Film colorization
Film colorization (
Early techniques
Hand colorization
The first film colorization methods were hand done by individuals. For example, at least 4% of
The process was always done by hand, sometimes using a stencil cut from a second print of the film, such as the Pathécolor process. As late as the 1920s, hand coloring processes were used for individual shots in Greed (1924) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925) (both utilizing the Handschiegl color process); and rarely, an entire feature-length movie such as Cyrano de Bergerac (1925) and The Last Days of Pompeii (1926).
These colorization methods were employed until effective
Digital colorization
Computerized colorization began in the 1970s using the technique invented by Wilson Markle. These early attempts at colorization have soft contrast and fairly pale, flat, washed-out color; however, the technology has improved steadily since the 1980s.
To perform digital colorization, a digitized copy of the best black and white film print available is used. With the aid of computer software, technicians associate a range of gray levels to each object and indicate to the computer any movement of the objects within a shot. The software is also capable of sensing variations in the light level from frame-to-frame and correcting it if necessary. The technician selects a color for each object based on common "memory" colors—such as blue sky, white clouds, flesh tones, and green grass—and on any information about colors used in the movie. If color publicity stills or props are available to examine, authentic colors may be applied. In the absence of any better information, technicians may choose colors that fit the gray level and are consistent with what a director might have wanted for the scene. The software associates a variation of the basic color with each gray level in the object, while keeping intensity levels the same as in the monochrome original. The software then follows each object from frame to frame, applying the same color until the object leaves the frame. As new objects come into the frame, the technician must associate colors to each new object in the same way as described above.[4] This technique was patented in 1991.[5]
In order to colorize a still image, an artist typically begins by dividing the image into regions, and then assigning a color to each region. This approach, also known as the
Several companies claim to have produced automatic region-tracking algorithms:
- Legend Films describes their core technology as pattern recognition and background compositing that moves and morphs foreground and background masks from frame to frame. In the process, backgrounds are colorized separately in a single composite frame which functions as a visual database of a cut, and includes all offset data on each camera movement. Once the foreground areas are colorized, background masks are applied frame-to-frame.
- Timebrush describes a process based on neural nettechnology that produces saturated and crisp colors with clear lines and no apparent spill-over. The process is cost effective because it relies on computers rather than human effort, and is equally suitable for low-budget colorization and broadcast-quality or theatrical projection.
- A team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering describe their method as an interactive process that does not require precise manual region detection, nor accurate tracking; it is based on the premise that adjacent pixels in space and time that have similar gray levels should also have similar colors.
- At the University of Minnesota, a color propagation method was developed that uses geodesic distance.[6]
- A highly labor-intensive process employed by the UK-based film and video colorization artist segmentation method. These were then utilized by SVS Resources to interpolate the color across the intervening surrounding frames using a part computerized/part manual process.[7]
Uses of colorization
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 Annabelle Serpentine Dance series, were also the earliest examples of colorization, done by painting aniline dyes onto the emulsion.
Around 1905, Pathé introduced Pathéchrome, a stencil process that required cutting one or more stencils for each film frame with the aid of a reducing pantograph.
In 1916, the
Partial colorization has also been utilized on footage shot in color to enhance commercials and broadcast television to further facilitate the director's artistic vision. As an example,
Restoration
A number of British television shows which were made in color in the early 1970s were
Integration
Colorization is also sometimes used on historical stock footage in color movies. For instance, the film Thirteen Days (2000) uses colorized news footage from the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
The full-color feature film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), 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.
In his feature film The Aviator (2005), Martin Scorsese seamlessly blended colorized stock footage of the Hell's Angels movie premiere with footage of the premiere's reenactment. The colorization by Legend Films was designed to look like normal three-strip film but was then color corrected to match the two-strip look of the premiere's reenactment. Also in The Aviator, Scorsese used colorized footage of Jane Russell from the original black-and-white film, The Outlaw and dog fight scenes from Hell's Angels.
Colorization examples, criticism, and controversies
Entertainment make-overs
In 1983, Hal Roach Studios became one of the first studios to venture into the business of computerized film colorization. Buying a 50 percent interest in Wilson Markle's Colorization, Inc., it began creating digitally colored versions of some of its films. Roach's Topper (1937), followed by Way Out West (1937), became the first black-and-white films to be redistributed in color using the digital colorization process,[10][11][12][13] leading to controversy. Defenders of the process noted that it would allow black-and-white films to have new audiences of people who were not used to the format. Detractors complained (among other reasons) that the process was crude and claimed that, even if it were refined, it would not take into account lighting compositions chosen for black-and-white photography which would not necessarily be as effective in color.[14] Figures opposed to the process included Roger Ebert, James Stewart, John Huston, George Lucas, and Woody Allen.[10]
Cary Grant was reportedly "very gung-ho with the outcome" of the colorization of Topper.[10] Director Frank Capra met with Wilson Markle about colorizing the perennial Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life, Meet John Doe and Lady for a Day based on Grant's enthusiasm.[10] Colorization, Inc.'s art director Brian Holmes screened ten minutes of colorized footage from It's a Wonderful Life to Capra, which led Capra to sign a contract with Colorization, Inc.[10] However, the film was believed to be in the public domain at the time, and, as a result, Markle and Holmes responded by returning Capra's initial investment, eliminating his financial participation, and refusing outright to allow the director to exercise artistic control over the colorization of his films, leading Capra to join in the campaign against the process.[10][15]
On a December 27, 1989 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson actor Jimmy Stewart criticized efforts to colorize old black-and-white films, including It's a Wonderful Life.
In 1986, film critics
On February 14, 1989, Turner Entertainment president
Our attorneys looked at the contract between RKO Pictures Inc. and Orson Welles and his production company, Mercury Productions Inc., and, on the basis of their review, we have decided not to proceed with colorization of the movie. ... While a court test might uphold our legal right to colorize the film, provisions of the contract could be read to prohibit colorization without permission of the Welles estate.[21]
One minute of the colorized test footage of Citizen Kane was included in a special
John Huston's opposition to the colorization of his work led to a landmark three-year French legal case after his death, sparked by a colorized version of
Because of the high cost of the process, Turner Entertainment stopped colorizing titles. With the coming of DVD technology, the notion of colorization was once again gaining press. Because the DVD format was more versatile, studios could offer viewers the option to choose between both versions without switching discs, and thus, the release of colorized titles once again seemed profitable. Some companies rereleased the older colorized versions from the 1980s—an example of this is the Laurel and Hardy box set being released in the UK.[25]
Other studios, such as
Both film and television restoration and colorization is produced by the company Legend Films. Their patented automated process was used to colorize around 100 films between 2003 and 2009. Shirley Temple, Jane Russell, Terry Moore, and Ray Harryhausen have worked with the company to colorize either their own films or their personal favorites. Two movies that Legend Films are noted for is the colorization of the exploitation film Reefer Madness, for which certain color schemes were used to create a psychedelic effect in its viewers, and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Recently (2007), Legend Films colorized It's a Wonderful Life for Paramount Pictures (whose subsidiary, Republic Pictures, had regained control of the copyright in the 1990s) and Holiday Inn in 2008 for rights holder Universal Pictures.
In 2004, a classic Indian film, Mughal-e-Azam, was colored for theatrical release all over the world by the Indian Academy of Arts and Animation (IAAA) in association with Sankranti Creations. Since 2013, Livepixel Technologies, founded by Rajeev Dwivedi has been the sole player in film colorization business and almost completed more than 100 titles related with World War.[citation needed]
In 2005, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the first season of Bewitched 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. A year later, the second season of Bewitched and the first season of I Dream of Jeannie, another show owned by Sony, were released the same way. These releases were colorized by Dynacs Digital Studios, a Florida-based company with film colorization and animation studios in Patna, India.[citation needed]
CBS has colorized a number of episodes of I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 2010s, which are timed to air on Friday nights in holiday periods.
Colorization has also been used to restore scenes from color films that were cut from the finished product but were preserved in black-and-white. In 2018, the originally intended closing scene to the 1978 film Grease (in which the lead characters kiss) was added to the film's 40th anniversary release. A challenge that still plagues colorization efforts is the fact that the colorized black-and-white film may not match film shot originally in color; Randal Kleiser, the director of Grease, wanted to edit the scene back into the film but found the colors between the scenes did not match well enough to do so. Kleiser is optimistic that colorization technology will be advanced enough to match true color by 2028, when Grease reaches its 50th anniversary.[27]
Documentary make-overs
Colorization is sometimes used on
The documentary series
The 1960 Masters Tournament, originally broadcast in black-and-white and recorded on kinescope, was colorized by Legend Films for the documentary Jim Nantz Remembers. This was the first time a major sports event had been rebroadcast using colorization.[32]
In
The Greatest Game Ever Played, the 1958 NFL Championship between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, was colorized by Legend Films for ESPN for a sports broadcast special in December 2008.[citation needed]
See also
- National Film Preservation Act
- TNT (TV channel)
- Turner Classic Movies / History
- 2D to 3D conversion—many of the issues involved in colorization, such as object edge identification/recognition, are also encountered in 3-D conversion
- Color recovery of black and white copies that still have color information in them from color recordings
References
- ISBN 9780813552989.
- ISBN 978-2918040422.
- ^ "The colorized cartoon database". Archived from the original on May 22, 2006. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
- ^ "COLORIZATION". Archived from the original on 2013-05-07. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
- ^ "Canadian Intellectual Property Office". Archived from the original on 2011-10-08. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
- ^ Daniel Sýkora. "Annotation of colorization methods". Archived from the original on 2010-11-06. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
- ^ "Babelcolour Video Colourisation". 8 May 2013. Archived from the original on 2016-04-15. Retrieved 2013-11-15.
- ^ Charles Norton (6 March 2008). "Putting colour back in the Doctor's cheeks". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 2013-12-04. Retrieved 2008-03-14.
- ^ "Doctor Who Restoration Team Official Site". Archived from the original on 2020-02-04. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
- ^ S2CID 159900256.
- ^ "Topper". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. American Film Institute. Archived from the original on 2016-04-08. Retrieved 2016-06-28.
- ^ Topper (Media notes). Hal Roach Studios Film Classics, Inc. 1985.
It seems fitting that Topper should again be on the cutting edge of change, this time heralding the age of Colorization as the first completed Color version of a classic black and white motion picture.
- ^ "Roach Enters Home Market". Billboard. April 13, 1985. Retrieved 2016-07-03.
- ^ Krauthammer, Charles (1987-01-12). "Casablanca In Color?". Time. p. 3. Archived from the original on November 6, 2007. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
- ^ "Carpra's Movies Lead New Lives". MSNBC. Archived from the original on 2012-07-11. Retrieved 2009-12-24.
- ^ Colorizing, Hollywood's New Vandalism (1986) Archived 2016-12-20 at the Wayback Machine, Siskel & Ebert, Buena Vista Television, 1986; air date unknown
- ^ "AMERICAN FILM TECHNOLOGIES INC /DE/ – AFTC Annual Report (10-K) ITEM 1. BUSINESS". Sec.edgar-online.com. Archived from the original on 2011-07-10. Retrieved 2009-11-01.
- ^ Bawden, James, "Colorful Turner sees Citizen Kane in a different light".Toronto Star, July 28, 1988. "Citizen Kane? I'm thinking of colorizing it."
- ^ "The Museum of Broadcast Communications: Ted Turner". Museum.tv. Archived from the original on 2011-01-27. Retrieved 2009-11-01.
- ^ "Turner Says It's Testing To Colorize 'Citizen Kane'". Associated Press. Associated Press, January 30, 1989. Archived from the original on 2014-01-06. Retrieved 2014-01-05.
- ^ "We'll Never Know If Rosebud Was Red". John Antczyk, Associated Press, February 14, 1989. Archived from the original on 2014-01-06. Retrieved 2014-01-05.
- ^ "The Complete Citizen Kane' documentary is now online". Wellesnet, May 13, 2013. 2013-05-13. Retrieved 2014-01-05. The footage appears at approximately 1:17:00.
- ^ "The Complete Citizen Kane". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 2013-10-07. Retrieved 2014-01-06.
- ^ Riding, Alan (25 August 1991). "Film Makers Are Victors In a Lawsuit on Coloring". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2009-06-16. Retrieved 2009-04-24.
- ^ "The Laurel and Hardy Collection". DVD Beaver. Archived from the original on 2007-04-09. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
- ^ "Stooges DVD revives colorization debate". MSNBC. Archived from the original on 2011-05-19. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
- ^ Alexander, Bryan (May 21, 2018). "Danny and Sandy finally get their movie-ending 'Grease' kiss, 40 years after it was cut". USA Today. Archived from the original on May 22, 2018. Retrieved May 23, 2018.
- ^ "Anthology Home Video". Beatles Reference Library. Archived from the original on 2010-12-28. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
- ^ "The Beatles - Help! [Blackpool Night Out, ABC Theatre, Blackpool, United Kingdom]". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2022-12-28. Retrieved 2022-12-28.
- ^ Bowser, Jacquie (8 November 2007). "Telegraph launches ad campaign for First World War giveaway". CampaignLive.co.uk. Archived from the original on 3 October 2017. Retrieved 3 October 2017.
- ^ "World War 1 In Colour (2003)". cosmolearning.org. Archived from the original on 14 October 2021. Retrieved 14 October 2021.
- ^ "Made-for-TV legend". Chicago Tribune. 27 March 2007. Archived from the original on 2022-08-02. Retrieved 2022-08-02.
- ^ "The Times" report, 19 November 2018, page 3
Further reading
- Anthony Slide, Nitrate Won't Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United States (pg 9, August 1, 2000), ISBN 0-7864-0836-7
External links
- Hand coloring on Timeline of Historical Film Colors with many written resources and many photographs of hand colored prints.
- Tom Marshall - Photo Colouriser with many examples of digitally colourised photos.
- Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on colorization of black-and-white films, four parts: