Here are two home-made screen caps from March of the Wooden Soldiers, one black and white and one colour. Click on the thumbnail twice to enlarge:

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/5...ch3b9jy.th.jpg

http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/9...rch34gy.th.jpg

These were done by using the "Print Screen" button during playback in InterActual DVD player and copying to Paint. The images were corrected for luminosity by Microsoft Office Picture Manager.

I watched some of the colorized version of Swing Parade and all of the B/W. I still prefer the B/W, but the colorization used was interesting. I have to admit that overall it looked like a film shot in color 60+ years ago. The color was faded in a way that made it look like an old color film. The color seemed much more toned down from the way it was in the previous Legend release of Stooges shorts. The colors used in that DVD seemed very garish and over the top.

I still support Legend as long as they continue to give us a quality B/W print as well and the Mike Nelson tracks when appropriate. The color is not for me, but there have been times when I loved it such as Reefer Madness. Best use of colorization ever.

Two more:

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/2...h12b6tq.th.jpg
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/6...ch125cn.th.jpg

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/6753/march125cn.jpg

Set and costume in B&W films was diferent.
 

One problem that makes difficult to colorize a film in turn to make it like Technicolor looking it the chooises of B&W original producers.

In Wooden Soldiers for example there are lot's of characters using bright clothes, dress etc. Santa Clauss looks almost pink because his clothe was bright instead of mediun tone (apropriated to strong red), intented photograph well in B&W. Most used brigh clothes combined with dark pieces acessories to give contrast in B&W photograph. Also many clothes and sets gras gray when required, to suffer no alteration of filters used in photograph to add contrast for only desireble objects or backgrounds.
Strong saturation usually requere mediun tones, not dark or bright, to get a pleasant strong color.

In a technicolr film the colors, hues and strong saturation, gives the contrast beetween set pieces and characters, while on B&W you only have shadow tones to compose your photograph. Technicolor would not look nice if converted to B&W, while the B&W original films was made to look ok that way. I remamber a joke I HEARD ONCE: "TED TUNER ANNOUNCES THE B&W VERSION OF DISNEY'S FANTASIA.
We the colorization try to give some technicolor look they usually add too strong saturastion for bright piece of clothes, making it a little bit weird, or unatural, like Pink Santa Claus. One solution would be turn dow the luminance of those clouthes, but this would require even more precise tools. Maybe in very early future they get tools for that.

But people would compalin that colorization would alter some of the original tones of B&W film. The only alteration Legend Films did for B&w tones was the title of Night of The leaving Dead. The original title was brigh, and legend films darkned it (sellected area)to be able to colorize it as mediun red, otherwise would got bright pink. Wise and necessary alteration in my opnion. You can check it on DVD Beaver review:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDCom...livingdead.htm

Require place the cursor over the capture title to Switch from the B&W to the colorized.
We can notice how much Legend's technology improved from that DVD realise to today.
Interesthing if Legend Films keep the final colorization work with all sellection of objects (hair, body, eye, eyebrow, ground, walls) to let in future a color updade for a fraction of the original colorization cost.


A. Bergman

From Wikipedia's Legend Films page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...Films_releases ):

Hubba, Hubba... The only way I would buy The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms or It Came from Beneath the Sea, short of a 3D version, would be colourized!

P.S.: Legend Films releases used to be known as "Off Color Films" but they terminated that brand name after three films.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the 1998 Godzilla, a TV is shown running footage from It came from Beneath the Sea (the giant octopus attacking the Golden Gate Bridge) in colour. I wonder if that small bit was colourized by Legend Films...

I'll correct myself: The footage appears exactly 50 min into the film and it's in black and white (darn!).

From this review: http://www.agonybooth.com/godzilla/default.asp?Page=5

Another home-made screen cap from March of the Wooden Soldiers (colourized):

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/8253/march143gc.jpg

I would say that almost 99% of it looks pretty good. I wish those scenes that don't, and they are quite apparent, could have been caught. Where's quality control when you need it!

Hi Sparks


Problaby because this is the climax of the film, that why it got more atention. Also given the large number of variable pieces, almost all toys, and there is no human sking to difficult the job, helps to make a nice pleasant scene. The color reflex in the ground really looks convincing.

Many people attack colorization, but it is ofering health classic to get a new audience. We don't see much people attacking the trash own production that is pushed to childrens today, like modern cartoons with slime everywhere, violence, erotization, alienation, consumism, or popstar-syndrome (makes childs feel that need to be popular to be happy) .

I would like to see someone on industry with courage to talk about the dead of cinema, with mostly foolish retard action films, no more than a marketing machine, with directors which the studio just buy to make a mediocri work. Where is the courage need to attack all thius modern crap of today?

Well the industry it's too strong, controls society, and sometimes to make people believe they have some ethic, they just attack some minor market like colorization. Like sometimes ago they turned the nose to idenpendent films, and now created fake-indepedent films, when noticed people was giveng attention for idenpendent productions.

That's the industry...


A. Bergman

I tried watching the colorized She for a few minutes but couldn't take artificial look due in part to the overusage of green, as is usual in colorized movies. Nobody wears and has that much green around them unless they're in the forest wearing camouflage. [Edit: After looking at it again, it wasn't the overuse of green as much as my particular dislike of that drab green that looks particularly artificial to me when it's used as a filler. The same use is often made of drab blues but they don't seem to bother me as much.] Everyone's face being the same color didn't help either. The B&W version was so much better!

Is my feeling about colorization just plain looking bad the minority opinion of the people posting in this thread?

So what you are saying, really, is: "No, Sir, I don't like it".
http://www.diamondcomics.com/toyches...r.%20Horse.jpgWe are trying to elevate the debate here to a more substantial discussion ... But rest assured you are still comfortably ensconced in the "snobbish, politically correct" majority. I was at my favourite Toronto DVD store the other day, ordering the Legend Films She when the lady behind the counter went: "We usually make it a point not to stock colourized films." And I had to make my case, all over again, that besides the customer being always right, we were talking about a better transfer than the Kino Video edition and about a company that is advancing the art and science of colourization through lots of hard work and research, etc., before she reluctantly condescended to take my order. I guess I also like colourized films because of the challenge they represent to the assertion of individual liberties in an increasingly unidimensional cultural universe.

We are gradually evolving from a world where colourized films are treated on a par with kiddie porn to a world where serious reviewers who at first wouldn't even look at the colourized part of colour/b&w twofer are now saying condescending things like: "It's not as bad as you might at first think, really..."

I'd say it's in the minority right now because it seems like the only people posting in this thread any more are in the pro-colorization camp (Baracine, A. Bergman, etc.). I don't think you're in the minority of film buffs worldwide. (For instance, there have been threads about Legend's efforts in forums as diverse as the TCM forums and the Criterion forum, and the consensus in both places is decidedly anti-colorization.)

I imagine that a few folks like myself have just grown tired of Baracine's strong-arm tactics. Contrary to his stated desire of "elevat[ing] the debate here to a more substantial discussion," he keeps accusing people who dislike colorization of being snobs or, even worse, anti-democratic. I think a number of people have stated very cogent aesthetic reasons for their dislike of colorization practices in this thread, including X's point about the unrealistic similarity of facial color. But these seem to get ingored.

So I say we leave this thread to the love-fest (or "elevated, substantial discussion") that it's become over the past two pages.

Maybe the minority in this thread, but definitely the vast majority on this site would prefer it in B/W. I give Legend some credit for trying to make colorization better, but I have never felt any of their colorization made the movie better or make it closer to how it was originally intended. It works best for comic effect in movies like Plan 9 and Reefer Madness. I think they are better off with the color over the top than trying to make it natural.
They still get an A for effort from me though thanks to the B/W version being on there and the fact they are trying to improve the process.

What's a more elevated discussion that the film being made to look bad when it looked good before it was colorized?

Is increasing sales the necessary component of what's considered an elevated discussion? I'm just trying to figure out the parameters here.

What you are saying is: The majority of posters in this thread are pro-colourization and the majority of film buffs worldwide are anti-colourization. Well, I don't know about the posters of this thread but it's nice to know there is at least one "leper colony" in dvdtalk where pro-colourization posters are allowed to express their opinion without being spat upon.

I don't give much weight to opinions along the lines of "all the faces are the same colour and everybody wears green" because it simply isn't true of Legend Films. This thread recognizes that there has been a lot of progress in the methods used over the years, as can be demonstrated by viewing the comparison segments of the Legend Films website (side-by-side comparisons of past and present colourizations of Shirley Temple films). If by "strong arm tactics" you mean keeping an active and consistent presence in a thread I started in order to discuss the original but misunderstood science/art form that is colourization, I am guilty as charged.

Well, coming up with more refined critical tools than "good" and "bad" would be a definite improvement...

We have already established that, even if no one would have ever attempted colourization if there hadn't been the possibility of a financial reward down the line, the process is far from making a fortune, it is still in its infancy and fighting for recognition and survival and is meeting resistance from all quarters of the film industry.

Reality check: Colourized films rarely make the weekly IMDb New Releases list, and are rarely reviewed on sites like dvdtalk.com and dvdbeaver.com.

Thank you.

Your rhetoric is spinning in circles and that's not a good sign of a positive discussion. I listed my reasons for saying why it looked bad to me and now you're relying on a statement referring to those reasons to have something to attack.

Who is spinning in circles now? Tell me, Doctor X, where is the green in this trailer?

http://www.legendfilms.net/trailers/dvd_sheTrailer.html

By "strong-arm tactics," I mean the fact that you keep employing extremely divisive rhetoric. Basically, your argument comes down to this: "Present colorization practices render colorized B&W films beautiful (and often better than the original B&W). If you disagree with that statement, you're a snob, an old fuddy-duddy, and possibly a fascist (because you try to deny people greater freedom of choice)." And that's the sort of logic you apply to everyone who's been disagreeing with you in this thread. You seem to be predicating your definition of an "elevated" discussion upon the principle that your point of view cannot be disagreed with. That tends to close off discussion -- hence "strong-arm tactics." Phrases like "being spat upon" don't help much because they aren't literally true -- unless the woman at your favorite DVD store actually expectorated in your direction.

The real problem is that your opinion that colorization can produce beautiful end results is just as subjective as many others' opinion that it does not. You can disagree with X's opinion that the colorized faces look unrealistically similar to him, but you can't disprove that he actually had that subjective experience. And what I particularly dislike about your position is that you refuse to accept that many of us find the end result of colorization aesthetically displeasing. To you, we're just willfully blind.

Actually, if you read between the lines, I was trying to disprove just that. From what I've seen of the film trailer, the facial colours are not "all the same" and the colour green doesn't appear at all in the costumes (1). So it looks like, possibly, X doesn't know of which he speaks, has not seen the film, colourized or otherwise, and is just "trolling for a good cause" on pure principle. If I am wrong, I would like him to volunteer screen caps of his own because GOD KNOWS there aren't any in the internet DVD review circuit.

Or at least colour-blind, in the case of X (daltonism makes one see the colour blue as green). :) What I am really asking for is more tolerance and that posters keep an open mind. And yes, that saleslady did look like she was going to spit in my direction at one point... But maybe that's just my subjectivity again and maybe she was chewing gum.

(1) For the very good reason that almost nobody ever wears solid green in a Legend Film - except for zombies, fairy tale crocodiles and hallucinating potheads: http://www.legendfilms.net/trailers/...HiTrailer.html. It's almost become their trademark.

Also see: http://www.legendfilms.net/trailers/...HiTrailer.html

Baracine, you keep pleading for tolerance and an open mind (oh the humanity!), but you're the one that makes the accusations (snobbery, trolling, political correctness and defective eyesight being the latest) when anyone takes a contra view.

There's no debate going on here; you're right everyone else is wrong. Snobby, politically correct, color blind trolls every one. Does that just about sum it up?

Your forgot lying: lying, snobby, politically correct, colour-blind trolls. Now that feels about right. Thank you.

Silly me. Thought we'd just clear that up.

With supporters like you its no wonder we still want to burn companies at the stake for colorizing films.