norskog (04/02/83)
#N:fortune:21400001:000:537 fortune!norskog Apr 1 17:30:00 1983 Black&white films were meant to be seen b&w. The cinematography was usually very carefully designed to evoke emotion and create a mood. Coloring them is a gross insult. The system mentioned is very slick, you color in one image at the beginning of a sequence, and it processes subsequent frames automatically, by identifying shapes and following their motion. A much better use of the necessary computer time would be to touch up print damage. Lance Norskog Fortune Systems megatest!fortune!norskog hpda! amd70!
elf (04/04/83)
Ah, gimme a break, all you aesthetes out there. I just want some information, the more specific, the better (like addresses or phone numbers of companies involved). I don't deny that many b&w movies will (and should) remain b&w. (Non-portable programs due to machine or device dependence would be a crude analogy to this situation.) But let's be realistic. You can't tell me that sophisticated and evocative lighting techniques were used for Laurel and Hardy movies. I agree that using a system to repair print damage would also be productive, perhaps even more so. Eugene Fiume U of Toronto utcsrgv!elf
norskog (04/06/83)
#R:fortune:21400001:fortune:21400002:000:349 fortune!norskog Apr 5 16:58:00 1983 A big part of what Laurel & Hardy are all about is the contrast between their body shapes. Colored in, this would not be so noticeable, because you would be distracted by the color information. When a good filmmaker makes a black and white movie, every choice he makes is influenced by this fact. If such a film is colored in, all bets are off.
urban (04/07/83)
Not all "black and white" movies were necessarily intended that way. Silent films, in particular, were sometimes shot in black and white because that was the only technology available, and then HAND-COLORED by an artist for display (the economics of the 1910s is amazing, isn't it?). Mike