rbf1138

The making-of Sky Captain on the DVD points out and shows footage of Sky Captain as having been fully black and white and then colored. Anyone else think it would've been awesome if they had put the movie in full B&W on the disc, or on a second disc? Knowing Paramount, we probably wont see a better release, but damn if I wouldn't love a full-blown double-disc SE of this movie.

Mike Lowrey

Well, putting aside having a dual version of this film, one post-production colored and one in original B&W, this shows that the technology is available now to fully and realistically color any old B&W movie.

I'd love to see all the old WWII movies colorized, just for color sake.

PopcornTreeCt

Well I don't know about colorization "realistically".

wennma01

i'm not so sure. sky captain was shot digitally so it was easier to convert to color it. old b&w films were shot on regular film stock which would make the process more difficult

Mike Lowrey

Well yeah, I know Sky Captain was shot digitally, but doesn't it all that it takes is to scan in the film frames and colorize them that way? All you need is a digital file. Lowry Digital is doing essentially the same thing when they restore films.

I'm just saying that the colorization process has obviously improved from the early '90s colorization experimentation where everything had a pastal look to it.

JustInsane

I know Kerry wanted to release the B&W version on the DVD as well, but I guess Paramount didn't. Or maybe they are saving it for the HD-DVD.

jaeufraser

I doubt they'll ever release it. It was never intended to be shown in black and white really.

What they did was take the film, and desaturate it to black and white, then recolor it for that final old school look. I think there's really as much chance of seeing the black and white version as there is of seeing the original color version. It's not what the intended prodcut was supposed to be. Kerry might've wanted it as evidenced by his short, but I doubt Paramount would go for it at all. It would make this a very niche product and I don't think monetarily would be worth it.

You can, though, watch Conran's short which I think is B&W.

Randy810

If we don't want our movies in any aspect ratio other than the original OAR, why would we want our movies colorized? I beleive Ted Turner learned not to mess with our movies a few years back.
Digitalizing may be fun to play with but I really want my movies as seen in the theatres. Even if the director wants to play around with his film.
Guess, I am a*** retentive.

Patman

Couldn't you just turn down the "Color" on your TV set?

rbf1138

Lol, that's what I finally realized, Patman. Looks pretty cool actually.

movielib

Just what I was going to say but I didn't see this thread until now.

I can't believe it took 9 posts to get to it.

Drexl

I wouldn't assume that because they colored this film a certain stylistic way, they could make a B&W film look as if it was shot in color.

cultshock

That was my immediate first thought as well.

nightmaster

Good point. Why ask for OAR but on the other hand ask for the colors to be screwed around with? Both are inherent to the vision of the director; why shouldn't both be what is desired??

fumanstan

Personally, a B&W version of the film doesnt really appeal to me. I love the color tone of the film the way it is.

spartanstew

But sometimes the movies are only black and white because that's what was more readily available then. It has nothing to do with how the director wanted it. I believe the first feature film color movies were shot in the mid-20's, but the process wasn't really perfected until perhaps the late 40's or early 50's (I believe Kodak's process appeared here). As a result, movies like "It's a Wonderful Life" and "Citizen Kane" were in B&W maybe because it was just easier and more cost effective to do it that way. It doesn't mean that if the movie was made today, the director would choose to make it in B&W for creative purposes.
If someone could make GREAT color transfers of "Wonderful Life", "Citizen Kane" (and others), I'd probably buy them. For the most part, I (and probably many others) prefer color to B&W (which is why color TV's have been outselling B&W TV's for decades).



Stew

klandersen

For the most part I agree with you that back then B/W was more readily available and also more cost effective, however, Citizen Kane was intended to be in B/W. If it wasn't intended to be in B/W then Orsen Wells wouldn't have bothered with some of the details of contrast and cool camera angles etc... There are many B/W films that if they were originally filmed in color it wouldn't make much of a difference, however, movies like Citizen Kane if it had been filmed in color would be missing some of its appeal and artistic value.

Cameron

a quick explanation of original 2 strip and 3 strip technicolor

from the link above...also posted in Do people get fooled by "colorized" cover art of B&W films?

My Thread Discussing- black and white movies in color on dvd?

Two-Color and Three-Color (Full-Color) Technicolor Development:

One of the first 'color' films was Thomas Edison's hand-tinted short Annabell's Butterfly Dance. Two-color (red and green) feature films were the first color films produced, including the first two-color feature film The Toll of the Sea, and then better-known films such as Stage Struck (1925) and The Black Pirate (1926). It would take the development of a new three-color camera, in 1932, to usher in true full-color Technicolor.

The first film (a short) in three-color Technicolor was Walt Disney's animated talkie Flowers and Trees (1932) in the Silly Symphony series. [However, others claim that the first-ever color cartoon was Ted Eschbaugh's bizarre Goofy Goat Antics (1931).] In the next year, Disney also released the colorful animation - The Three Little Pigs (1933). In 1934, the first full-color, live-action short was released - La Cucaracha (1934).

Hollywood's first full-length feature film photographed entirely in three-strip Technicolor was Rouben Mamoulian's Becky Sharp (1935) - an adaptation of English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray's Napoleonic-era novel Vanity Fair. The first musical in full-color Technicolor was Dancing Pirate (1936). And the first outdoor drama filmed in full-color was The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936).

In the late 30s, two beloved films, The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939), were expensively produced with Technicolor - what would the Wizard of Oz (with ruby slippers and a yellow brick road) be without color? And the trend would continue into the next decade in classic MGM musicals such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and Easter Parade (1948). Special-effects processes were advanced by the late 1930s, making it possible for many more films to be shot on sets rather than on-location (e.g., The Hurricane (1937) and Captains Courageous (1937).) In 1937, the Disney-produced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was the first feature-length animated film - a milestone. The colorful Grimm fairy tale was premiered by Walt Disney Studios - becoming fast known for pioneering sophisticated animation.

Mr. Salty

However, because of that "limitation" older films were lit and photographed specifically for black and white. Lighting and photographing for color is an entirely different process. Anyone who knows anything about photography will tell you it simply isn't a matter of adding color where there was none before.

For the most part, I prefer the "scope" aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and I'm not much of a fan of 4:3. That doesn't mean movies made before widescreen was common should be cropped to a different aspect ratio because of what I want.

spartanstew

You're probably right. While I own Citizen Kane, I've yet to actually watch it so I'm unfamiliar with the nuances of this particular film.


Agreed, that's why it would take some re-coloring techniques that we might not have the ability to do yet.

I agree with this also, however, if a process were developed to turn 4:3 movies into 16:9 (or more) without losing any of the original picture, but only increasing the picture (showing details that weren't in the original), I think we'd be all for it.


Stew

Josh Z

Your logic is completely skewed. Regardless of the reasons why a movie was shot in black & white, the filmmakers did indeed shoot it that way and used their resources to the best of their abilities to make the best-looking black & white images they could. Colorizing them is as much a desecration as cropping a widescreen image.

Your reasoning is akin to saying, "The only reason Frank Capra cast Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life is because Tom Cruise wasn't born yet, and if he made the movie today he'd probably cast Tom Cruise. Therefore, we should digitally insert Tom Cruise into the movie."

Hokeyboy

I'm absolutely flabbergasted that anyone on this forum is making a case FOR the colorization of b&w films.

claviusb

Getting back on topic, Sky Captain was shot in color and then desaturated. They didn't desaturate the image a full 100% (as originally planned), they only removed a fraction of the color. A real easy thing to do in Adode After Effects. Colorization was NOT involved.

PatrickMcCart

B&W films have plenty of colors: gray, white, and black.

Mr. Salty

Fuck no, we wouldn't.