archived-videos Film colorization Demo reel

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Dustin13

Hi everyone. I am a student at a 3d compositing school in Orlando Florida. Recently I decided I was gonna make a demo reel entirely of colorized black and white film footage. However, unlike most methods of colorizing black and white footage I set out to do the whole thing in 3d compositing programs. Im not really sure if this is a new technique or not. Ive done alot of research and I havent really seen anyone approach a 2d black and white video with Rotoscoping and Rotopainting technique's before. Well, here is a link to my vimeo where it can be viewed. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. This is my passion in life. I found it to be the most exciting thing Ive ever learned in school. So please, if you have to rip it apart; because thats the only way im gonna improve myself.

http://vimeo.com/16296140
 
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Thanks alot guys! and wheatgrinder you asked what turns me on so much about this... I like it because it feels like im helping preserve pieces of film history. Thats why i feel in love with it. I also like most people was not to keen on colorization at first but when I started this whole project I set out to colorize things the way i thought they should be done with nice subtle colors and to make sure the colors dont take away from the film itself.
 
It's most definitely something to marvel. Whether it is necessary or not, whether it hightens or simply creates a false representation, I'm not so sure.

Is the authenticity of the era not the "Core" of its being, the colour, the quality, the style?

It's purely the arguement of "What if this era had this available?"

You cannot deny that it's a newlook, one that perhaps you may have never happened to see...

Is it right to do so?

Opinions...
 
Colorizing is not preserving! It's changing.

If you pan to make this your career please stay away from the classics ;)
 
we all are standing on the backs of giants.. in any endeavor. Colorizing old film is just a more literal execution of that idea.

That said, that look could be very sweet in a contemporary film. It could be narrative assisting, or imagine it in a live drama in 3D! What an "experience" that would be!
 
Indie talk I get what your saying. There are certain movies I dont like doing. Like the casablanca I did. I honestly fought with myself for a month on whether or not to do that one. The reason I finally did was simply, look at the colored version in the 80's it was a very bright version. Which simply should not be the case when it comes to such a dark beautiful movie like that one. However, I will argue that if you look at the 1903 Alice in wonderland which was the first thing I ever colored. That is definetly preserving. I took the first movie of one of the greatest stories ever written from a very worn out burned up silent, to a colorful scene. Alice in wonderland shouldve never been made till color existed you will never trully be able to convey the true look of that wonderful story.
Now that I have gotten my short rant out of the way. Yes most classics shouldnt be touched. If i could find someone that would shoot new movies in black and white and let me go through and color them i definetly would.
 
Personally, I think it rocks man. Seeing roman holiday in color...was something that I really really liked. Fact. I think that is an amazing skill to have.
 
To everyone that has been telling me they like my work.. Seriously. Thank you! ive been really done on my work lately because I cant get a call back from any colorizing companies..but this has really made me want to push it harder and do more creative ones.
 
I think it's really cool! Perhaps it's more useful for historical archive footage that was only shot B&W due to technical limitations, rather than as an artistic piece.

I remember they did something about The Second World War in Colour and it was pretty amazing...
 
The subtlety was wonderful... I'm also not a big fan of colorizing though... but you've done it quite gracefully and stayed true to how it would have looked as color film was coming into vogue (you should see the 1922 kodak tests on youtube... I'll look it up, hold on...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_RTnd3Smy8

Which predates most of the films you're working on - so color *was* something they were working towards at the time casablanca and roman holiday were shot... it just wasn't quite ready for primetime (cost or tech wise) until a little bit later.
 
Impressive as hell! One of the reasons my kids won't watch old films is because they are in Black and White. I know I like it, even though I grew up on Black and White programming. I think colorization is good for playing to modern audiences.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mkX8ecvtqU


Someone posted the above clip and put music to it, so that it felt like you were actually riding a San Francisco trolley, in 1905. I was thinking about how I could do a sky replacement, just to have some color in it. I could only imagine what you could do with it. I'm certain, that colorization would add to the effect of putting the viewer there.

There is something amazing about watching something so old, yet still being able to relate to it.
 
Scoopicman said:
Impressive as hell! One of the reasons my kids won't watch old films is because they are in Black and White. I know I like it, even though I grew up on Black and White programming. I think colorization is good for playing to modern audiences.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mkX8ecvtqU


Someone posted the above clip and put music to it, so that it felt like you were actually riding a San Francisco trolley, in 1905. I was thinking about how I could do a sky replacement, just to have some color in it. I could only imagine what you could do with it. I'm certain, that colorization would add to the effect of putting the viewer there.

There is something amazing about watching something so old, yet still being able to relate to it.
Click to expand...

Man im not gonna lie ive watched this thing like 5 times today. Thanks for showing to me. Theres just so many different things I want to do to that lol.
 
That is really, really good Dustin. Truth be told I always saw this kind of processing as gimmicky but you have totally won me over. Especially with the stills, starting with black and white gives a subtlety of tone that is breathtaking and looks a lot like the look many photographers are trying their best to achieve from colour.

Excellent work
 
Everything looks great.

But, with the exception of the early Alice color was available for everything else. The creators of these films and photos chose to use B/W. Colorizing is great if you do it for yourself. But, personally I'd stick with the originators vision.

Great work though.
 
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