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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2013 10:18:57 GMT
Leave everything as it is for goodness sake. If it was originally made in b+w thats the way it should remain. Remember what Jon Pertwee said about seeing the first episode of DW at some convention, something along the lines of "it was b+w and who the hell needs colour when it's that atmospheric?"
Restoring colour to stuff surviving in b+w, fine... you're trying to get it back into something close to it's original state but colourising b+w material... I admire the patience and stamina people have doing that, but it does nothing for me.
I haven't seen the restored Mind of Evil yet so can't comment on how episode one looks though look forward to seeing it given the praise I've seen about it. The restored Planet Of The Daleks episode was a pretty neat job too, very convincing so I guess we're lucky in the world of DW since no other form of colourisation has impressed me in the least. Don't even get me started with those War documentaries with colourised stuff... they look ghastly to my eyes.
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Post by Peter Stirling on Aug 6, 2013 11:07:34 GMT
The episodes were made in B&W and that's how I want to see them. The directors knew they were taping/filming in B&W and set up their lighting and scenes accordingly. Colorization destroys what the director intended. For the same reason I never watch movies dubbed into english from another language, or movies cropped to make them fit on a 4:3 screen (instead of lettebox) or stretched to fit on a 16:9 screen (instead of pillarboxed). I guess I am a purist -- I want to see it how it was made. The Pertwee episodes, of course, are a completely different story - they were made in color, so colorization makes perfect sense. Hear ! hear! The 'metallic' look of 60's B/W VT suits Dr.Who IMHO and color (which is somebody's 2013 interpretation and not the real thing) makes it look like something out of a comic book and is a distraction I think. As a fan of the original Outer Limits I think it looks fantastic in B/W and any so so scripts are just swamped in atmosphere,menace and imagination.
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Post by Richard Tipple on Aug 6, 2013 11:36:40 GMT
Sorry guys but who is stopping you seeing them as they were originally made? Nobody! Who's arguing for classic B&W releases to be colourised? Nobody!
Let's get a bit of perspective here, it's fans enjoying a hobby. Charles' remix analogy hits the nail on the head for me.
Nobody is forcing you to sit down and watch some colourised Doctor Who. But some people (me!) enjoy toying with it, and many, many others enjoy watching my experiments. Where exactly does the problem lie? If 2Entertain wanted a whole serial colourised that's an entirely different debate and I can assure you they'd approach someone a lot more talented than I am.
Right now it's just fans reworking a show they love. It's no different to the fake/fan-made 'Next time' trailers that are popular on youtube.
Can we live and let live a bit, please? Recently a fan spent some time in photoshop trying to imagine what Capaldi's Doctor might wear only to be met with derision and aggressively expressed views as to why it's wrong, wrong and ALL WRONG! Everyone's getting terribly upset over one man's restricted imagination. Is it worth it?
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Post by Ronnie McDevitt on Aug 6, 2013 12:20:32 GMT
I want to see the originals as broadcast, warts and all - the way I remember them. I have no interest in hearing Nick Briggs tampering with Daleks on a 1972 story so I didn't and won't watch the updated `Day of the Daleks.' I'm more than happy with the original. However if others want to see an "improved" production who am I to say they shouldn't have the choice? Just don't expect me to watch it that's all! I suspect there will be a divide between older and newer fans on this issue. People like myself generally won't approve of changes whereas those not brought up in the monichrome era will be keener to see the black and white stories colourised.
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Post by Nicholas Fitzpatrick on Aug 7, 2013 1:36:23 GMT
Sorry guys but who is stopping you seeing them as they were originally made? Nobody! Who's arguing for classic B&W releases to be colourised? Nobody! I am. I'd love to see them in colour. I've been saying this here for 20 years (or wherever here was 20 years ago ... we were probably all over at rec.arts.drwho). Anyone one who doesn't like it can simply turn down the colour on their TV. It would also make it more accessible. I've been watching old stories with my 5-year old, and even though I picked up the Beginning box set a year ago, she refused to watch it in B&W ... until recently. After The Name of the Doctor though, with that scene with Doctor 1 and Susan, she got interested when I said that's just before The Unearthly Child, and she sat there and watched it - all 4 episodes in 1 sitting. First time I'd seen the final 3 episodes since it aired here on Space in 1996. Actually better than I remember, though the beautiful prints help. And today she asked to watch the Dead Planet. Hopefully someone finds Marco Polo before we get that far ...
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RWels
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Post by RWels on Aug 8, 2013 9:53:02 GMT
So am I. Now that we have the technology, it wouldn't be the '90s turner fiasco but it would 1) actually look good and 2) just be an optional thing that does not replace the authentic version.
My main argument: Take a look at the Aztecs' picture gallery. Wow! The colour on some of those photos is amazing! It was a revelation for me that it looked like that in the studio.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2013 11:19:46 GMT
The episodes were made in B&W and that's how I want to see them. The directors knew they were taping/filming in B&W and set up their lighting and scenes accordingly. Colorization destroys what the director intended. For the same reason I never watch movies dubbed into english from another language, or movies cropped to make them fit on a 4:3 screen (instead of lettebox) or stretched to fit on a 16:9 screen (instead of pillarboxed). I guess I am a purist -- I want to see it how it was made. The Pertwee episodes, of course, are a completely different story - they were made in color, so colorization makes perfect sense. In addition to different lighting techniques between B&W and colour as you mention there's also the choice of colours used for B&W costumes and sets which are not analogous to their colour counterparts. The costumes can be quite bright and garish to enhance and differentiate them from other colours when reduced to shades in monochrome. An on-set colour photograph might be misleading because the costume palette would have been chosen with it's ultimate look in B&W and should not be taken as what it would look like if they were intending to shoot in colour. When fan-sourced animated reconstructions were in their infancy there was quite a big division between people who wanted the animations in colour and those who wanted the reconstructions to be authentically monochrome. The argument used by the colour camp was that you could "turn the colour on your set down" if you wanted to watch it in B&W. This is not the same thing as constructing a monochrome image from the ground up. As evidenced from the Planet of the Daleks 3 colourization even hand-coloured frames still don't look quite right and tend to look flat. It was only in combination with the chroma dot recovery that allowed for the restoration of the subtle colour gradients in faces and the moire pattern in Jo Grant's costume. This isn't to say that Stuart and Richard's efforts aren't great. They're very watchable from my point of view. A television engineer (of which I am not) might have a different opinion, but that's really an apples to oranges comparison.
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Post by Richard Bignell on Aug 8, 2013 11:20:02 GMT
Anyone one who doesn't like it can simply turn down the colour on their TV. Except, as has been said many times before, dependant on the way your system is set up (if you're using RGB connections for example), you simply can't do that. The big problem would be getting any colourisation done properly. It's a very, very difficult thing to achieve well and I still haven't seen anything that convinces 100%. As a one-off curiosity it would be interesting to see, but it would cost far too much money to be viable for DVD.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 8, 2013 11:47:17 GMT
Let's not forget it took the BBC many years of experimentation to get colour TV working since they realised very quickly that it required a totally different set up to that required by b+w. Producers and directors got to experience this first hand when BBC2 began colour broadcasts learning that lighting schemes used for b+w shows simply didn't work in colour plus there were certain colours that clashed badly. It demanded a totally different set up and way of thinking. So, sure b+w sets may had been colourful in some instances but would had been chosen specifically for how it would look in b+w. I think if such b+w materials was colourised using the colour photos as reference, the results would be horribly garish and demand much digital tinkering to rebalance the whole picture to get any kind of acceptable result.
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Post by brianfretwell on Aug 8, 2013 11:50:48 GMT
Another example of false colouring. Wasn't the TARDIS console originally painted green just because it would have been over bright on the old cameras used in Lime Grove had it been white?
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Post by Alan Hayes on Aug 8, 2013 11:53:22 GMT
Well, that all depends on whether authenticity was considered important. Personally, beyond skin tones and (for instance) getting the colour of an Ice Warrior correct, I'd be happy with an approach which went for a particular colour appearance of the period (say mimicking Technicolor). I don't see colourisation as replacing the original (not least in the case of Doctor Who where we have most everything to hand in as near to the original format as possible) - I like the remix analogy and would welcome a 60s Doctor Who serial being colourised. However, the costs involved will inevitably prevent it from ever happening, so the purists can sleep easy.
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RWels
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Post by RWels on Aug 8, 2013 16:08:23 GMT
In addition to different lighting techniques between B&W and colour as you mention there's also the choice of colours used for B&W costumes and sets which are not analogous to their colour counterparts. The costumes can be quite bright and garish to enhance and differentiate them from other colours when reduced to shades in monochrome. An on-set colour photograph might be misleading because the costume palette would have been chosen with it's ultimate look in B&W and should not be taken as what it would look like if they were intending to shoot in colour. That doesn't matter. Watch a b/w Aztec episode; then watch the photo gallery. Don't tell me you are not surprised to see those colours. Yes, if it had been recorded in colour that would probably have looked very different from the photographs. But not necessarily better! I don't want a reconstruction of how it would have been done, that would look awful. Film & TV colours change according to technology and also fashion. Anyway the colours from the photos could be toned down if the series were ever to be colourised. I have no idea: Was DW ever recorded with a live audience?
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Post by Richard Marple on Aug 8, 2013 16:59:23 GMT
I know it's not a like for like, but when the pilot of Stingray was being filmed a number of test shots of the main sets & costumes were made to see how they would come out on colour film.
Some didn't work so well, so come colours had to be toned down to work better.
In the 1930s Technicolor used to recommend a limited palette of suitable shades to early colour productions, something set & costume designers etc didn't like.
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Post by Nicholas Fitzpatrick on Aug 8, 2013 17:53:36 GMT
Except, as has been said many times before, dependant on the way your system is set up (if you're using RGB connections for example), you simply can't do that. Why not? To satisfy myself I just went to check. I use an RGB connection for my DVD player (my TV only has a single HDMI input, which I use for my cablebox). I just so happened to have The Beginning Doctor Who DVD in there, so I played the Doctor Who: Origins documentary. On my TV I simply lowered the Colour setting to 0, and there was Verity Lambery and Sydney Newman in B&W instead of colour. Any TV I've had have a Colour and Tint setting (a knob in the old days, a menu setting these days). It's 100% independent of how the signal gets to the TV. Great documentary BTW! I watched it for the first time the other day. I hadn't realised (or maybe remembered) that Sydney Newman 1980s film footage has been obtained. Is this from the 1986 interview held by Library and Archives Canada in the Sydney Newman fonds? The big problem would be getting any colourisation done properly. It's a very, very difficult thing to achieve well and I still haven't seen anything that convinces 100%. Oh, I agree. it would be a challenge. As a one-off curiosity it would be interesting to see, but it would cost far too much money to be viable for DVD. Currently. But we were told the same thing about other things (such as Spearhead in Blu-Ray, or colourization of any of the Pertwee material), and times change. I've been talking this up for 20 years now. I can wait another 20 years. Maybe 30 years and I can show the grandkids. There's 2 questions, whether we should and whether we can. I think the answer to the first question can be answered by the question of whether the BBC would have produced these in colour in the 1960s if they could have. If there's an episode or scene that makes more sense artistically in B&W then keep it in B&W. The second question of whether we can or not, I think the answer is, not yet to get the quality we'd want at a price that we can afford.
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Post by davechasteen on Aug 8, 2013 18:06:49 GMT
I have no desire to see the 60's episodes colorized, myself. But, if someone like Babelcolour (S.H.) were to work their magic on the clips from "The Dalek Invasion Of Earth" Episode 6, used as the prologue for "The Five Doctors", I could see no harm. I think if there had been a suitable color clip of Hartnell as Doctor Who, JN-T would have used it. The prologue itself is less than a minute in length. It would make a nice optional feature on the next 'Revisitation' (perhaps Blu-Ray edition) of that particular story.
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