by digitally tinting single objects in each frame of the film until it was fully colorized.
Colorization is also sometimes used on historical stock footage in movies. For instance, the film Thirteen Days uses colorized news footage from the time of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The intention is to remove the distancing effect that black and white might have on the audience.
In the 1980s, this process drew considerable controversy. Defenders of the process claimed that it would allow black and white films to have new audiences of people who were not used to the format. Detractors complain that the process was crude and even if it were refined, it does not take into account that color and black and white photography require different lighting compositions. Thus they argue, the original work of the artists involved is damaged.
Media mogul Ted Turner was a particularly aggressive proponent of this process until public pressure forced him to reconsider. In particular, plans to colorize Citizen Kane led to major backlash from the film community, with directors such as John Huston demanding that the film be left alone. Partially due to this controversy, all films shown on American television or released to home video in an altered format (including pan and scan and "edited for television" versions), must now display a disclaimer indicating that the film "has been modified from its original version".
With the coming of DVD technology, studios have been able to release both the original black and white films and the colorized versions from the 1980s on the same disc.
Without exception the early colorized movies have softer contrast and fairly pale, washed out color. However, the technology has improved since the 1980s, and several black and white TV shows and films have recently been given what is claimed to be a completely lifelike colorization.
Legend Films, who specialize in the restoration and colorization of classic black and white films for DVD, have made their attempts look as realistic as possible, in addition to letting viewers choose between the original black and white and new colorized versions without changing discs. Their DVD release of the Reefer Madness (1936) puts colorization to good use: its intentionally unrealistic color schemes add to the cult film's campy humor.
Colorization used for artistic purposes
Some black and white films also used colorization for artistic purposes. One of the earliest examples of colorization can be found in Phantom of the Opera (1925), in which Lon Chaney's character can be seen wearing a bright-red cape while the rest of the scene remained monochrome. This was done using the Handschiegel hand-coloring process The scene was toned sepia, and then the cape was painted red, either by stencil or by matrix. Then, a sufur solution was applied to everything but the dyed parts, turning the sepia into blue tone. The process was named after it's inventor, Max Handschiegl.
In Rumble Fish (1983), only two objects in the film are shown in color: a fish in the pet store and a character's reflection in the police car at the end.
Schindler's List (1993), aside from the bookending sequences originally shot in color, also features a scene in which colorization effects are used — we notice a little girl in a large crowd, but only because her sweater is red.
Other recent films that make use of colorization include Pleasantville (1998), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004),Sin City (2005) as well as the new Legend Films library of restored and colorized films: Reefer Madness: Special Addiction, Night Of The Living Dead, Carnival of Souls, House On Haunted Hill, My Man Godfrey, The Jackie Robinson Story, Shirley Temple: The Early Years, The Three Stooges, Africa Screams with Abbott and Costello, A Christmas Wish, Beyond Christmas and many, many others..
The lastest in colorized titles include the majority of Fox Home Entertainment's Shirley Temple collection, Miracle on 34th Street as well as both family films and cult films that were once public domain all produced by Legend Films http://www.legendfilms.net and http://www.offcolorfilms.com. The colorized versions of the black and withe public domain films now have a Legend Films copyright. The inventor of the latest and most sophisticated colorization process is Barry B. Sandrew, Ph.D. Sandrew who also invented the first all digital colorization process that made colorization mainstream acceptable. Today the process is photo-realistic and has been used on such recent films as Martin Scorcese's "The Aviator".
Other applications
A number of British television shows which were made in color in the early 1970s were wiped for economic reasons, but in some cases black and white telerecordings were made for export to countries that did not yet have color television. A notable example is the BBC's 5-part Doctor Who story The Dæmons. Only one episode survived in color; the rest existed only as black and white film recordings. The only other known recording was a poor quality off-air recording of an abridged American broadcast. In the 1990s the BBC colorized the black and white copies using the off-air recording as a color reference.
The result was judged a success by both technicians and fans and it is widely rumoured that more sophisticated colorization technology will be used to restore other Doctor Who episodes as well as shows like Steptoe and Son where some episodes only exist in black and white. However, there are no plans to use colorization on BBC programmes originally made in black and white.
Colorization is sometimes used on documentary programmes. The Beatles Anthology TV show colorizes some footage of the Fab Four, most notably the performance of "All You Need Is Love" from the TV special Our World (1967). In the documentary this scene begins in its original black and white before dissolving into realistic, psychedelic color. In this case the color design was based on stills taken at the same time, so in a sense the color is "real", yet the use of artificial color in a documentary could also be regarded as misleading or even fraudulent.
The documentary series World War I in Color (2003) was broadcast on television and released on DVD in 2005. There had previously been full-color documentaries about World War II using genuine color footage, but since true color film had not been invented at the time of World War I, the entire series consists of colorized contemporary footage (and photographs). The producers claim that their intention was to show the War literally in its true colors, without the air of unreality created by black and white film. Whether this is a valid argument remains debatable.
Colorization techniques
A major difficulty with colorization has been its labor-intensiveness. For example, in order to colorize a still image an artist typically begins by dividing the image into regions, and then proceeds to assign a color to each region. This approach, also known as the segmentation method, is time consuming and requires a great deal of painstaking work on dividing the picture into correct segments. This problem occurs mainly since there are no fully automatic algorithms that always identify correctly fuzzy or complex region boundaries, such as between a subject’s hair and face.
Colorization of moving images also requires tracking regions as movement occurs across the frames of a particular scene. Again, there have been no completely reliable automatic region-tracking algorithms. The closest to a fully automated process in that created by Dr. Barry Sandrew of Legend Films, Inc.
The lastest in colorized titles include the majority of Fox Home Entertainment's Shirley Temple collection, Miracle on 34th Street, Mask of Zorro as well as both family films and cult films that were once public domain all produced by Legend Films http://www.legendfilms.net and http://www.offcolorfilms.com. The colorized versions of the black and white public domain films now have a Legend Films copyright. The inventor of the latest and most sophisticated colorization process in Barry B. Sandrew, Ph.D. Sandrew invented the first all digital colorization process that made colorization mainstream acceptable. Today the process is photo-realistic and has been used on Martin Scorcese's "The Aviator".
References to colorization in pop culture
- In an episode of The Simpsons, Bart watches an old romantic film on "Colorization Theatre". The characters' skin color in that film appears purple.
- In the film Gremlins 2, the Clamp Cable Network and the character Daniel Clamp are parodies of Ted Turner and Turner Classic Movies. On that network, all films are offered in color. In one scene, you can hear an announcer say that the network will air a colorized version of Casablanca, which also contains "a new happy ending."
External links
- Legend Films - Official website features demonstration clips