Comments on: Movie colorization

By: Adam Lounsbery

Adam Lounsbery — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 22:39:48 +0000

That is a nice touch, and I’m sure the people who computer-colorized the film did a lot of hard work. I still think it looks like crap. It’s all muted earth tones and unnatural skin colors. I like the contrast of blacks, whites, and shades of gray in the original, and colorization always makes everything so brown. Film noir doesn’t have a monopoly on carefully lit black & white cinematography. Every colorized movie I’ve seen has destroyed a lot of the cinematographer’s hard work. They knew, after all, that they were making a black & white film, and lit it accordingly.

By: Bjørn Stærk

Bjørn Stærk — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:16:01 +0000

My view is that color just looks better - which is why most filmmakers have wanted to use it ever since it was invented. So the question is if you can colorize it without destroying something of what made the movie good in the first place. With film noir it would be a really bad idea, but with an adventure movie like She, or a drama like It's a Wonderful Life, it just makes the visuals richer, in my view. Btw, a nice touch in It's a Wonderful Life, (which you can see here): Photographs in the background are still in black and white.

By: Adam Lounsbery

Adam Lounsbery — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:54:48 +0000

I don’t care for movie colorization. It’s not because I think black & white movies weren’t “meant” to be in color, but simply because they weren’t. It’s the same as new, stereo mixes of old movie soundtracks or LPs that were originally mono. It’s easy to say what directors and producers might have done if they were able to, but the fact is that they didn’t. I much prefer a beautiful, crisp restoration of a black & white movie than a colorized print, no matter how lifelike it is.

On the other hand, if people prefer a colorized version, I’m not going to try and stop them from watching it that way. DVDs like you mention, with both versions available, seems sensible to me. George Romero discussed colorization in an interview. He said he didn’t mind it that much, and that he thought it was much more brutal to edit films for television and cut in commercials. On the other hand, he said colorization ruined the surprise at the beginning of his “Night of the Living Dead,” since the guy stumbling around the graveyard now had green skin, so it was immediately clear that he wasn’t just some drunk shambling around.

By: 40’s movies marathon – part 88 « Bjørn Stærk's Max 256 Blog

40’s movies marathon – part 88 « Bjørn Stærk's Max 256 Blog — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:47:29 +0000

[…] precisely because they are done voluntarily, by individuals. Btw, I love the current state of colorization technology. It looks perfect – not technicolorful, which would be distracting, but just […]

By: Dr.N.A.S

Dr.N.A.S — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:56:01 +0000

Hello Sir, It’s really good ideas to see our lovely movies again in color..I’m a phd researcher and I already have made a movie colorization project one year ago, I ‘ll be pleased to contact with you.
Please visit my site and contact me.
http://drnourasemary.webs.com