Restoration of a very early color film

I thought some of you would find this interesting (I did).  The work was done by the National Media Museum in England and the recovered color movie dates to 1902.
 
The original process and the restoration process are both fascinating.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XekGVQM33ao&feature=player_embedded
 
 

That is even more fascinating than The FSF.

Oh I see what they're trying to do.  They're just trying to make us think that color had been invented back around 1900 when everyone knows that the world was only in black and white back then.  However, I'm not fooled!

Technically it's not colour film,  it's colour encoded.

julibee

Karyn


Technically it's not colour film,  it's colour encoded.

That just makes it more bad ar$ed. :)

Daryl'd.

That is even more fascinating than The FSF.

Nothing is more fascinating than the FSF.

Thanks, that was cool. Somehow I ended up on the romanoarchives from there. I never know where I will end up when I look at something.... there is always something new to learn, something old/new to see or read.

Thanks again. I like this.

J

I was hoping that McQ would point out how restoration used to be better/easier/market savy before the proprietary dongle based systems came into existence. 

The cliché … everything old is new again … (IMHO) is applicable  in every facet of the human experience but is very true the development of “NEW” products and technologies.  There have always been really smart people around.  Sometimes, it just takes time the surrounding science to catch up before you can execute on a given technology.

Hi,
 
Time never was that color wasn't!
 
The hard part, is that we're confusing a "film" with the reality and sometimes people actually think that the flowers never had color or the skyes were not blue! And that film was the "truth".
 
I, personally, and I love film, and know its history really well, find that these kinds of things are money wasted.
 
I supposed that I would like to see the Melies films colorized, and maybe the bosoms and the legs would look better? How about Busby Berkely? (... you can get a better Busby impression in Ken Russell, btw!!!!).
 
The technology of film, is what has given us "history" ... and I don't see that the bombing planes, or film in D-Day is that important to help us find something that we did not see before!
 
This is one of the greatest falacies in film, and the very same thing that gets us hooked on top ten. I find it bizarre, that we have to see it colorized for us to accept its reality, freedom, or living ... as if it wasn't true before, but it is now because color was added to it.
 
Sorry ... I find this bizarre, and a serious waste of money!
 
Might as well pay Bapu and the CHB to go play the instruments of 400 years ago, get them some real outfits ... they deserve the money a lot more and better! ... and it would look cool, too! I'll have to play Salieri, just for fun!
 

mike_mccue


I'm hoping that Pedro can teach you all about the problems with sheet film and how we all were *confusing* the image because the multi layers are stacked so that each color ends up in a slightly different degree of focus.

Splitting the colors to adjacent collectors can make a much crisper light-drawing.

I'm hoping to learn which way is better... especially now that it's hard to know which way is the old fashioned way.

Next, Christianity is going to make sure that all images of Jesus, the Christo, are in living color .... so they have a better reason for you to believe in him, and show you that ...
 
Wow!

mike_mccue


Poetry in notion; You have perfected the art of offending everyone you speak at.


regards,
mike

That is not the point!
 
Besides, ideas are just ideas ... and you basically are stating that I have no right to state mine ... but because yours has a laugh track it is right, and my idea is wrong!
 
That was not the point, Mike!
 
I have more appreciation for your music than I do half the articles that the media likes to flock us all to all the time ... but you don't see that? And another professor or what not ... is more important?
 
Not to me!

Entertainment must be accessible to the masses. Art--- pure art in a higher form-- is different. And just as important, but there is a line between that I think you often miss.

 
Yes, no and maybe.
 
My point is that we have a tendency to look at everything else, and then when you look in the mirror, you/we/I, do not have the ability or talent to do half as good.
 
No one, has fought more for the "low arts" than I, although I do not think that the Ramones are that great, but then, I don't go around saying that Shakespeare or Milton are teh pinacle of "art", or Picasso, or Carmen!
 
In some ways, the colorization of that, to me, is like the new age bible ... or a new "translation" of the old thing ... and sometimes, I think that we put on the 3D glasses, as a way to get out ... because we're afraid to trip inside, and see the REAL 3D. with more colors than any palette will ever be able to distinguish or show you or I.
 
My work, words, and comments, are not ... ideas ... I tend to deplore ideas because they are the bery things that derail our own understanding of things.
 
I can see, and appreciate, more than anyone, the ability to RESTORE a lot of music, film and art ... to me that is a vital record of the time and place, and much more important than what that process brought out ... which I think was ... funny, and fun ... not exactly meaningful per se.
 
There was a film, called "My 20th Century", a Hungarian film that was ... nuts and just like this ... but it was "displaced" at the turn of the century and it was like you were seeing film for the first time, and it had a riot with people's reactions and such. In it, people also confused the real thing ... and immediately, one little girl says ... "I wanna be like her" ... which is neat, and you and I would never want to take away one's dream ... but sometimes that "dream" is a perception that is wrong ... it's an image, not a reality!
 
Film, can be accused of a lot of things, from "reality" to "neo-reality" to "fake" and many other terms in between ... but it's still about the "manipulation of an image" ... and that is totally different for all of us! And no, I do not believe any of us are wrong, but folks are saying here I am ... when they have no idea where I am coming from, and worse ... they are not big enough to ask ... you at least, are on par with your voice ... you comment to invite the proper/better answer and understanding ... and you know that is not a "philosophy" ... it's a true and tried reality!

Mosh,
 Serious question; did you bother to watch the video? Are you aware that the photographer developed both a color separation process and a presentation process where the film was originally viewed and experienced in color?

 It seem as if you are reacting to an idea that the restoration actually added color when in fact the process merely attempted to rescue and present the film as it was experienced in 1902.

 I would have been delighted to learn that someone built a new projector to re combine the color, but it seems as if the use of digital com-positing was a cost effective way to preserve the legacy that the inventor of the process left for us to enjoy.

 Are you taking all that into account before you offer your generalized criticism of society?

 best regards,
mike

Hi Mosh,

 I went out and found a new B.C. avatar for you to consider using: