Artificially coloured?

[Brian Gaff]

I have noticed an increase in very old films being in colour, and though
myself I cannot tell, how is this actually done? It surely must be only
approximate, since the originals were shot in black and white and in all
sorts of different frame rates one supposes. Does somebody painstakingly go
through and note what base colour all things need to be and then lets a
computer fill it in by guessing if its the original item and tweaking the
hues according to the grey scale on the film?

Brian

[Jeff Layman]

Point your text reader at this link:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_colorization>

It's quite long!
--
Jeff

Post by Brian Gaff
I have noticed an increase in very old films being in colour, and though
myself I cannot tell, how is this actually done? It surely must be only
approximate, since the originals were shot in black and white and in all
sorts of different frame rates one supposes. Does somebody painstakingly go
through and note what base colour all things need to be and then lets a
computer fill it in by guessing if its the original item and tweaking the
hues according to the grey scale on the film?
Brian

[Davey]

On Fri, 22 Dec 2023 13:32:07 +0000

Post by Jeff Layman
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_colorization>
It's quite long!

"They Shall Not Grow Old", mentioned there, was a fairly recent (2018)
full-length documentary that was colourised to good effect. Generally,
the early versions of colourisation were pretty bad, having little or
no surface effects on clothing, but things have progressed since then.

[Brian Gaff]

Looking realistic, but I wonder how accurate they might be, if somebody wore
a striped shirt how could the know what the colours were?
Brian
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Post by Davey
On Fri, 22 Dec 2023 13:32:07 +0000

Post by Jeff Layman
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_colorization>
It's quite long!

"They Shall Not Grow Old", mentioned there, was a fairly recent (2018)
full-length documentary that was colourised to good effect. Generally,
the early versions of colourisation were pretty bad, having little or
no surface effects on clothing, but things have progressed since then.
--
Davey.

[Davey]

On Sat, 23 Dec 2023 11:50:27 -0000
"Brian Gaff" <***@gmail.com> wrote:

A perfectly valid question, variations of which I have often
wondered myself. In the case of this particular film, about War,
most clothing was a drab military olive, with the occasional mud
overtone.

[Graham.]

A lost colour episode of Dad's Army was successfully reconstructed
from a 16mm film recording where the 4.433MHz dot crawl was
foetunatly not completely filtered out.

As for "frame rate", the shutter speed of feature films has been
pretty much fixed at 24fps AFAIK.
--

[NY]

Post by Graham.

Post by Brian Gaff
I have noticed an increase in very old films being in colour, and though
myself I cannot tell, how is this actually done? It surely must be only
approximate, since the originals were shot in black and white and in all
sorts of different frame rates one supposes. Does somebody painstakingly
go through and note what base colour all things need to be and then lets
a computer fill it in by guessing if its the original item and tweaking
the hues according to the grey scale on the film?Brian-- --:This
newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...The Sofa of Brian
Signature is meaningless.!

A lost colour episode of Dad's Army was successfully reconstructed
from a 16mm film recording where the 4.433MHz dot crawl was
foetunatly not completely filtered out.
As for "frame rate", the shutter speed of feature films has been
pretty much fixed at 24fps AFAIK.

Yes, I'd expect the source material to be 1 frame of video per 1 frame of
film. How that video is displayed is another matter: in the 25 fps world,
the video is played at 25 fps so about 4% faster. Nowadays some very
sophisticated software can keep the pitch the same, rather than being 4%
(roughly one semitone) sharp.

[Brian Gaff]

Yes I once witnessed a video of Sound of music that was sharp. A bit of a
give away on a musical. No back in the old days we had things like9 frames a
second for news footage and it was this that responsible for the very fast
playbacks. Now, just a few years before I lost my sight completely, there
seemed to be a lot more content transferred with some kind of simulation of
the missing frames so it looked smoother and at the correct speech. It was
by no means perfect, ie you could see some small movements of arms etc,
still look blurred or jerky.
Colourisation of cartoons was one thing, but its much harder to do with
live action. I remember back in the day of home moves that ran at 16 frames
a second, that some films colours faded with time. Ilford had this washed
out look after some years, where highly saturated colours were OK but more
pastel shades were almost in black and white.
On many films in my Youth, like Summer Holiday etc, there was nearly
always a shot that started in black and white and faded to colour gradually.
How was this done?
Brian
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The Sofa of Brian Gaff...
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Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!

Post by NY

Post by Graham.

Post by Brian Gaff
I have noticed an increase in very old films being in colour, and though
myself I cannot tell, how is this actually done? It surely must be only
approximate, since the originals were shot in black and white and in all
sorts of different frame rates one supposes. Does somebody painstakingly
go through and note what base colour all things need to be and then lets
a computer fill it in by guessing if its the original item and tweaking
the hues according to the grey scale on the film?Brian-- --:This
newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...The Sofa of Brian
this Signature is meaningless.!

A lost colour episode of Dad's Army was successfully reconstructed
from a 16mm film recording where the 4.433MHz dot crawl was
foetunatly not completely filtered out.
As for "frame rate", the shutter speed of feature films has been
pretty much fixed at 24fps AFAIK.

Yes, I'd expect the source material to be 1 frame of video per 1 frame of
film. How that video is displayed is another matter: in the 25 fps world,
the video is played at 25 fps so about 4% faster. Nowadays some very
sophisticated software can keep the pitch the same, rather than being 4%
(roughly one semitone) sharp.

[Graham.]

Yes I once witnessed a video of Sound of music that was sharp. A bit of a give away on a musical. No back in the old days we had things like9 frames a second for news footage and it was this that responsible for the very fast playbacks. Now, just a few years before I lost my sight completely, there seemed to be a lot more content transferred with some kind of simulation of the missing frames so it looked smoother and at the correct speech. It was by no means perfect, ie you could see some small movements of arms etc, still look blurred or jerky. Colourisation of cartoons was one thing, but its much harder to do with live action. I remember back in the day of home moves that ran at 16 frames a second, that some films colours faded with time. Ilford had this washed out look after some years, where highly saturated colours were OK but more pastel shades were almost in black and white. On many films in my Youth, like Summer Holiday etc, there was nearly always a shot that started in black and white and faded to colour gradually. How was this done?

According to Wikipedia, here's how (arguably) the most famous
example was achieved in The Wizard of Oz.

<QUOTE >
A significant innovation planned for the film was the use of
stencil printing for the transition to Technicolor. Each frame
was to be hand-tinted to maintain the sepia tone. However, it was
abandoned because it was too expensive and labor-intensive, and
MGM used a simpler, less expensive technique: During the May
reshoots, the inside of the farmhouse was painted sepia, and when
Dorothy opens the door, it is not Garland, but her stand-in,
Bobbie Koshay, wearing a sepia gingham dress, who then backs out
of frame. Once the camera moves through the door, Garland steps
back into frame in her bright blue gingham dress (as noted in DVD
extras), and the sepia-painted door briefly tints her with the
same color before she emerges from the house's shadow, into the
bright glare of the Technicolor lighting. This also meant that
the reshoots provided the first proper shot of Munchkinland. If
one looks carefully, the brief cut to Dorothy looking around
outside the house bisects a single long shot, from the inside of
the doorway to the pan-around that finally ends in a
reverse-angle as the ruins of the house are seen behind Dorothy
and she comes to a stop at the foot of the small
bridge.

[Brian Gaff]

It almost seems more complicated to do it their cheap way than the way they
said in the first place. You need another actor, and two sets of dresses one
in the right colours the other not.
Summer Holiday was the start of the 60s I think. I distinctly the black and
white double decker bus driving along and gradually being coloured along
with the scene. I think they maybe had two cameras close together, but I
guess they could just as easily decoloured the original colour version and
then mixed them.
Brian
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Post by Graham.

Post by Brian Gaff
Yes I once witnessed a video of Sound of music that was sharp. A bit of a
give away on a musical. No back in the old days we had things like9
frames a second for news footage and it was this that responsible for the
very fast playbacks. Now, just a few years before I lost my sight
completely, there seemed to be a lot more content transferred with some
kind of simulation of the missing frames so it looked smoother and at the
correct speech. It was by no means perfect, ie you could see some small
movements of arms etc, still look blurred or jerky. Colourisation of
cartoons was one thing, but its much harder to do with live action. I
remember back in the day of home moves that ran at 16 frames a second,
that some films colours faded with time. Ilford had this washed out look
after some years, where highly saturated colours were OK but more pastel
shades were almost in black and white. On many films in my Youth, like
Summer Holiday etc, there was nearly always a shot that started in
black and white and faded to colour gradually. How was this done?

According to Wikipedia, here's how (arguably) the most famous
example was achieved in The Wizard of Oz.
<QUOTE >
A significant innovation planned for the film was the use of
stencil printing for the transition to Technicolor. Each frame
was to be hand-tinted to maintain the sepia tone. However, it was
abandoned because it was too expensive and labor-intensive, and
MGM used a simpler, less expensive technique: During the May
reshoots, the inside of the farmhouse was painted sepia, and when
Dorothy opens the door, it is not Garland, but her stand-in,
Bobbie Koshay, wearing a sepia gingham dress, who then backs out
of frame. Once the camera moves through the door, Garland steps
back into frame in her bright blue gingham dress (as noted in DVD
extras), and the sepia-painted door briefly tints her with the
same color before she emerges from the house's shadow, into the
bright glare of the Technicolor lighting. This also meant that
the reshoots provided the first proper shot of Munchkinland. If
one looks carefully, the brief cut to Dorothy looking around
outside the house bisects a single long shot, from the inside of
the doorway to the pan-around that finally ends in a
reverse-angle as the ruins of the house are seen behind Dorothy
and she comes to a stop at the foot of the small
bridge.
--
Graham.
%Profound_observation%

[pinnerite]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2024 15:19:56 -0000

Post by Brian Gaff
It almost seems more complicated to do it their cheap way than the way they
said in the first place. You need another actor, and two sets of dresses one
in the right colours the other not.
Summer Holiday was the start of the 60s I think. I distinctly the black and
white double decker bus driving along and gradually being coloured along
with the scene. I think they maybe had two cameras close together, but I
guess they could just as easily decoloured the original colour version and
then mixed them.
Brian
--
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...
Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!

Post by Graham.

Post by Brian Gaff
Yes I once witnessed a video of Sound of music that was sharp. A bit of a
give away on a musical. No back in the old days we had things like9
frames a second for news footage and it was this that responsible for the
very fast playbacks. Now, just a few years before I lost my sight
completely, there seemed to be a lot more content transferred with some
kind of simulation of the missing frames so it looked smoother and at the
correct speech. It was by no means perfect, ie you could see some small
movements of arms etc, still look blurred or jerky. Colourisation of
cartoons was one thing, but its much harder to do with live action. I
remember back in the day of home moves that ran at 16 frames a second,
that some films colours faded with time. Ilford had this washed out look
after some years, where highly saturated colours were OK but more pastel
shades were almost in black and white. On many films in my Youth, like
Summer Holiday etc, there was nearly always a shot that started in
black and white and faded to colour gradually. How was this done?

According to Wikipedia, here's how (arguably) the most famous
example was achieved in The Wizard of Oz.
<QUOTE >
A significant innovation planned for the film was the use of
stencil printing for the transition to Technicolor. Each frame
was to be hand-tinted to maintain the sepia tone. However, it was
abandoned because it was too expensive and labor-intensive, and
MGM used a simpler, less expensive technique: During the May
reshoots, the inside of the farmhouse was painted sepia, and when
Dorothy opens the door, it is not Garland, but her stand-in,
Bobbie Koshay, wearing a sepia gingham dress, who then backs out
of frame. Once the camera moves through the door, Garland steps
back into frame in her bright blue gingham dress (as noted in DVD
extras), and the sepia-painted door briefly tints her with the
same color before she emerges from the house's shadow, into the
bright glare of the Technicolor lighting. This also meant that
the reshoots provided the first proper shot of Munchkinland. If
one looks carefully, the brief cut to Dorothy looking around
outside the house bisects a single long shot, from the inside of
the doorway to the pan-around that finally ends in a
reverse-angle as the ruins of the house are seen behind Dorothy
and she comes to a stop at the foot of the small
bridge.
--
Graham.
%Profound_observation%

I found this really interesting. I never gave it any thought before.
I also remember Summer Holiday as a really uplifting piece of flim-flam.

Alan