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Post #753009

Author
Spaced Ranger
Parent topic
Info Wanted: Colorized Classics - is anyone preserving them?
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/753009/action/topic#753009
Date created
15-Feb-2015, 1:16 PM

Oh, sure!
Colorizing movies were originally made by a physical process where a limited-color palette of color overlays were applied to physical areas presenting each frame (or groups of no-motion frames). These limited color-patches were applied throughout the entire film.

So, once a digital process is established, just let it run from beginning to end and that should be the complete project. The corrections I made to the colorized YouTube snapshot therefore should be a representative gin-up of the entire, original colorizing process ... if we were to use those specific  YouTube sources. Better sources shouldn't need fix-ups, unless for better esthetics.

This can be seen in the recent LegendFilms colorization of The Little Rascals on DVD (should be a digital process now-a-days).

  Notice that the Hues are essentially flat, and uniformly cover wide areas. (Just think rooms full of women workers knife-cutting celluloid sheets of different colors for specific areas of each shot. Yep, that's how it was done!) Saturation is pretty much uniform for all those Hues ... just like in those old days.

In fact, the more ambitious and meticulous restorer could digitally recreate the Hue masks to apply over the B&W original for perfect colorization.