Fathom Events Shows THE THING In Wrong Aspect Ratio

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I completely agree Randy! Here is an.example of how colorizing a movie ruins it.

https://youtu.be/nB1lH8Jk520

[Randy Stankey]

Obviously done by a wanker. Anybody who would colorize any image that they, themselves, didn't originate is an idiot.
If it's an image that you made and you want to colorize it, that's perfectly fine. It's your work. Do as you see fit.
To alter somebody else's work is an offense that automatically makes one a wanker.

With that YT clip, aside from the fact that it was pretty bad, it was apparently done with something called "De-Oldify AI."
The name has "wanker" written all over it. Why would an image in black and white automatically be thought of as "old?"

Somebody needs to have a talk with Calvin's dad:

CalvinsDadColor.jpg

[Randy Stankey]

Oh! Hey! I just remembered!

When the 1954 movie, "Suddenly," was colorized, they gave Frank Sinatra brown eyes!

[Leo Enticknap]

Colorization is a slightly more complex issue than straight right or wrong.

During the silent era, almost all movies shown theatrically were colorized. The most common (because it was the cheapest) method was also the crudest: tinting (dyeing the base, so the "white" of black-and-white is colored), and/or toning (coloring the emulsion, or "black"). Sometimes different colors were used for the tint or the tone for dramatic effect. More sophisticated forms of colorization were used on high budget blockbusters, e.g. the Handscheigl process, which was similar to Technicolor dye transfer printing, except that an operator decided what color went where, rather than that information being captured in the camera.

No-one claimed at the time that doing this destroyed the artistic integrity of the b/w frames captured in the camera: in fact, most archivists consider it a more authentic form of restoration if these colors are reconstructed, based on surviving prints or lab documentation.

Colorization stopped abruptly when sound came along, because dyes applied to the optical soundtrack area buggered up the signal-to-noise ratio. Imagine having to move the fader from 7 to 4.5 every time there was a cut from a blue-tinted shot to a yellow one! So it was only for a short period, between the early 1930s and the late 1950s, that most of what was seen on cinema screens was actually b/w.

Of course I agree that colorizing a movie noted for the artistic quality of its b/w cinematography is a thoroughly bad idea, especially if it was never shown in colorized form on its original release. But it's wrong to believe that colorization was only ever done by wankers seeking to cater to the lowest common denominator (the "Casablanca - now fully restored in color and with a happy ending!" that Donald Trump's cable TV network advertises in Gremlins 2). It was a mainstream part of movie post-production for nearly four decades.

[Martin McCaffery]

During the silent era, almost all movies shown theatrically were colorized.

This seems like an overstatement. I've certainly read about various color processes during the silent era, including some that added color via filters on the projectors, but, at least in my research on Alabama theatres going back to the 1800s, I never see a casual mention of color in the newspaper accounts or the advertising. If a movie had color, it was played up prominently. And given that during the silent era, the write-ups of movies were provided by the studios and described the movies in excruciating detail, it seems odd that tinting and toning aren't mentioned. Even movies I know were tinted at some point, I haven't seen it mentioned in newspapers when it was playing locally.

I've seen descriptions of tinting and toning in old trade mags, but there was no indication that it was almost all movies. Even if you limit it to feature films (by whatever definition they used at any given time), it seems unlikely it would go uncommented upon.

Maybe it was frequently done in big cities, or the individual State Rights holders took it upon themselves to do it to move product, but that seems doubtful. The only thing I have ever read about that was almost always colorized was the Pathé Red Rooster.

If I'm wrong, I would love to know more.

[Randy Stankey]

If a silent film was colorized it would have had to have been done in a lab and that lab was likely owned by the studio who owned the movie.

That, being assumed, means that, if a film of that era was colorized, it would have been done by the original producers or, at least, with their knowledge and/or consent.

Like I said, imagery that is colorized by the original creator isn’t such a problem for me.

But… Turning “Ol’ Blue Eyes” brown?!!

[Frank Cox]

[Martin McCaffery]

If a silent film was colorized it would have had to have been done in a lab and that lab was likely owned by the studio who owned the movie.:

True of the late silent era, not so much in the early days. They didn't have studios then, they had "manufacturers," who sold movies by the foot. Copyright didn't apply to movies for quite a while, so you could do what you want with whatever you had. Buried somewhere I have an old trade journal article that describes how to tint the film your self, probably in your own theatre. The manufacturers didn't care what happened to the film once they sold its State Rights. And those guys were the retail sellers, who only cared as long as the print lasted.

[Jim Cassedy]

I have a couple of really old film technology books from the late 1900's in my collection. One of them
contains formulas for mixing up batches of film tinting and toning solutions, but OMG- - some of those
colors required handling some really toxic chemicals, including cyanide, arsenic and formaldehyde. ☠️

[Randy Stankey]

One of those old recipes wouldn't happen to be something called "Monchoven's Intensifier," would it?

It's used to darken underexposed/developed negatives by reacting mercury with the silver in the film emulsion. Cyanide is used to complex the mercury and silver.

The recipe is similar to the solutions we used to use in the plating shop. We commissioned a new silver plating line with a tank that was about 20 feet long, 3 ft. wide and, 3 ft. deep. Its volume was just under 1,500 gallons and it took more than a metric ton of pure sodium cyanide to build the bath chemistry.

We were filling the tanks with water and I was reading over the recipe: So many gallons of water, this much cyanide, so many lbs. of silver salts, eye of newt, etc...
I thought to myself, "If I added some mercury chloride we could develop film in this tank!"

[Leo Enticknap]

One of them contains formulas for mixing up batches of film tinting and toning solutions, but OMG- - some of those colors required handling some really toxic chemicals, including cyanide, arsenic and formaldehyde.

Uranium sulfate was a common yellow tinting dye. When I was in film archiving school we were shown an original release print reel of, ironically, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalpyse, to which the professor applied a Geiger counter. It started to click a bit! She explained that it had now decayed to the extent that it wasn't dangerous in any normal handling situation, but that when new, it would have represented a significant cancer risk to lab workers and projectionists who handled such prints regularly.

Former co-workers in the archive world tell me that for British, European, and American movies at least, a surviving feature release print from the 1920s that wasn't at least tinted is unusual. Newsreels, ads, trailers, etc. were more likely to be untreated b/w, though.

[Martin McCaffery]

Former co-workers in the archive world tell me that for British, European, and American movies at least, a surviving feature release print from the 1920s that wasn't at least tinted is unusual. Newsreels, ads, trailers, etc. were more likely to be untreated b/w, though.

Interesting. I wonder if it was mostly a European thing and they added the process to the features they got from the US? I have seen pictures of a Keaton film that was hand painted in France (tediously painted frame by frame). Features from the 1920's would only be a very small percentage or the output of the Silent Era. And those surviving long enough to be saved by the archives is even smaller. I'll have to do more hunting around.

[William Kucharski]

Shockingly this post wasn’t started by me; I seem to be the resident AR nit-picker here.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Interesting. I wonder if it was mostly a European thing and they added the process to the features they got from the US? I have seen pictures of a Keaton film that was hand painted in France (tediously painted frame by frame). Features from the 1920's would only be a very small percentage or the output of the Silent Era. And those surviving long enough to be saved by the archives is even smaller. I'll have to do more hunting around.

Georges Méliès was known for hand-painting and tinting frames and sell those copies at additional cost. That may have inspired others at that time, to do so too.

[Jim Cassedy]

Leo Said:

Uranium sulfate was a common yellow tinting dye

After I made my original post about the toxic tinting chemicals, I recalled that
Unanium Sulfate was another toxic & slightly radioactive compound found in
some tinting formulas- - but it was too late to go bak & edit.

Just FYI> One of the best reference books on identifying & dating old film
stocks is "Physical Characteristics Of Early Films As Aids To Identification".
It was originally published in the 1990's by master film historian & restoration
expert Harold Brown, but has been recently updated and re-published. While
it mainly concentrates on identifying silent film stocks by edge markings,
perforations type, title card art, and yes, even types of tinting-- it does also
cover several more modern motion picture film stocks such as Fjui, Agfa, etc.
It's over 300 pages and has hundreds of pictures of edge marks, codes, and
stuff. While it's unlikely most of us will ever encounter an original Mèliės print,
this is the book that would come in handy if you think you've stumbled upon one.

I think I paid abt $40us for the new reprint.
FIlmBook_1.jpeg

It's got hundreds of images of different film stocks/types
FilmBook_2.jpeg


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