Colorization Question

[Sveven Dvorking]

Which version do you find best to watch?

I prefer B&W.

[BobChief]

How silly...(the idea, not you Steve)

[Crazy Tom]

Originally posted by Sveven Dvorking
Which version do you find best to watch?

It must be me, but watching B&W is fascinating. The funny thing is, there is some sort of mystery of how everything would look in color. Now that cartoons are colorized (in most cases), I thought watching those have answered some of my questions.

Can you ever imagine a Bosko/Buddy cartoon being colorized? WB still has a lot of work to do!

[Patrick McCart]

B&W.

I don't mind the computer color versions much (Some of the 1990 colorizations are a little too bright) but the redrawns are hard to watch.

[Thad Komorowski]

B&W of course! However, after watching at least three hours of B&W cartoons can be very tiresome, and you'd want to see some colorization by then.

-Thad:D

[hippety hopper]

B&W
I say keep them in their original form!

[lislebartman]

I have been opposed to colorization since the technology came about in the early 1980's! To tamper with a director's work, whether it be animation or live-action, is wrong, period!!!! I constantly see that annoying commercial for those Shirley Temple movies, which boast that these films have been "brilliantly restored for today's audiences"! WHAT A LOAD OF S***!!!

I can tolerate the computer-coloring of B & W cartoons (except for those horrible re-drawn Max Fleischer Popeye films), and thank God they have stopped adding digital color to such films like 'Casablanca' & "The Fighting 69th". Have you noticed that you never see those bastardized films in TV anymore?

[Patrick McCart]

Colorization actually is a good thing (at least for Turner's films).

All the WB and Turner owned films that were computer colorized were cleaned up for colorization. Notice how good Casablanca looks on DVD? Also, the Turner colorizations look pretty good (films only, of course.).

The 1995 colorized LT's look VERY good and the B&W originals are very well-preserved for most of them (Although Porky's Poppa has that weird ending...)

Keep in mind that if it wasn't for these color versions, they may have not been on TV as much in the late 80's and early 90's.

Colorization is fine with me as long as the original B&W version is readily availible.

[Sogturtle]

Guys~

Before we get tooooo dogmatic in our statements about preserving the sacrosanct original black and white we need to stop and think this out for a gooooood lonnnnnnng minute... WHY were so many cartoons made in b & w? For some artistic, aesthetic reason??? Did the directors want to work in a monochromatic world?? The answer to both is a resounding NO!!! Cartoons were produced in b & w for one reason and one reason only... MONEY!!! You know, cash, dollars & cents, pounds, Francs, pesos... Plain old filthy lucre. The cost of shooting in b & w was much, much less than filming in 3-strip Technicolor. The studios and producers made the decision to film in color as little as possible, NOT the directors. The average movie showing consisted of a feature (almost always in b & w), a newsreel (always b & w), a short subject (always b & w), and a cartoon (either color or b & w). Thus a color cartoon (Merrie Melodie, Happy Harmony) would positively leap out at the audience. But the cartoon producer could offset this expensive indulgence by going on producing some cartoons in black and white. (Ub Iwerks split the difference and had his "Willie Whoppers" inked and painted in color, and then filmed in b & w (to please old producer Pat Powers)

Thus WHO chose to make the Looney Tunes in b &w??? NOT Freleng, Avery or Tashlin, all who escaped to the pastel color-dom of Merrie Melodies as fast as possible (nor poor Clampett who was stuck doing LTs). But indeed it was Leon Schlesinger and Jack L. Warner. Do ya remember that Schlesinger actually named his YACHT "The Merrie Melodie", but called the little ratty boat on it "The Looney Tune(s)". Does this tell us something about how Leon felt about his own black and white cartoons?? When Metro chose to do the "Captain And The Kids" they also made the foolish choice to go with b & w on most (tinted sepia), again just for MONEY.

And so in reality by striving to "maintain the ORIGINAL black and white" all we are really doing is perpetuating the studios and producers CHEAPNESS. And NOT any artistic rationale on the part of the mega-talented directors.

As such computer-colorization rectifies and undoes the damage done long ago by the penuriousness of the producers!!

============================================

As regards live-action films, the exact same argument holds true, with one noteworthy exeption... "Citizen Kane" was shot by Orson Welles expressly to be a black and white film (essentially a satire/fictionalized docudrama). For those who still believe in auteur-director's "preferring" black and white... It might be noted that the great Alfred Hitchcock when asked about his early '60's
b & w masterpiece "Psycho"... Stated that if he was reshooting it then he would make only TWO changes... The first was that he would film it in COLOR, and the second change would have been to show Janet Leigh (mother of Jamie Lee Curtis) topless!

[Sveven Dvorking]

Soggyturtle~

What you are saying may be true for the most part, I still feel that cartoons should be shown in their original form. They may have been money hogs, but remember this: The colors in the colorized versions are NOT what the real directors would have done. It is like making a change to the cartoons that neither the directors nor the producer were going to end up doing at the time.

______________________________________________________________________

This is how I feel about the goodness of cartoons:
B&W 98%
CZ 1.5%
REDRAWN 0.5%

Of course, I still record colorized versions if I can't get the B&Ws. If I already have a colorized version, and the B&W of the same cartoon comes on LNB&W at a later time, I record the B&W and call it an "upgrade".

[J Lee]

I like the 1995 series of computerized color cartoons, less so the 1992 series and even less for the ones Warner's did in 1990. And of course I think the 1967-68 redrawns are the worst thing to happen to western civilization since the Black Plague.

I like the last series of colorized shorts because that came closest to what Avery, Clampett, Tashlin and the rest would have been selecting as their colors if the Looney Tunes had been graced by three-strip Technicolor in 1936 through 1942.

That means that I have no problem watching "Porky In Wackyland," "Porky At the Crocadero" and "You Ought to Be In Pictures," while I wish Warner's would go back and redo "Porky Pig's Feat," "Porky's Movie Mystery," and "Puss `N Booty," all of which have colors that seem to have been lifted from the 1967-68 redrawns and have little connection (other than Porky=pink and Daffy=black) with what was going on with the color Merrie Melodies at the same time. (and yes, I know, I wish CN would just show the colorized version of the last one)

show

[Patrick McCart]

The 1992 and 1995 cartoons keep the right color logic that they would have had if made in color.

For example...Porky In Wackyland has a WB logo (that the Do-Do rides on) that is the correct color.

Daffy was always colorized with an orange beak and dark orange feet (maybe his neck would be colorized in the 1990's), Porky is always pink, Goodwill stayed in a black cloak, irises stayed black, and shadows stayed black.

Remember...if it wasn't for these colorized versions (Yes, even the 1968 redrawns), these cartoons might not even be on the air. B&W isn't as accepted as it was 40 years ago. Besides, the color version of You Ought To Be In Pictures is amazing to look at...Freleng couldn't have made this in Technicolor without Schlesinger spending a LOT more money to get it filmed that way.

It's not a big deal, anyways. The B&W versions are readily availble on VHS and laserdisc...and on DVD soon. Computer colorized versions can't be on DVD because the CZ versions don't have a high enough resolution. (Winstar tried using The Impatient Patient and it looked terrible!)

[Joe Tully]

You sound so foolish.

You sound like a jerk, but you don't hear us saying anything.

Not everyone sees things from the same great point of view as you. I suggest that you try to deal with that in a somewhat diplomatic manner.

[lislebartman]

This question is for Sogturtle:

Just how many drugs do you ingest, shoot up or smoke daily that would have you ramble on in such a manner? Maybe you should stop taking the brown acid or smoking that weed laced with PCP and Pariquad!!

:cool:

[Patrick McCart]

Hitchcock wanted Psycho to be B&W for a few other reasons..

He thought color would be too gory and he wanted to experiment making a "American International-styled" movie on a low budget in B&W.

The remake of Psycho is boring because B&W is so much creepier than color.

Citizen Kane is an experiment to use German expressionistic cinematography.

In my opinion, I'd like to shoot a movie in B&W because of the look of it...but a lot of people wouldn't want to see it because it's not in color.


listlebartman, since when was intelligent conversation called "rambling?"

[Sogturtle]

Joe Tully and Patrick~

Thank you for your defense! You're good guys!

Actually my observation on PSYCHO was quoted from one of my former film professors, Dr. Jay Boyer, Phd., who briefly quoted a portion of a Hitchcock interview made late in his life on the subject. Adding a little more to this, Hitchcock, in an effort to cut costs on the film down even closer to the bone went so far as to employ his television production crew, rather than a film crew in the making of the movie. Having said all this I will be the first to admit that I don't know where to find printed confirmation of these statements by Alfred Hitchcock...

[Sogturtle]

Mr. Lislebartman~

To answer your insulting attempted rebuttal of my posting earlier. SORRY to disappoint you, but I don't use any drugs, never have, never will. Ditto for booze. I had the benefit of being able to observe the disastrous effects of drugs (and booze) on several of my older cousins...

We really are supposed to avoid such nasty invectives as yours on this board...

To the real issue at hand. My comments on black and white were based on the cold, clear realities of Hollywood film production. And not any gut-feeling.

[Joe Tully]

I have a couple of questions on this topic:

1) How exactly does computer colorization work? Can the computer tell what colors should be there, does a person just choose, etc.

2) Were the B&W Looney Tunes painted in color? I'm guessing the answer is no due to costs, but I remember that Ub Iwerks did Flip in color even though it was filmed in B&W, since that made the shades of grey look much nicer.

3) Importantly, if the LTs were in color, does computer colorization return the original colors?

I would still prefer B&W anyways (that's what I voted for) but it would certainly make computer colorization more intersting to me if it returned the original colors.

[Sogturtle]

Joe~

The b & w Looney Tunes were painted in black and white, unlike Ub's. These b & w cels will sometimes appear to have a bluish hint (or tint). I have one or two. The colorization process (to my understanding) gives a list of possible color equivalents to gray-scale values. From these possibilities an artist makes a choice for each area. Sooooo as such we have a human-being picking from grays and blacks originally picked by another human being. The computer simply carries out the command for a certain color being assigned to a particular area.

In a very few instances we do have some corroboration as to what WOULD have been intended. There was a book version of "Porky's Duck Hunt" (1937) published in 1938, which utilizes original studio drawings, with pastel colors in Porky's room etc.

[Joe Tully]

Thanks Sogturtle!

I'm sure some Flip the Frog fans would love to see computer colorized versions to see how Ub originally envisioned it (Nelson I'm looking at you):) Though I'm not sure if many cels and backgrounds of the originals are still around.

[DR. BELCH]

PATRICK MCCART:
In my opinion, I'd like to shoot a movie in B&W because of the look of it...but a lot of people wouldn't want to see it because it's not in color.
Perchance have you seen Ed Wood? It was filmed in black and white fairly recently (1994), directed by Tim Burton, and stars Johnny Deep as the crossdressing schlockmeister who made the infamously poor Plan 9 From Outer Space. If this is the sort of vision you have, I'd watch it. I don't know how good the B.O. was on this one, but it's out of stock on Amazon. :(
Orson Welles is also in the movie...well, sort of. You'll see what I mean...if it's ever on cable again.

[Joe Tully]

Don't forget Schindler's List.
Also, the beginning and ending of The Wizard of Oz.

There is something beautiful about B&W, but like Patrick says, I think a lot of directors are afraid of using it because some people associate it with boredom. But B&W should be only used for films that are just right for it. I've seen Psycho, Ed Wood, and parts of Schindler, and thought that it worked well for all of them. It works well for Wizard of Oz too, it helps show the difference between the everyday world and the beauty of the fantasy world of Oz. I doubt B&W would work well for something such as Ace Ventura though.
:D

[Patrick McCart]

Ok, here's how I think digital coloring works after researching some things...

1. A digital video transfer of the cartoon is made (Prior to transfer, the print used is cleaned up and the telecine colorist adjusts the image to look great.)

2. The cartoon is scanned into the workstations and digitized.

Here's where it gets tricky...

Each scene is colorized using paint tools (the color is layered over the original B&W image.)

The backgrounds are "remembered" in the computer, so they don't need to be tinted for each frame.

I think the 1990 colorizations needed frame-by-frame coloring, while the others used "digital remembering" to keep colors the same.

Also, I think there is sub-programs that can tell where lines are to keep colors from bleeding over.

I tried contacting CST Entertainment Inc. so I could find some info, but they went out of business. :(


About those B&W films...Wizard of Oz, Schindler's List, Ed Wood, and Psycho are "high-class" films. I personally love B&W films (Young Frankenstien wouldn't have been as funny as it is without B&W nor would A Hard Day's Night have the right mood.)

It's really sad that the last "big" B&W film was Ed Wood. (I might by wrong.) B&W has a quality that is so great. I do think there are some cartoons that a screwed up in digital color (Case of the Stuttering Pig and Jeepers Creepers aren't as funny and creepy when computer colorized.) It's just a real shame that a lot of people don't care for B&W. It's nice to know that there still are those who give in to the greyscale.

[Sogturtle]

Patrick, your description of colorization pretty much mirrors what I read in an article on it some years ago. My description was the Reader's Digest version :). And was meant to emphasize the computer's analyis of the grayscale values in concert with the human input.

INTENTIONAL black and white filmmaking for non-monetary reasons is quite lovely. Modern filmmakers with enough clout DO have the power to go with their grayscale dreams... (Iffffff Spielberg wanted black and white, Spielberg would get black and white). Ditto for Ron Howard and some others. "Young Frankenstein" absolutely had to be made in black and white to properly (and very lovingly) parody the classic Universal original. Charlie Chaplin made his last starring film ("A King In New York") in 1957 in b & w, but by the time of his final movie in '67 ("A Countess From Hong Kong") had decided to go with color. "A Hard Days Night" usage of b & w intentionally mimics a newsreel camera following the Beatles around. It also served to keep costs down for the production company. By one year later the same producer and director would go with color for the Beatles "Help".

The universally beloved "Wizard Of Oz", with its b & w open and closing scenes MAY actually mimic the 1933 cartoon version which opens in b & w then switches to Technicolor after the tornado. This may have been the only deliberate use of b & w and color in a classic era cartoon. The use of color throughout the rest of the feature "Wizard..." pretty much insured Metro having a success on its hands. Annnnd can you imagine "Gone With The Wind" in black and white??? Evidently neither could producer David O. Selznick ("Smellsick" to his enemies).

As for modern and recent b & w films, we can also mention "Pleasantville" (featuring Don Knotts)...

==============================================

On Flip the Frog cels being painted in black and white... That I don't know, have never seen one. (Chuck Jones as former Flip cel washer WOULD DEFINITELY know;)) Amusingly before his death the great (Iwerks, Warners, MGM) animator Irv Spence agreed to be part of a series of limited edition cel recreations of classic Iwerks cartoons (with Iwerks, Natwick, and Hardaway dead, who else could they get?). It would appear that original animation drawings were found and utilized. The "Fiddlesticks" and Comicolor cels were rendered in appropriate shades and hues. BUUUUUT when it came time to ink and paint the Willie Whopper "The Caveman", someone made the historical error of having it painted in... (you guessed it) BLACK and WHITE!!!

This egregious error throws up into the air the issue of whether the painting of the Flip cel from "Spooks" in b & w was right or wrong...

[Rob]

Hey, Soggy!

You mentioned that you had some B&W cels. Just curious as to which ones you have?

Thought of another use of both color and B&W in a cartoon: Avery's brilliant "Technicolor ends here" gag in LUCKY DUCKY.

And a thought on the colors used in the book version of PORKY'S DUCK HUNT perhaps relecting the filmakers' intent...Possible. But I'm thinking that the people who published the book had little to do with the cartoon itself (although the artwork was provided by Leon Schlesinger's studio) and ramdomly selected colors for it.

BTW, this book turns up every now and then on ebay, usually in the 85.00-150.00 range, depending on condition. It is historically significant as the first ever piece of Daffy Duck merchandise.

[Sogturtle]

Rob~

My color cels I know instantly. My drawings I know pretty darn well. BUT for the life-of-me I can't place which LT has a mother and baby ape in it... Can you?? Similarly I have another b & w cel with a very Sniffles-ish mouse... Doubt if it's Warners even. B & w cels of the major characters are incredibly rare, and way pricey

You're eminently right about Tex's "Lucky Ducky" b & w usage. A supreme gag. And quite mocking of full-color versus monochrome.

I'm one of the Daffy-philes who does own a copy of the 1938 book "Porky Pig's Duck Hunt". Found it by accident on Ebay. With shipping paid around $60 (somebody bid me up... How dare they ;)). I did say MAY in reference to its being a color guide to the classic cartoon. Normally the publisher would have dictated the color scheme, I believe. My twisted rationale is that the book is actually COPYRIGHTED by the "Leon Schlesinger Corporation" and not by the Saalfield publishing company. So that infers that Leon (and artistes) had significant control over the shebang. The book is written in rhyming verse (Tex must have been thrilled!!) but with vocabulary that little kids would hear whizzing over their heads. The colors are consistent throughout the book except one panel in which Porky's bluish couch mysteriously changes color to bright turquoise. The curtains are pink. The vengeful neighbor wears a bright red shirt. The besotted fish are a nice shade of lavender!!!. The duck decoy on Porky's head is a GREEN mallard...(shades [ahem] of PLUCKY!!

For other odd early collectibles, I have a verrrrrry early Daffy glass, depicting Daffy as bright red!!!

[Sveven Dvorking]

When you tried to use italics for "lavender", it didn't work. Maybe you should fix that.

[Jack]

I chose black and white.

Sogturtle made some good points about how the directors wouldn't have chosen black and white, and that money is why the cartoons were made in that way. However, I do think black and white is how they were intended to be seen. They knew the cartoons had to be B&W, so they made them with that in mind.

The cartoons just seem more dynamic in black and white, and some of the directors took advantage of not having color. How are people to guess what colors the director would have wanted? How do we know that black and white wasn't how the director intended some films to be, even though there was no option to make them in color?



Jack:D

[J Lee]

How are people to guess what colors the director would have wanted? How do we know that black and white wasn't how the director intended some films to be, even though there was no option to make them in color?

There is no way to know, but if you look at the color selections from a few 1938 Merrie Melodies, for example, you can get a bit of an idea about what the pervaling color schemes/designs were and would likley have been for the 1938 Looney Tunes. That's why the 1995 series of colorization works IMHO while the 1990 versions fare much worse -- the colors in the 95s just look right, while the colors in a lot of the 1990 colorized LTs don't look like anything the directors/layout people were using in the Merrie Melodies being released at the same time.

[Sveven Dvorking]

No colorization looks right. If a cartoon was produced in B&W, it should remain that way.:mad: You wouldn't know what the directors intended, because different people worked on the 1938 MMs than the 1938 LTs.:p

[Matt]

Granted, in many cases the director might have preferred to film the cartoon in color, but the fact remains that it was not an option, so the artists involved used the materials they were given; which means they painted the cels and staged the cartoon so that it would look best in black and white. Even Ub Iwerks had the cels and backgrounds painted in color because he wanted a fuller and more subtle range of grays. When Gaughin ran out of canvas in Tahiti he would paint on burlap, wood, whatever he had on hand. It doesn't mean that he did not prefer canvas: it simply was not an option. I think colorizing the cartoons would be like scraping the paint off a Gaughin masterpiece and re-adhering it to canvas or paper. As an artist you work with the materials you have and try and accomodate that medium. In my mind, changing the cartoons after the fact, either colorizing or censoring them (I really don't see much difference between the two), is a mistake. I would almost rather they never be shown at all.

Matt

[Sogturtle]

Originally posted by Sveven Dvorking
No colorization looks right. If a cartoon was produced in B&W, it should remain that way.:mad: You wouldn't know what the directors intended, because different people worked on the 1938 MMs than the 1938 LTs.:p

Sveven~

If 1938 is used as a representative year of proposed color-schemes of the LTs versus the known color schemes of MMs then we actually find... 39 cartoons were released that year, 22 MM, and 17 LT. Directors Avery, Freleng, and Jones made/released only MMs that year (a grand total of 12, 9 of which were by Tex). Of the 17 LTs, 10 were produced by the "Ray Katz unit" with Bob Clampett as director. Richard H. Thomas was already on board as Clampett's background painter, and he was renowned for his great rapidity and skill with watercolors. The remaining 7 LTs were split up between the Tashlin unit (4 LT and 6 MM), and 3 from the combined Howard/Hardaway/Dalton unit (3 LT, 4 MM). As such their 10 MM cartoons CAN indeed be used as a guide to how their 7 LT toons would have looked. Iffffff you care to push this all further, then Tex's first cartoon (a Merrie Melodie) of 1938 "Daffy Duck And Egghead" would serve similarly as a guide to Tex's 1937 LT output, especially "Porky's Duck Hunt".

==============================================

To the "new" Matt (not to be confused with the other two)~

Interesting argument (comparing the Warner's directors and artists to Paul Gaughin)!!! It breaks down though because Gaughin's lack of canvas was because he as an artist CHOSE to go to the idyllic isolation of Tahiti and thus created his own situation of privation. The great Schlesinger/Warner folks were forced to the privation of black and white paints and monochromatic film because it was just flat-out cheaper for Schlesinger and Warners. NOT by any desire of their own artistic temperments.

When the "Katz unit" was dissolved in the very early Forties, the other directors had to again make a few b & w LTs. Shortly after, Bob Clampett took over the Avery unit and wasted no time in leaping permanently to glorious Technicolor. Does this tell us how devoted Bob was to black and white?? :)

Perversely ifffff Leon had thought it all out fully it would have likely saved him MORE money yet to have imitated Ub and just had all the cels painted in full color! Maintaining such a high percentage of black, white, and grays in addition to all the color paints actually added to the cost!!

[Matthew Hunter]

I don't think the computer colorized versions are all that bad. I'm sure Bob Clampett would have liked them on his Porky Pig cartoons, he complained about being stuck doing B/W. I think the original black and white versions are fascinating, though, and should be available also. The redrawn versions are awful, because the original animation is severely changed. They tried to turn a full-animation cartoon into a limited-animation one, and that didn't work, not to mention those horrible colors. I like the different versions, though, because colorization keeps many of the classics on the air. Think what a large chunk of LT's are Black and White. How can you market that on merchandise, a gray pig? I see their logic, the best ones are the 1995 and as long as there is a B/W version out there and that disclaimer that this is a colorized version, I'm okay with that. Live action is different, though, a medium that isn't so readily associated with kid's entertainment and is often shot in B/W on purpose. Even if a director would have wanted color, they had to make the best of B/W, and many of their adaptations and creative uses of the medium would be lost that way.
-Matthew