[Forgeties79]

Rightfully so if you ask me. Out the gate think about the implications of determining, say, skin color. I’m not saying “under no circumstances should it be done” but I also think people don’t appreciate the importance of the decisions made and the politics/implicit biases under the hood. I’m not even getting in to artistic intent and impact on lighting here either.

Colorizing b&w images is still debated to this day.

[monocasa]

Because of the film technology at the time, a lot of the skin tones on set wouldn't match what you'd expect anyway due to makeup designed for the b&w film. Lots of sickly greens, yellows, and blues in place of red tones for instance.

https://www.bustle.com/articles/30501-i-tried-a-vintage-film...

At that point if you've already decided you want to colorize the film, there's a real question of how do you approach it, because being true to what was on set definitely isn't the right choice. So now you're playing with skin tones regardless.

[dylan604]

> Because of the film technology at the time, a lot of the skin tones on set wouldn't match what you'd expect

It wasn't just skin tones. Wardrobe was picked for the resulting look on B&W film vs what it looked like in real life. Here's a pretty in depth article: https://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-39-first-release/desi...

[registeredcorn]

Huh. That actually brings up a kind of modern parallel I hadn't thought of. A lot of action movies are done primarily, or in part, on greenscreen. The intent of using a greenscreen has nothing to do with what was captured, and more so to do with what is trying to be depicted; what ought be seen, not what is being seen by the actors and actresses.

It would be interesting to know if, in say, 100-200 years, there is some alternative technology that could de-render todays CGI perfectly, and then replace it with some alternative, perhaps insert some form of practical effect in a convincing way? Would being able to do so be better to do just because it can be done?

Like, suppose that one of the more recent big budget movies, Transformers or whatever, could entirely have all of the CGI stripped out of them instantly, and then be replaced with some form of "less fake" effects in a different way. Would it be good to do so, if that were possible? For me personally, I'm very much in favor of rubber suits and fake blood over sticks with ping pong ball overlayed with graphics. [1] In spite of my preference though, I don't know if however many hundreds of people who had worked the digital modeling for all of those scenes would appreciate essentially deleting all of the thousands of hours they had put into the movie.

Bringing that back to B&W films, I think that if someone was really excellent at doing the set design for B&W films, it makes me wonder how they might react if someone insisted on "fixing" the film by colorizing it, and showing their set pieces in a way that they never intended for those pieces to be seen by the audience. Like, if they weren't outright upset with even the idea of doing it at all, perhaps they might insist on some sort of creative control on how each of those set pieces were colorized and portrayed in the final product. Obviously, that would then extend out to all of the other things too, like wardrobe, makeup, etc. I could see the complexity ballooning out to be as complicated and involved as making the movie was to begin with! For example, maybe the guy that scouted the original location for the film wouldn't have chose the spots he had chosen if he knew that people would be able to see it on giant TVs that they could pause every single frame of, and perform all kinds of upscaling and digital zooms in and out on.

[1] I am firmly in favor of practical effects over digital for everything, except small technical errors like a boom mic or a coffee cup in a shot, because I think that the constraints a movie set faces will demand either: incredible innovative solutions by the crew, or, those constraints force directors to scale their vision back to something more contained and manageable. It helps to show where the scope creep for a movie is, and where it's simply unnecessary. For example, Jaws has a great backstory regarding the constant issues of the mechanical shark, it really forced Spielberg to rethink how and when the shark would be shown, and when it would be better to let the viewers mind fill in the blanks.

[Forgeties79]

I think these are really interesting questions and I like a lot of what you’re saying. I don’t really agree with your near prohibition on CG, but I definitely get where it comes from and think that some productions definitely abuse it

[mc32]

Eh regarding skin color people don’t care about realism these days. You have historical remakes with totally anachronistic ethnicities in them and “no one” cares.

I mean sure, some people do, the same as some people used to complain about overrepresentation of caucasians in some old movies set in what was then called “the orient”. I think the only ones who put up a fight are the Japanese who don’t like their productions ethnically misrepresented as much.

B&W highlights the stories better. With color you get more ambient context and sometimes that’s interesting.

[jyounker]

I think you have a misperception of the past. The actors that played the great chinese detective Charlie Chan were Warner Oland, Sidney Toler, and Roland Winters.

[Forgeties79]

> Eh regarding skin color people don’t care about realism these days. You have historical remakes with totally anachronistic ethnicities in them and “no one” cares.

This isn't exactly the same thing. Colorizing historical footage decides what the color is. A remake is an interpretation with nowhere near the same claim of accuracy and the audience 100% knows this. The social politics of this are incredibly important.

[philipallstar]

> The social politics of this are incredibly important.

Or they are incredibly transient, fashion-led and led either by the least intelligent people available, or those who stand to gain from them.

[Forgeties79]

you’re welcome to your opinion as well