Encyclopedia
Film colorization is any process that involves adding
color to
black and white, sepia or monochrome moving-picture images. The earliest examples date back to the early 20th century, but it has become more practical and more common since the development of digital image processing. It has been done with different effects for various reasons, some of which are controversial.
Techniques
During the late 1950s and the 1960s, black and white
cartoons were redistributed in color—the colorization process was done by tracing the original black and white frames 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. The initial process was invented by
Canadians Wilson Markle and
Brian Hunt and was first used in 1970 to add color to monochrome footage of the moon from the
Apollo mission.
Colorization typically begins with a monochrome film print. From the film print, a high quality videotape copy is made. Technicians, aided by a computer, identify the grey level of every object in every shot and note any movement of objects within shots. A computer adds color to each object, while keeping grey levels the same as in the monochrome original. This technique was patented in 1991.
Movies colorized using early techniques have softer contrast and fairly pale, flat, washed out color. However, the technology has improved since the 1980s, and several black and white TV shows and films have been given what is claimed to be a completely lifelike colorization.
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. One computer-assisted method for colorizing was developed by a team of researchers at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering. The new method is an interactive process that does not require precise, manual, region detection, nor accurate tracking and is based on the simple premise that nearby pixels in space and time that have similar grey levels should also have similar colors . A recent approach is the Timebrush RLC [Real Life Colour] process that uses Artificial Neural Networks to create real life like gradations for natural scene content. In this process, a neural net is pre-trained to mimic characteristics of real world color models [sky, trees, skin tones, etc]. During the color rendering process the neural net then provides life-like simulation of color gradations and variation, hence adding extra depth and realism to a colorized scene .
Partial colorization
The earliest form of colorization introduced limited color into a black and white film using dyes, as a visual effect. The earliest Edison films, most notably the
Anabelle Butterfly Dance series were also the earliest examples of colorization, done by painting
aniline dyes onto the emulsion.
By around 1905,
Pathé introduced
Pathéchome, a stencil process that involved cutting glass stencils for each frame with a
pantograph.
In 1916, the
Handschiegl Color Process was invented for the film,
Joan the Woman . Another early example of the Handschiegl process can be found in
Phantom of the Opera is a French [i] novel [i] by Gaston Leroux [i]. ...
, in which
Lon Chaney's character can be seen wearing a bright-red cape while the rest of the scene remained monochrome. 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 its inventor, Max Handschiegl. This effect, as well as a missing color sequence, were recreated in 1996 for a Photoplay Productions restoration by computer colorization .
This approach has also been used since the introduction of color film as well, for artistic effect.
Rumble Fish was filmed in black and white, with only two objects shown in color: the fish in the pet store and a Rusty James' reflection in the police car at the end .
Similarly,
Schindler's List , filmed in black and white except for modern "bookend" sequences, features a single scene in which a little girl in a large crowd is seen to be wearing red. Other recent films that make use of partial colorization include
Pleasantville in which color gradually takes over black and white scenes, and
Sin City is the title for a series of stories [i] by Frank Miller [i] ...
which features spot color based on the use of color in the
graphic novels.
Restoration
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 is a long-running British [i] science fiction television [i] ...
story
The Dæmons is a serial [i] in the British [i] science fiction television [i] ...
. Only one episode survived in color; the rest existed only as black and white film recordings. The only known color recording was a poor quality off-air recording of an abridged American broadcast. In the 1990s the BBC colorized the black and white copies by adding the color signal from the off-air recordings. 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 was a British sitcom [i] written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson [i] ...
where some episodes only exist in black and white. However, there are no plans to use colorization on BBC programs originally made in black and white.
Integration
Colorization is also sometimes used on historical stock footage in color movies. For instance, the film
Thirteen Days uses colorized news footage from the time of the
Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The intention was to better integrate these scenes into the film and remove the distancing effect that black and white might have on the audience.
The full-color feature film
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a film [i] released on September 17 [i], 2004 in the United States [i] ...
, which already made heavy use of digitally-generated sets and objects, integrated black and white 1940s footage of Sir
Laurence Olivier into scenes by colorizing him.
Entertainment make-overs
In the mid-1980s, the process drew considerable controversy when some black and white films were redistributed in color using the colorization process. Some sources cite
Topper as the first black and white movie to be redistributed in a colorized version. Other sources cite
Yankee Doodle Dandy as the first film to be colorized.
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 complained that the process was crude and even if it were refined, it would not take into account that
lighting compositions chosen for black and white
photography would not necessarily be as effective in color. They also cited creative decisions that the original director might not approve of, such as the visual pun of the character Violet in
It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 Frank Capra [i] film, produced by his own Liberty Films [i] and rele ...
wearing violet. Thus they argued, the original work of the artists involved is damaged.
Media mogul
Ted Turner was once a particularly aggressive proponent of this process. When he told members of the press that he was considering colorizing
Citizen Kane is a 1941 [i] mystery [i]/drama film [i] released by RKO Pictures [i] ...
, his comments led to an immediate public outcry. Welles had retained control over the film in his original contract, which would prevent any editing or other tampering with this film, without the express permission of Welles or his estate. Turner Pictures had never actually announced that this was an upcoming planned project. Turner later said that this was a joke designed to needle colorization critics, and that he never had any intention of colorizing the film.
Partially due to this controversy, all films shown on American television or released to home video in an altered format , must now display a disclaimer indicating that the film "has been modified from its original version".
By the mid-1990s, the colorization controversy died out, and Turner Entertainment stopped releasing colorized titles because of the high cost of the process. With the coming of
DVD technology, colorization was once again gaining press when studios began releasing colorized DVDs of several classic and cult films.
Because the DVD format was more versatile, viewers were now able to choose between both versions without switching discs. Some companies re-released the older colorized versions from the 1980s—an example of this is the
Laurel and Hardy box set being released in the
UK. Other studios, such as
Sony Entertainment commissioned new color versions. A recent release that garnered much controversy was a set of colorized
Three Stooges DVDs. Unlike other colorized DVDs, the Three Stooges shorts had never been colorized. The new discs were prepared using digital technology, and a heavy amount of research was put into making the discs. Since the DVDs offered the shorts in both formats, audiences embraced the new colorized releases. The company behind the colorization was
Legend Films, who were previously only hired to use colorization technology for artistic merits in Hollywood films.
With the success of the Three Stooges discs, the company was allowed to expand into many other products, including several series of DVD releases for
20th Century Fox, with mixed response. A majority of the works being released by Legend and Fox are films that have fallen into the
public domain and are not copyrighted in the United States, but the company has also colorized copyrighted works owned by 20th Century Fox and other companies. Three box sets of
Shirley Temple films included colorized versions authorized by Temple. One of Legend's more notorious releases was a "
Special 'Addiction'" DVD of the film
Reefer Madness, originally titled
Tell Your Children, is a 1936 drama film directed by Louis Gasnier [i] ...
, which used intentionally unrealistic color schemes to add to the
cult film's unintentionally campy humor.
In 2005, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the first season of
Bewitched was an American [i] situation comedy [i] starring actress Elizabeth Montgomery [i] ...
on DVD. Because the first season was produced in black and white, Sony released two versions of the set: one with the episodes as originally broadcast and a second with the episodes colorized. The colorization on the set was done by Dynacs Digital Studios, who also used the latest colorization technology but less research. The color set outsold the black and white set by a substantial margin. A year later, the second season of
Bewitched and the first season of
I Dream of Jeannie was a popular American [i] sitcom [i] with a fantasy [i] premise....
, another show owned by Sony, were released the same way.
Documentary make-overs
Colorization is sometimes used on
documentary programmes.
The Beatles Anthology TV show colorizes some footage of the band, most notably the performance of "All You Need Is Love" from the TV special
Our World . In the documentary this scene begins in its original black and white before dissolving into seemingly 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 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 was not practical for moving pictures at the time of
World War I, the series consists of colorized contemporary footage . 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.
Footnotes
Further reading
- Anthony Slide, Nitrate Won't Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United States , ISBN 0-7864-0836-7
External links
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- - A web article
- - Legend Films is holder of the key colorization patents for North America. Its official website features demonstration clips.
- - Provides real life like colourization of classic black and white content using its RealLifeColour Neural Net based technology
- - An experimental fan site that hand colors monochrome video footage and production stills for the 1960s BBC television series Doctor Who is a long-running British [i] science fiction television [i] ...
.
