Color Me Beautiful

AND BROADCAST ME PROFITABLY

by Jerry A. Sierra for POST, 3/26/1990

Published title: "There's gold in them black & whites"

"I'm for coloring old films. For over 35 years I have seen myself in Miracle on 34th Street" (I was the woman Macy's sent to Gimbals), and to see it in color last year brought a liveliness to the screen and the way we all see 'in color.' If the technology had been invented sooner, I'm sure that more films would have been made in color."
- Fran Lee, Letter to NY Times 11/6/86

"We got probably $30 million worth of publicity out of [the controversy] The viewers have voted with their TV dials."
- Ted Turner

RUGGED AND HANDSOME IN A FLORIDA-ORANGE SHIRT, brown vest, gray hat and silver star, Randolph Scott lassoes a runaway horse against a striking plains backdrop of bright blue skies and occasional green trees. The movie, RKO's "Badman's Territory," rivals the best technicolor cinema of the 50's and 60's. Leonard Maltin's "TV Movies and Video Guide" describes it as "a good western," but Maltin's book fails to describe the beautiful rich vistas or the distant blue capped mountains that appear throughout. Instead, it describes the film as black and white.

And colorless it was, when shot in 1946 by director Tim Whelan and crew. Forty-six years later, to begin the last decade of the twentieth century, it stands as an example of the best in color conversion, and marks the 100th film colorized by Color Systems Technology.

"Three years ago the distant mountains would have been brown," explains CST art director Bruce Jones, "and the horses would have been brown. We would have used a less vibrant palate, and there would have been masking errors [when the color doesn't stay on the subject] now we have strict quality control standards that don't allow that to happen."

When the classic "Miracle on 34th Street," converted by CST for 20th Century Fox, aired in 1985 it became the highest rated non-network movie in syndication, with audience draw 600% higher than its previous black-and-white showing. It received congratulatory uproars by just about every one from Nancy Reagan to Cary Grant. In the next two years, the colorized version went on to produce well over a million dollars in syndication revenues, approximately the same amount it earned for the previous fifteen years.

Soon after its splashing beginnings the director's guild of America launched a morality campaign against colorizing, several years before anybody knew what kind of quality could be achieved with the process.

"In the beginning," explains David Rivera, a colorist with four years experience, "any color applied to the B&W film was a major event, now the public wants more realism. In 'Miracle' and 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' we used big diffused globs of color on everything, now we can't do that."

Five years later, comparing the quality of each of those movies is like comparing the original quadraplex-format recorders to digital technology, the results are worlds apart. "We've learned a lot in the last few years," says Joseph De Vita, "we've gained a great deal of experience in how to actually accomplish the process, our quality has improved with every project we have done."

The basic process of color conversion, ironically, has not changed much since the company moved from Hollywood to its present location in Marina Del Rey. It still involves six major steps, now performed by 135 production employees in a two-shift, seven-day operation. What's changed is the company's ability to use and understand the complex procedure, as well as the efficiency of those involved in the process.

The first step is to take the original film and transfer it to tape, with forty 1" tape dupes made. Step two involves breaking down each individual scene into shots and similar locations. A research department, in step three, identifies colors of historical significance for buildings, uniforms and other pertinent information. The data is passed on to the art department for step four, which involves setting up a story board showing how key scenes will look.

Once the client approves the overall look, the film moves into step five, the actual color conversion process, which can be performed in as many as 19 of the studios. Each studio features several computers and at least five Sony monitors on which colorists can call up reference stills as well as the film being worked on, and a variety of additional equipment, including 4 Ikegami cameras and an assortment of BTS routers, a Harris still store and a Tecktronics vectorscope.

"Once each shot in the film is converted," explains De Vita, "we put it back in the original order of the picture on one piece of videotape."

The last step is balancing the color and smoothing out transitions from one cut to the next. "We usually take three to four days to color correct the movie after its been colorized and put together," says Todd Holland, Manager of post production and generally known as The Post Guy, "we've got it down to a science, we piece it together as the shots are colorized, so we can stay up with production, we're usually right behind them."

An enhancing process gives the videotape a sharper, clearer look. "Much crispier than the original transfer," says Holland, "the lines are more defined, and detail tends to come out more."

On public domain movies, soundtracks are often sent out to be restored, sweetened and re-mixed for stereo, resulting in much better frequency range, stereo separation, and a loss of most of the clicks, pops and hiss associated with old soundtracks.

Since its inception in 1985, CST has worked for a variety of clients such as 20th Century Fox, Disney, Vestron, Viacom and Turner Entertainment Co., for whom the company has colorized over 70 features. In 1987 CST received an Emmy for "Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development."

Yet despite all the excitement of such early success, as the company became more efficient in marketing its services, 'the bloodier the ink got on its balance sheets.'

"The process was imperfect and the cost was high," says Buddy Young, President and CEO, "conversion was still in its infancy, but we believed colorization could add an entirely new dimension to entertainment."

Now fit and trim for the nineties, a $21 million debt load has been restructured and the company has reduced operating costs by eliminating a less productive 3rd shift. For the first time in its five-year existence the company reported a profit, for the fiscal quarter ending December 31, 1989.

Also announced recently is an agreement with International Creative Exchange to license and colorize 114 episodes of Blake Edward's "Peter Gunn," one of the original television detective series, with the company participating in revenues derived from sales of the series. In addition, CST and Viacom International have agreed in principle to a joint research and development venture aiming to enhance the quality and cost-effectiveness of CST's conversion process.

With production costs at an average of $800,000.00 per hour of TV programming, and with nearly 2.8 million minutes of feature films and television programs available for coloring in the United States, color conversion becomes an economic and profitable way to fill increasingly valuable air time for independent and cable stations.

"I see a lot of series in the near future," says Jones, "because of our efficiency, we can do a lot of series that once we couldn't have done, as well as perhaps episodes that were shot in black and white for two years and then shot in color for six, we can do those two years so that no one would ever know they were colored, because we have exact references to go by, and we can match those frame to frame.”

That the skies are beginning to look bright and blue at CST, much as they do in "Badman's Territory," is obvious, but De Vita and Jones have their eyes set on the not too distant future, where the digital, multi format environment will allow work to be done at any resolution desirable. "We're looking at other markets that have a strong synergism and coupling with color conversion," says De Vita, "these may be projects where conversion makes up only part of the final product."

Jones sees the opportunity to work with current productions, doing special effects sequences that would be very costly on film, but if shot in black-and-white and converted to color could be done cheaply and quickly.

"Imagine a whole dream sequence where you have complete and total control of the colors, having them change subtly before your eyes..."

To a culture obsessed with colors, and an industry set on giving people more of what they're already obsessed with, the possibility of total and complete control of color can be a profitable commodity. "Color is so powerful," continues Jones, "we're so surrounded by it, the way we juxtapose colors... the way we take each other through sequences of color, what starts out as red, what ends up as blue... it evokes deep feelings and sensations that manifests itself very subtly."

To date, the only serious contenders for the color conversion crown, unquestionably worn by CST, seems to be American Film Technologies in San Diego, but Jones is not worried, nor is Rivera, who points out, "they don't have anything close to our color palate."

"We're particularly careful with our flesh tones," explains Jones, "we treat the women slightly different than men, and darker skins different than Caucasians. We don't just use the same flesh 101 on everything."

Back in "Badman's Territory," Randolph Scott square dances with an attractive redhead, (Ann Richards) who wears a stunning low cut black dress with white gloves and a large pink flower at her breast. The room is colorfully decorated with blue curtains, red banners, and a variety of dancing couples, the women's formal dresses in an assortment of colors. The now forgotten Gabby Hayes, wearing his distinctive gray beard as well as the red shirt and leather vest we rarely ever saw in color, plays his harmonica and belts out his famous coyote howl.

FIN

Colorful Talk About Colorization

"The Sea Hawk job is the first one that convinced me that someday, if the coloring continues to improve dramatically, they may have something there, after all."
- Robert Osborne, The Hollywood Reporter, 3/24/87

"Just do it in black and white, Mr. Whistler... Ted Turner can put in the color later..."
- Cartoon by Peters, Dayton Daily News

"We see and live our lives in color, the colorized aspect of it gives a film a more contemporary feel."
- Andy Kaplan, Hal Roach Studios
- Daily Breeze, Feb 15, 1987

"We didn't think Topper could ever be improved, but we were most impressed with the colorization of that fun movie... A clever idea. The President joins me in sending best wishes for your continued success."
- Nancy Reagan, 1985

"The vast majority of people really don't give a hoot whether you colorize movies or not. It's a handful of elitists in Hollywood that don't like it.

The most heartbreaking thing of all is "Gilligan's Island" - 98 episodes and 27 of 'em are in back and white. Is there anything wrong with colorizing the 27 episodes to make 'em all in color?
- Ted Turner, American Film, Jan/Feb '89

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