Film Colorization?
August 12, 2011 9:15 AM Subscribe
What's wrong with colorizing black and white movies?
What isn't wrong with it?
More seriously, off the top of my head:
1. There's nothing wrong with a black and white movie.
2. The original film was in black and white. Why shouldn't it remain in black and white? Similarly, original aspect ratio should always be respected.
3. The original director and cinematographer shot the movie with black and white in mind. Shots were framed, sets were lit, etc for a black and white movie. Colorizers have no idea about any of that.
posted by kmz at 9:21 AM on August 12, 2011 [7 favorites]
More seriously, off the top of my head:
1. There's nothing wrong with a black and white movie.
2. The original film was in black and white. Why shouldn't it remain in black and white? Similarly, original aspect ratio should always be respected.
3. The original director and cinematographer shot the movie with black and white in mind. Shots were framed, sets were lit, etc for a black and white movie. Colorizers have no idea about any of that.
posted by kmz at 9:21 AM on August 12, 2011 [7 favorites]
Best answer: 1) Aesthetics. In the early days of colorization, colorized movies looked especially sickly. The look is much better these days, given advances in digital imaging technology and algorithms, but still something that makes most knowledgeable cinephiles wrinkle their noses.
2) Artists' Rights. Cinematographers often put special effort into lighting for black-and-white films, ensuring just the right interplay of light and shadow, or making sure to capture an adequate scale of greys to convey a sense of space on the screen. Decisions about costuming and set design are also made with monochrome photography in mind. Splashing a little color onto the photographed images changes them — many would say it lessens them. It also pays a great disrespect to the artists involved, who are generally not given a say in what's being done to their work. (Orson Welles is said to have insisted, on his deathbed, that the executors of his estate keep a safe distance between his films and "Ted Turner with his goddamned Crayolas.")
posted by Joey Bagels at 9:22 AM on August 12, 2011 [3 favorites]
2) Artists' Rights. Cinematographers often put special effort into lighting for black-and-white films, ensuring just the right interplay of light and shadow, or making sure to capture an adequate scale of greys to convey a sense of space on the screen. Decisions about costuming and set design are also made with monochrome photography in mind. Splashing a little color onto the photographed images changes them — many would say it lessens them. It also pays a great disrespect to the artists involved, who are generally not given a say in what's being done to their work. (Orson Welles is said to have insisted, on his deathbed, that the executors of his estate keep a safe distance between his films and "Ted Turner with his goddamned Crayolas.")
posted by Joey Bagels at 9:22 AM on August 12, 2011 [3 favorites]
It's often seen as an after-the-fact hack-job by 3rd parties to make old movies more appealing to new (younger) audiences who would otherwise disregard black-and-white movies as dated and old.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:24 AM on August 12, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:24 AM on August 12, 2011 [3 favorites]
And the Orson Welles line was probably in a letter (though other wording has been cited elsewhere).
posted by filthy light thief at 9:29 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by filthy light thief at 9:29 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Let's assume you're talking about movies wherein the creators would have liked to make them in color if they had the opportunity.
Colorizing it post-fact is not reflective of the way the movie was actually made, or the choices the people on the movie made. Almost everything in a movie that doesn't sell itself on being verite is a concious choice. That wall the director wanted to be blue? Chances are someone said "make that wall hot pink so it looks the shade of gray that blue sort of is in black and white." Sixty years later, someone with a computer makes that wall green because it seems like it would be green. Who says that person gets to decide the vision of the original creators?
posted by griphus at 9:31 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
Colorizing it post-fact is not reflective of the way the movie was actually made, or the choices the people on the movie made. Almost everything in a movie that doesn't sell itself on being verite is a concious choice. That wall the director wanted to be blue? Chances are someone said "make that wall hot pink so it looks the shade of gray that blue sort of is in black and white." Sixty years later, someone with a computer makes that wall green because it seems like it would be green. Who says that person gets to decide the vision of the original creators?
posted by griphus at 9:31 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
It's sort of like how dubbing dialogue into silent films would be... well, silly. The whole style of the film was built around the fact there was no spoken dialogue. Similarly, watching a colorized version of a film is missing at least half the point of the film -- yeah, you get the story, but a brief synopsis will do that for you and save you a bunch of time.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:32 AM on August 12, 2011 [5 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:32 AM on August 12, 2011 [5 favorites]
It's probably just a preference thing, that some people prefer to see the original, and others prefer to view it in a format that they're more accustomed to.
Personally, I prefer the original versions, as they reflect the artistic choices made at the time, unmuddied by later influences (and if there is a 'wrong', that's what it is). But I also like my recordings of the Great Caruso to have the scratches of the old 78s left in, and no extra scenes or CGI back-inserted into my original Star Wars trilogy.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:40 AM on August 12, 2011
Personally, I prefer the original versions, as they reflect the artistic choices made at the time, unmuddied by later influences (and if there is a 'wrong', that's what it is). But I also like my recordings of the Great Caruso to have the scratches of the old 78s left in, and no extra scenes or CGI back-inserted into my original Star Wars trilogy.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:40 AM on August 12, 2011
I'll answer with a question. What would be wrong with reproducing a Rembrandt painting and changing the colors to a more "modern palette" with the purpose of appealing more to a modern audience?
posted by txmon at 9:40 AM on August 12, 2011 [5 favorites]
posted by txmon at 9:40 AM on August 12, 2011 [5 favorites]
Black and white photography at its best isn't just color photography shot in monochrome. Black and white photography is particularly concerned with the composed relationship between light and shadow, and just about every part of the process including costuming, set design, and makeup was built around that contrast.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:44 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by KirkJobSluder at 9:44 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
I generally take a dim view of colorized movies. But there are exceptions. Ray Harryhausen approved of the DVD colorization release, and so do I, FWIW.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:47 AM on August 12, 2011
posted by 2N2222 at 9:47 AM on August 12, 2011
the DVD colorization Earth Vs the Flying Saucers release, that is.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:48 AM on August 12, 2011
posted by 2N2222 at 9:48 AM on August 12, 2011
Usually your TV/Monitor has controls for color saturation, and if you dial it all the way down you get black and white. Depending on the colorization process, the result should be pretty damn close to the original monochrome film.
That, and the fact that nobody's messing with the original prints, make me shrug off the whole debate.
posted by rocket88 at 9:50 AM on August 12, 2011
That, and the fact that nobody's messing with the original prints, make me shrug off the whole debate.
posted by rocket88 at 9:50 AM on August 12, 2011
Ah, yes but a colorized film, having been passed through whatever process good or bad, is digitized and a much clearer print,........so........tune the viewing to B & W again and enjoy the clarity. The 1933 King Kong was colorized and the process improved the print by 1000%; the in camera matte shots and added-in placement of the real actors to the stop motion all becomes as if it is the same action shot.
So the issue to me is not the color but the clarity.
But yeah, .............mostly it is a poor idea.
posted by Freedomboy at 9:52 AM on August 12, 2011
So the issue to me is not the color but the clarity.
But yeah, .............mostly it is a poor idea.
posted by Freedomboy at 9:52 AM on August 12, 2011
Best answer: Because a generation from now, people will be asking, "What's wrong with making classic movies into 3D?"
posted by mkultra at 9:56 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by mkultra at 9:56 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
Some comedian (I wish I could remember who) years ago summed it up best when he said Ted Turner was getting flak for planning to colorize the first twenty minutes of The Wizard of Oz.
posted by TedW at 9:59 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by TedW at 9:59 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
The 1933 King Kong was colorized and the process improved the print by 1000%; the in camera matte shots and added-in placement of the real actors to the stop motion all becomes as if it is the same action shot.
And I would say, no, the colorization process destroyed the look of the film. What's wrong with enjoying the film as it is? As it was made? You want to see King Kong at home, go watch it on Warner's Blu-ray reissue. That's clarity. It's magnificent. A colorized version that's been muddied up so you can no longer catch the nuances of the photography and special effects? I'm glad you enjoy it but, to me, that's not King Kong anymore.
I've got one of the colorized Harryhausen discs. It looks OK. If he's in favor of that, god bless him. But I will watch the black-and-white version every time.
posted by Joey Bagels at 10:02 AM on August 12, 2011
And I would say, no, the colorization process destroyed the look of the film. What's wrong with enjoying the film as it is? As it was made? You want to see King Kong at home, go watch it on Warner's Blu-ray reissue. That's clarity. It's magnificent. A colorized version that's been muddied up so you can no longer catch the nuances of the photography and special effects? I'm glad you enjoy it but, to me, that's not King Kong anymore.
I've got one of the colorized Harryhausen discs. It looks OK. If he's in favor of that, god bless him. But I will watch the black-and-white version every time.
posted by Joey Bagels at 10:02 AM on August 12, 2011
It's like taking Da Vinci's drawings and painting over them with water colours.
Is it wrong? Would colour make them better? Would they somehow be more approachable to a modern audience?
'Wrong' is a strong word but, really, what's the point? The colour only obscures aspects of the original work and dilutes the vision of the original creative team.
No thanks, I'll stick to the original every time.
Because a generation from now, people will be asking, "What's wrong with making classic movies into 3D?"
It begins.
posted by mazola at 10:21 AM on August 12, 2011
Is it wrong? Would colour make them better? Would they somehow be more approachable to a modern audience?
'Wrong' is a strong word but, really, what's the point? The colour only obscures aspects of the original work and dilutes the vision of the original creative team.
No thanks, I'll stick to the original every time.
Because a generation from now, people will be asking, "What's wrong with making classic movies into 3D?"
It begins.
posted by mazola at 10:21 AM on August 12, 2011
Best answer: This was a raging debate in philosophical aesthetics in the 1990s; the chair of my undergrad department was one of its key figures. There's a retrospective article about the controversy here, and its bibliography contains references to many of the key texts.
posted by Beardman at 10:23 AM on August 12, 2011
posted by Beardman at 10:23 AM on August 12, 2011
Actually, I'll just copy the relevant footnote, which contains both academic and popular press references:
Vincent Canby, "'Colorization' Is Defacing Black and White Film Classics," The New York Times (November 2, 1986), Sec. 2, pp. 1, 21;
Charles B. Daniels, "Note on Colorization," British Journal of Aesthetics 30:1 (1990), 68-70;
David N. James, "On Colorizing Films: A Venture into Applied Aesthetics," Metaphilosophy 20:3-4 (1989), 332-340;
Flo Leibowitz, "Movie Colorization and the Expression of Mood," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49:4 (1991), 363-365;
Jerrold Levinson, "Colourization Ill-Defended," British Journal of Aesthetics 30:1 (1990), 62-67;
Yuriko Saito, "Contemporary Aesthetic Issue: The Colorization Controversy," Journal of Aesthetic Education 32:2 (1989), 21-31;
James O. Young, "In Defence of Colourization," British Journal of Aesthetics 28:4 (1988), 368-372;
James O. Young, "Still More in Defense of Colorization," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 50:3 (1992), 245-248;
Julie Van Camp, "The Colorization Controversy," The Journal of Value Inquiry 29:4 (December 1995), 447-468.
posted by Beardman at 10:24 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
Vincent Canby, "'Colorization' Is Defacing Black and White Film Classics," The New York Times (November 2, 1986), Sec. 2, pp. 1, 21;
Charles B. Daniels, "Note on Colorization," British Journal of Aesthetics 30:1 (1990), 68-70;
David N. James, "On Colorizing Films: A Venture into Applied Aesthetics," Metaphilosophy 20:3-4 (1989), 332-340;
Flo Leibowitz, "Movie Colorization and the Expression of Mood," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49:4 (1991), 363-365;
Jerrold Levinson, "Colourization Ill-Defended," British Journal of Aesthetics 30:1 (1990), 62-67;
Yuriko Saito, "Contemporary Aesthetic Issue: The Colorization Controversy," Journal of Aesthetic Education 32:2 (1989), 21-31;
James O. Young, "In Defence of Colourization," British Journal of Aesthetics 28:4 (1988), 368-372;
James O. Young, "Still More in Defense of Colorization," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 50:3 (1992), 245-248;
Julie Van Camp, "The Colorization Controversy," The Journal of Value Inquiry 29:4 (December 1995), 447-468.
posted by Beardman at 10:24 AM on August 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
From what I've seen, the colourization process is analogous to tinting a black and white photo. It's never really going to look like a colour image because you're just filling colour into the lighter value areas and leaving the darker areas as shades, with no real fill lighting colour. Also, all white people end up looking like talking band-aids.
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:47 AM on August 12, 2011
posted by bonobothegreat at 10:47 AM on August 12, 2011
It's sort of like how dubbing dialogue into silent films would be... well, silly.
Actually, I kind of like that idea in a perverse way. Has it ever been done? I mean, not for laughs?
posted by IndigoJones at 11:35 AM on August 12, 2011
Actually, I kind of like that idea in a perverse way. Has it ever been done? I mean, not for laughs?
posted by IndigoJones at 11:35 AM on August 12, 2011
So do I watch this as it was originally shot? Or how it was originally released? And would I be 'wrong' for enjoying the colour version more?
DAMN YOU COEN BROTHERS!
posted by mazola at 11:36 AM on August 12, 2011
DAMN YOU COEN BROTHERS!
posted by mazola at 11:36 AM on August 12, 2011
Usually your TV/Monitor has controls for color saturation, and if you dial it all the way down you get black and white. Depending on the colorization process, the result should be pretty damn close to the original monochrome film.
This is really not even close to true.
(I made this by finding a comparison pair of colorized and original images, then taking the colorized version into photoshop and hitting "desaturate". It's not a truly accurate demonstration -- this particular image had been hand-tinted, not the usual film colorizing method -- which would be worse than this -- and there's a lot of image clarity lost in both versions due to the fact that these samples have gone through at least a couple rounds of file compression by this point, but you get the idea. Saturation isn't a totally independent variable that you can turn on and off at will.)
posted by ook at 11:46 AM on August 12, 2011
This is really not even close to true.
(I made this by finding a comparison pair of colorized and original images, then taking the colorized version into photoshop and hitting "desaturate". It's not a truly accurate demonstration -- this particular image had been hand-tinted, not the usual film colorizing method -- which would be worse than this -- and there's a lot of image clarity lost in both versions due to the fact that these samples have gone through at least a couple rounds of file compression by this point, but you get the idea. Saturation isn't a totally independent variable that you can turn on and off at will.)
posted by ook at 11:46 AM on August 12, 2011
IndigoJones: Yes, Charlie Chaplin set dialogue, and music, to his own "Gold Rush". Like Star Wars, I don't like artists tampering with their original creations.
To me, colorizing a film is like taking a photograph of a Van Gogh painting and saying, shouldn't we be appreciating this new technology?
posted by Melismata at 11:46 AM on August 12, 2011
To me, colorizing a film is like taking a photograph of a Van Gogh painting and saying, shouldn't we be appreciating this new technology?
posted by Melismata at 11:46 AM on August 12, 2011
The idea of colorization comes from an illusion about black-and-white versus color movies--to wit, that color film is a newer or more sophisticated process, one that all B&W cinematographers would have used had they had access to the money or technology.
That ain't the case. Sure, back in the day, making a movie was generally more expensive in color than in black-and-white, especially in the technicolor days. But the fact is, color movies have been around since the thirties--"Gone with the Wind" was in color, after all--through the mid-sixties, and directors would pick and choose between the two film stocks based on the thematic content of the movie. Serious, dramatic fare and film noire were filmed in black and white, and color, for the most part, was reserved for actioners and lighter movies.
But now, given that the last Hollywood blockbuster filmed in black-and-white was "Shindler's List," people have come to assume that B&W is a primitive filming technology, rather than a highly sophisticated art reserved for contemplative or artistic movies. To a large part, this is due to the influence of TV. Until the mid-sixties or thereabouts, most families owned black-and-white sets, and the industry made an expensive propaganda push to spur the adoption of the more expensive color TVs (much as is occurring with 3D television right now). A generation of 1960s viewers grew up under the veil of this propaganda, believing that "color" equalled best in all media, whether TV or film.
The colorization fad (which has faded for the most part) is part and parcel of this phenomenon, as is the woeful lack of black and white movies in today's cinema. For a true picture of the glories of black and white, rent a movie like "The Third Man," "Persona," or "The Hustler"--preferably in a spankin' new blu-ray print if you can. The snowlike whites and rich, inky blacks will drip off of your monitor and onto the floor. Pure bliss.
posted by Gordion Knott at 12:39 PM on August 12, 2011 [6 favorites]
That ain't the case. Sure, back in the day, making a movie was generally more expensive in color than in black-and-white, especially in the technicolor days. But the fact is, color movies have been around since the thirties--"Gone with the Wind" was in color, after all--through the mid-sixties, and directors would pick and choose between the two film stocks based on the thematic content of the movie. Serious, dramatic fare and film noire were filmed in black and white, and color, for the most part, was reserved for actioners and lighter movies.
But now, given that the last Hollywood blockbuster filmed in black-and-white was "Shindler's List," people have come to assume that B&W is a primitive filming technology, rather than a highly sophisticated art reserved for contemplative or artistic movies. To a large part, this is due to the influence of TV. Until the mid-sixties or thereabouts, most families owned black-and-white sets, and the industry made an expensive propaganda push to spur the adoption of the more expensive color TVs (much as is occurring with 3D television right now). A generation of 1960s viewers grew up under the veil of this propaganda, believing that "color" equalled best in all media, whether TV or film.
The colorization fad (which has faded for the most part) is part and parcel of this phenomenon, as is the woeful lack of black and white movies in today's cinema. For a true picture of the glories of black and white, rent a movie like "The Third Man," "Persona," or "The Hustler"--preferably in a spankin' new blu-ray print if you can. The snowlike whites and rich, inky blacks will drip off of your monitor and onto the floor. Pure bliss.
posted by Gordion Knott at 12:39 PM on August 12, 2011 [6 favorites]
Best answer: Now, adding color to black and white movies isn't always terrible*, but if you're referring specifically to the process of digitally adding color to black and white material for television broadcasts and VHS releases that became popular and controversial in the 1980s then it's more terrible than some other cases.
It's bad when colorization interferes with or assumes things about artistic intention, as everyone has said. txmon's Rembrandt example is illustrative. This is probably why people like John Huston and Woody Allen were up in arms about the whole thing in the 1980s - they were living artists opposed to the idea that anyone might ever add color to their own work without their consent. (There are clearly some interesting intellectual property rights issues here...)
I think that the main reason it's wrong is that it treats films as things it's acceptable to alter for exploitation ("vandalized!" as Siskel & Ebert put it when this first because a controversy) rather than as major vehicles of the 20th century's artistic and cultural legacy.
Film has always had an ambiguous relationship with its status as "art" - certainly many of the regular people who went to see films in the first half of the 20th century didn't think of what they were seeing as art - but even back then there were people making the argument that it was. It's a tension that's existed as long as films have and isn't going to disappear any time soon. But colorizing films comes down pretty solidly on the side of "films are for making money for the studios who produced them". That's bad because the people responsible for colorizing the films are the guardians of the material - they own the negatives and the 35mm prints and the rights - and it's not a great sign for the future survival of that material if they are more focused on exploiting it than on restoring, perserving, and archiving it. (Though I'm honestly not even sure I see the logic of it - did they really think that the young people of the 1980s would be more interested in watching a film from fifty years ago if it were in color?)
On the other hand, even back in the 1940s producers routinely did things like release 8mm or 16mm prints of cut-down 10 minute versions of Hollywood B pictures for home projection - and creative exploitation has been happening in TV for a long time, sometimes in even more egregious ways than colorization! But on the other other hand, that was all in a time when film as a technology was healthy and stable and when there was still a lot of interest in and love for that content. These days, things are looking not so great for the future of the film technologies that produced most black and white films, so perhaps the "anything for exploitation" attitude should worry us more now than ever.
Also, after all that, I'd guess that colorization is also bad from a business perspective, since it's an incredibly labor-intensive process (if it's not done badly!) that may or may not actually sell more DVDs / keep more people watching the TV. Maybe it's just because I don't really buy DVDs, but I haven't noticed it happening nearly as much as I did in the VHS era.
*Filmmakers were adding color to their black and white films as early in cinema history as 1895. And film tinting was common throughout the silent era. But these sorts of things were choices made on the creative end of the production, not by a TV man trying to make a buck .
posted by bubukaba at 1:49 PM on August 12, 2011
It's bad when colorization interferes with or assumes things about artistic intention, as everyone has said. txmon's Rembrandt example is illustrative. This is probably why people like John Huston and Woody Allen were up in arms about the whole thing in the 1980s - they were living artists opposed to the idea that anyone might ever add color to their own work without their consent. (There are clearly some interesting intellectual property rights issues here...)
I think that the main reason it's wrong is that it treats films as things it's acceptable to alter for exploitation ("vandalized!" as Siskel & Ebert put it when this first because a controversy) rather than as major vehicles of the 20th century's artistic and cultural legacy.
Film has always had an ambiguous relationship with its status as "art" - certainly many of the regular people who went to see films in the first half of the 20th century didn't think of what they were seeing as art - but even back then there were people making the argument that it was. It's a tension that's existed as long as films have and isn't going to disappear any time soon. But colorizing films comes down pretty solidly on the side of "films are for making money for the studios who produced them". That's bad because the people responsible for colorizing the films are the guardians of the material - they own the negatives and the 35mm prints and the rights - and it's not a great sign for the future survival of that material if they are more focused on exploiting it than on restoring, perserving, and archiving it. (Though I'm honestly not even sure I see the logic of it - did they really think that the young people of the 1980s would be more interested in watching a film from fifty years ago if it were in color?)
On the other hand, even back in the 1940s producers routinely did things like release 8mm or 16mm prints of cut-down 10 minute versions of Hollywood B pictures for home projection - and creative exploitation has been happening in TV for a long time, sometimes in even more egregious ways than colorization! But on the other other hand, that was all in a time when film as a technology was healthy and stable and when there was still a lot of interest in and love for that content. These days, things are looking not so great for the future of the film technologies that produced most black and white films, so perhaps the "anything for exploitation" attitude should worry us more now than ever.
Also, after all that, I'd guess that colorization is also bad from a business perspective, since it's an incredibly labor-intensive process (if it's not done badly!) that may or may not actually sell more DVDs / keep more people watching the TV. Maybe it's just because I don't really buy DVDs, but I haven't noticed it happening nearly as much as I did in the VHS era.
*Filmmakers were adding color to their black and white films as early in cinema history as 1895. And film tinting was common throughout the silent era. But these sorts of things were choices made on the creative end of the production, not by a TV man trying to make a buck .
posted by bubukaba at 1:49 PM on August 12, 2011
> Danke, Melismata! Here's hoping I can find it in the archives.
posted by IndigoJones at 3:58 PM on August 12, 2011
posted by IndigoJones at 3:58 PM on August 12, 2011
Some comedian (I wish I could remember who) years ago summed it up best when he said Ted Turner was getting flak for planning to colorize the first twenty minutes of The Wizard of Oz.
Along the same lines, the 1939 B&W classic The Women features a mid-movie 10-minute fashion show which was filmed in Technicolor. The colors of the clothes is aesthetically significant and showing them in B&W defeats the purpose. That segment of the film was often cut out when it was shown on late night public TV or at art house theaters. To Turner Classic Movies' credit, they've generally shown the full version of the movie with the color interlude.
posted by fuse theorem at 6:27 PM on August 12, 2011
Along the same lines, the 1939 B&W classic The Women features a mid-movie 10-minute fashion show which was filmed in Technicolor. The colors of the clothes is aesthetically significant and showing them in B&W defeats the purpose. That segment of the film was often cut out when it was shown on late night public TV or at art house theaters. To Turner Classic Movies' credit, they've generally shown the full version of the movie with the color interlude.
posted by fuse theorem at 6:27 PM on August 12, 2011
You know, there are some color movies that look better in black and white.
posted by cardioid at 8:02 PM on August 12, 2011
posted by cardioid at 8:02 PM on August 12, 2011
You know, there are some color movies that look better in black and white.
Fargo? No way. Blood on the snow.
posted by Beardman at 8:37 PM on August 12, 2011
Fargo? No way. Blood on the snow.
posted by Beardman at 8:37 PM on August 12, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
But as for why you shouldn't watch colorized movies, first the process is often crap. People's lips for some reason seem to pass through the whole process unchanged, and it makes them look really creepy.
But even if the process were perfect, the cinematographers and production designers who worked with black and white made very careful decisions about how to set up, frame, light, etc. the films based on the monochrome palette and color tends to throw that stuff off.
They basically just look worse instead of better.
posted by Naberius at 9:20 AM on August 12, 2011 [11 favorites]