Cameron

from barry maxwell at the bits

On August 30th, Fox will offer The Shirley Temple Collection, Volume 1, a three-disc set (containing Curly Top, Heidi, and Little Miss Broadway) that one hopes will be an improvement over the company's first foray into releasing Temple's films several years ago. Classic fans may remember that the earlier releases consisted of black and white and colourized versions of three films (Bright Eyes, Dimples, and Heidi), all of which looked terrible - a pretty poor way to treat the films of a star who was the studio's meal ticket in the 1930s. Some of the early listings for this new release talk about colour versions only, so we will have to wait and see.

marty888

Colorized only ????

C'mon Fox, you should know better!

Chauncygardener

This collection of Shirley's 3 movies will also be sold as singles but its much cheaper to get them in this box set.

Also, these DVDs will be both the original black and white version and the NEW colorized version. This new color is fantastic and you just won't believe how fantastic this new color is!!!

See for yourself how great this new color is with Shirley's HEIDI.here is the link. it will take about 5 minutes to download and what you will see is a side by side comparison of the old colorized version with this new colorized version which you will truly be amazed with!! be sure to turn your speaker volume up too.


http://legendfilms.net/demos/heidiSplitHi.swf

Cameron

thanks for the link chauncey....but i don't need to see color version of anything shot for B&W

PatrickMcCart

It's good to know that at least the colorized versions included aren't the awful American Film Technologies versions. Besides poor colorization (although, not as bad as the RKO ones), the source prints were pretty bad.

Fox probably doesn't have a lot to work with for pre-1937 films, but even a dupe negative would look better if transferred well.

Add:

Wow, the comparison between the Legend Films and AFT colorizations is stunning. The Legend Films version looks very film-like... if it had a little more of an amber toned white balance, it would almost look like Technicolor.

spartanstew

I don't think it was shot FOR B&W, it was shot IN B&W because that was all that was available. If the director were alive today and you asked him how he would have prefered to have shot it, I'm sure he'd say color.


Stew

Cameron

makes little diffrence if that is what he wanted if it was not available at the time (I think Star Wars ranting has made a perfect example of that)... they were shot on Black and White Film...they were lit for black and white film...it does not need a colorization...and more so if it is only available in color then that is a shame.

rasalas

Have you ever noticed that no matter how good the colorizing (and this demo is quite good), teeth never look natural? They're always a dull bluish-gray.


I'm sure he'd also say that he wouldn't want some intern in post-production to choose colors randomly and use them in the film. That's how most films are colorized.

Aside from not being the way the film was shot, colorization by its nature involves making artistic choices that are complete guesses by the people doing the colorizing. Sure, there are basic hues that are known--the color of her hair, the Christmas tree, some costumes. But much of it is just a guess, because it's not as if every item was catalogued to note its color during filming. In fact, many costume and set-design colors were chosen for the way they photographed in B&W and would have looked awful if shown in their actual colors. So what's the point?

But the demo is impressive, if for nothing else than the quality of the print--as seen in streaming-video resolution, mind you.

MEJHarrison

This site has the best colorization demo I've ever seen. It's simply incredible.

But I still would prefer to see the movies in B&W. I wouldn't object to a colorized version being included for kicks, but no B&W = no sale.

chente

Edith Head used to wear blue tinted glasses for just this reason. It gave her a very good idea of how colors and textures would photograph in black and white.

The Bus

That colorization and restoration on is unreal. I still don't understand why people don't colorize with tonality in mind. Seems a lot more natural than just adding a blotch of color...

For example, if you color a dress, don't color it all the same shade. Consider sources of lighting, etc. I guess it just gets too complicated. Colorized stuff always looks so flat to me. Of course when/if I am a director, I will make a B+W movie and then colorize it.

Davelandweb

Any idea as to whether this set is going to have any extras or not? Seems kind of stupid that Fox would go to the trouble of colorizing these 3 movies when Shirley did 2 color movies (Blue Bird and Little Princess) and one with a color sequence (The Little Colonel).

Cameron

Shirley is still alive...a new interview or commentary would be nice...but i doubt it will happen