Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad.

A Seminar Report On

Film Colourization
Presented By Anil Ashok Jamdhade

Guided By, Mrs. Aradhna Takalkar. Submitted to Department Of Computer Science

Vivekanand shikshan Sansthas VIVEKANAND ARTS, SARDAR DALIPSINGH COMMERCE & SCIENCE COLLEGE Vivekanand Campus, samarthnagar, Auarangabad-431001(M.S.)

Department Of Computer Science

Vivekanand shikshan Sansthas

VIVEKANAND ARTS, SARDAR DALIPSINGH COMMERCE & SCIENCE COLLEGE Vivekanand Campus, Samarthnagar, Auarangabad-431001(M.S.)

Certificate
This to Certify that,
Anil Ashok Jamdhade
BCS IIIrd year (2011-12) ,VIth Sem,

have successfully Presented seminar entitled Film Colourization as per the requirement of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad as per the partial fulfillment for the award of the Bachelor Degree Of Computer Science in the academic year of 2011-12. Guide By Mrs. Aradhna Takalkar.

Mr.P.U.Laghane
(Course Co-ordinator)

Dr.Ashok T. Gaikwad
(Head Of Department)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I express my sincere thanks to our guide, Mrs. Aradhana Takalkar mam for such valuable guidance which has immensely helped me in preparing and submitting this report. Her knowledge has been a boost for me to gather the technical information on the title as well as understanding the title basics. I would also like to extend my thanks to Dr. A.T. Gaikwad(HOD) and Prof Mr. Lagane Sir (Project In-charge), for the co-operation and the support given to me throughout the semester. This has helped me to complete this report in time and also has helped me to enjoy the presentation of this report. And above all, I would like to thanks our Hon. Principal Sir, Prof, for giving us such a precious co-operation to develop this project.

Thank you,

Anil Ashok Jamdhade.

B.Sci (Comp.Sci.)-IIIrd year.

Index
1. 2. Introduction History -Early techniques 2.1 Hand colorization 3. 2.2 Digital colorization Benefits of using Film Colourization 3.1 Completely 'lifelike' color 3.2 High quality output
3.3 Coloured vedio tape

6
7

9 10 10

4. 5. 6.

Disadvantages of Film Colourization Contervercies on Film Colourization

11 11

Uses of colorization
6.1. Partial Colourization 6.2 Restoration 6.3 Integration 12 12 12 14 15

7.

Colourization Examples
7.1 Entertaiment make-over 7.2 Documentation make-over

8. 9.

Conclusion Bibliography

17 18

1.INTRODUCTION
Film Colourization:
Film colorization[1] is any process that adds color to black-and-white, sepia or monochrome moving-picture images. It may be done as a special effect, or to modernize black-and-white films, or to restore color films. Examples date from the early 20th century, but colorization has become common with the advent of digital image processing. Colorization is a computerized process that adds color to a black?and?white movie or TV program. The process was invented by Wilson Markle and was first used in 1970 to add color to monochrome footage of the moon from the Apollo mission. In 1983, Markle founded Colorization, Inc. The word "colorization" soon became a generic name for the adding of color to black?and?white footage. Most of the classic black-and-white movies have been "colorized," mainly so that they can be shown on television in color. It turns out that the process used to add the color is extremely tedious -someone has to work on the movie frame by frame, adding the colors one at a time to each part of the individual frame. To speed up the process, the coloring is done on a computer using a digital version of the film. The film is scanned into the computer and the coloring artist can view the movie one frame at a time on the computer's screen. The artist draws the outline for each color area, and the computer fills it in. The original black-and-white film holds all of the brightness information, so the artist can paint large areas with a single color and let the original film handle the brightness gradients. This means that the artist might only have to add 10 or so actual colors to a scene. To speed up the process even more, interpolation is common. From frame to frame, there is normally very little variation in the position of objects and actors. (See, for example, the frame-by-frame demonstration on this page of How Television Works.) Therefore, the artist might manually color every tenth frame and let the computer fill in the frames in between.

2. HISTORY:

Early techniques a. Hand colorization

The first film colorization methods were employed before effective color film processes were developed: each projected copy was individually colorized. The process was done by hand, sometimes using a stencil cut from a second print of the film. As late as the 1920s, hand coloring processes were used for individual shots in Greed (1924) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925) (both utilizing the Handschiegl color process); and rarely, an entire featurelength movie such as The Last Days of Pompeii (1926) and Cyrano de Bergerac (1925). During the late 1960s and the early 1970s, black-and-white Betty Boop and Looney Tunes cartoons were redistributed in colorthe colorization process was done by tracing the original black-and-white frames onto new animation cels, and then adding color to the new cels. With computer technology, studios were able to add color to black-and-white films by digitally tinting single objects in each frame of the film until it was fully colorized (the first authorized computer-colorizations of B&W cartoons were commissioned by Warner Bros. in 1990). The initial process was invented by Canadians Wilson Markle and Christian Portilla and was first used in 1970 to add color to monochrome footage of the moon from the Apollo program missions.
b.

Digital colorization

Computerized colorization began in the 1970s with a process developed by Wilson Markle. Movies colorized using early techniques have soft contrast and fairly pale, flat, washed out color; however, the technology has improved since the 1980s. Digital colorization typically begins with a monochrome film print from which a high-quality digital video file is made. Technicians, working by computer, identify the grey level of every object in every shot and note any movement of objects within shots. Likewise, any variance of light levels frame to frame are corrected, if the budget permits. A computer adds color to each detail of a depicted object, while keeping grey levels the same as in the monochrome original. This technique was patented in 1991. A major difficulty with this process is its labor-intensity. For example, in order to colorize a still image an artist typically begins by dividing the image into regions, and then assigning a color to each region. This approach, also known as the segmentation method, is time consuming, as the process of dividing the picture into correct segments is painstaking. This problem occurs mainly because there have been no fully automatic algorithms to identify fuzzy or complex region boundaries, such as between a subjects hair and face. Colorization of moving images also requires tracking regions as movement occurs from one frame to the next (motion compensation). There are several companies which claim to have produced automatic region-tracking algorithms.
6

Legend Films describes their core technology as pattern recognition and background compositing which moves and morphs foreground and background masks from frame to frame. In the process, backgrounds are colorized separately in a single composite frame which functions as a visual database of a cut, and includes all offset data on each camera movement. Once the foregrounds are colorized the background masks are applied frame to frame in a utility process. Timebrush describes a process based on neural net technology which produces saturated and crisp colors with clear lines and no apparent spill-over. It is claimed that the process is cost effective and equally suitable for low-budget colorization, as well as for prime time broadcast-quality or theatrical projection. A team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Benin School of Computer Science and Engineering describe their method as an interactive process which does not require precise, manual, region detection, nor accurate tracking and is based on the simple premise that nearby pixels in space and time that have similar gray levels should also have similar colors. At the University of Minnesota, a color propagation method was developed that uses

geodesic distance.

3. Benefits of using Film Colourization:3.1Completely 'lifelike' color

After crayons became colorful in the late 1950's, they began to be used for such things as 'color-bynumber' books. It wasn't until nearly 25 years later that people took notice of it's colorizing power on paper, and decided to translate it to film. The results were largely successful, financially. As the original product was (eventually) aimed at children, the crayon colorized films were usually children films, such as Laural & Hardy's 'God Awful Toy Movie' (right). The technique was not too disimilar from Acidtripnacolor, which is discussed below.

3.2 High quality output:

The process of colorizing a movie begins with a monochrome film print, preferably a new print struck from the original negative. From the film print, a high?quality videotape copy is made. Technicians, aided by a computer, determine the gray level of every object in every shot and note any movement of objects within shots. A computer adds color to each object, while keeping gray levels the same as in the monochrome original. Which color to use for which object is determined through common sense (green for grass, blue for the ocean) or by investigation. For example, movie studio photographs or costume vaults may provide guidance as to what color a hat should be. In cases where no such guidance is available, colorists pick their own colors, presumably with some aesthetic sensibility.

3.3 Coloured vedio tape:

It is worth emphasizing that the product of colorization is a videotape, not a film print. When a movie is colorized, nothing bad happens to the original film print, and the colorized version can only be watched on TV. Ultimately, the greatest impact of colorization may be upon old, monochrome TV series, if and when colorization loses its stigma. Indeed, one of the original ideas behind colorization was the creation of quasi?new TV series. As Earl Glick put it in 1984, "You couldn't make Wyatt Earp today for $1 million an episode. But for $50,000 a segment, you can turn it into color and have a brand new series??with no residuals to pay." As logical as this may sound, only McHale's Navy and a few other series have been colorized.

4 Disadvantages of Film Colourization:Colorization is an expensive and time?consuming process. Popular Mechanics reported in 1987 that it cost more than $3,000 per minute of running time to colorize a movie. The economic justification for such an expenditure lay in audience demand. Variety estimated in 1988 that while it cost $300,000 to colorize an old movie, the revenue generated by the release of the colorized version was $500,000. This revenue came mostly from television syndication, although videocassette release was also important in some cases. Another important consideration was the opportunity to claim new copyrights on old films, thus extending the film's potential life as a profit center for the owner.

5 Contervercies on Film Colourization:

Colorization became extremely controversial in the late 1980s, especially with regard to "classic" monochrome films such as Citizen Kane (which ultimately was not colorized), Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and It's a Wonderful Life. With some exceptions, the dispute pitted film directors and critics (who opposed colorization) against copyright owners (who favored it). Among its opponents, TV critic Eric Mink viewed colorization as a "bastardization" of film. The Writers Guild of America West called it "cultural vandalism."

The case against colorization is most often couched in moral terms. According to this reasoning, colorization violates the moral right of the film director to create a work of art that has a final, permanent form and that will not be subject to alteration years later by unauthorized parties. Moral rights of artists, recognized in other countries, have no standing in United States law, which gives preference to the property rights of copyright holders. In film and television, the copyright holder is almost always a large film studio or production company, which employs the director as an author?for?hire, so to speak. To an extent, the battle over colorization was an attempt by directors and other creative artists to prevent further erosion of their power to control their own work.

This position was often framed, somewhat spuriously, in more high?minded terms. For example, it was argued that colorization is an affront to film history. According to this line of thinking, the color version of a film drives the original monochrome version out of circulation, with the result that some viewers may not understand that Casablanca was shot in black and white. Similarly, as Stuart Klawans notes, the viewer might erroneously conclude that a color film such as Gone with the Wind was originally shot in monochrome and later colorized. If colorization can deceive to this extent, it must have a fairly convincing appearance, and, indeed, image quality and craftsmanship were probably the least?oftenheard objections to colorizing.

10

As more movie "classics" became involved, the reaction against colorization took on the flavor of a moral panic. With colorization frequently the object of ridicule, the case in favor of the process became largely a defensive one: colorization does not harm the black?and?white original, and in fact encourages restoration of the original film and the striking of new prints; colorization is no more meddlesome than other, generally accepted practices in the televising of movies, such as interruption for commercials, editing for TV, cropping, time compression, and panning and scanning (not to mention the reduction in image size and the possibility of watching a color movie on a monochrome TV set); finally, any viewer who is offended by the color image can turn off the chroma on the TV set and watch in black-and-white.

It is worth emphasizing that the product of colorization is a videotape, not a film print. When a movie is colorized, nothing bad happens to the original film print, and the colorized version can only be watched on TV. Ultimately, the greatest impact of colorization may be upon old, monochrome TV series, if and when colorization loses its stigma. Indeed, one of the original ideas behind colorization was the creation of quasi?new TV series. As Earl Glick put it in 1984, "You couldn't make Wyatt Earp today for $1 million an episode. But for $50,000 a segment, you can turn it into color and have a brand new series??with no residuals to pay." As logical as this may sound, only McHale's Navy and a few other series have been colorized.

As of 1995, colorization is no longer a hot issue. Demand for colorized movies has shrunk drastically. Ted Turner, owner of hundreds of MGM, Warner Bros., and RKO titles and colorization's most outspoken advocate, has quietly stopped releasing colorized movies. The main legacy of colorization is the National Film Registry, established by Congress in 1988 in response to the colorization controversy. The Registry is a list of films, selected by experts and expanded annually, that, if colorized, will have to be labeled with a disclaimer. As Klawans points out, the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on compiling the registry would be much better spent on actual film (not to mention television) preservation.

11

6 Uses of colorization
1. Partial colorization
The earliest form of colorization introduced limited color into a black-and-white film using dyes, as a visual effect. The earliest Edison films, most notably the Anabelle Butterfly Dance series were also the earliest examples of colorization, done by painting aniline dyes onto the emulsion. Around 1905, Path introduced Pathchrome, a stencil process that required cutting one or more stencils for each film frame with the aid of a reducing pantograph. In 1916, the Handschiegl Color Process was invented for Cecil B. DeMille's film Joan the Woman (1917). Another early example of the Handschiegl process can be found in Phantom of the Opera (1925), in which Lon Chaney's character can be seen wearing a bright-red cape while the rest of the scene remained monochrome. The scene was toned sepia, and then the cape was painted red, either by stencil or by matrix. Then, a sulfur solution was applied to everything but the dyed parts, turning the sepia into blue tone. The process was named after its inventor, Max Handschiegl. This effect, as well as a missing color sequence, were recreated in 1996 for a Photoplay Productions restoration by computer colorization (see below). Partial colorization has also been utilized on footage shot in color to enhance commercials and broadcast television to further facilitate the director's artistic vision. As an example, Cerulean Fx provided partial colorization for Dave Matthews Band's music video The Space Between as well as Outkast's music videos "Bombs Over Baghdad" and "Roses."
2.

Restoration

A number of British television shows which were made in color in the early 1970s were wiped for economic reasons, but in some cases black-and-white telerecordings were made for export to countries that did not yet have color television. A notable example is the BBC's 5part Doctor Who story The Dmons. Only one episode survived in color; the rest existed only as black-and-white film recordings. The only known color recording was a poor-quality offair recording of an abridged American broadcast. In the 1990s the BBC colorized the blackand-white copies by adding the color signal from the off-air recordings. The result was judged a success by both technicians and fans. In March 2008, it was announced[7] that new technology, which involves detecting color artifacts ("dot crawl") in high-resolution scans of black-and-white films, will be used to restore other Who episodes as well as shows like Steptoe and Son where some episodes only exist in black-and-white. However, there are no plans to use colorization on BBC programmes originally made in black-and-white, such as the 1960s Who episodes since they have no color information contained and so cannot be recovered using the method of other Who stories which have been colorized.[8]

3. Integration
Colorization is also sometimes used on historical stock footage in color movies. For instance, the film Thirteen Days uses colorized news footage from the time of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
12

The full-color feature film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), which already made heavy use of digitally generated sets and objects, integrated black-and-white 1940s footage of Sir Laurence Olivier into scenes by colorizing him. In his feature film, The Aviator (2005), Martin Scorsese seamlessly blended colorized stock footage of the Hell's Angels movie premiere with footage of the premiere's re-enactment. The colorization by Legend Films was designed to look like normal three-strip film but was then color corrected to match the two-strip look of the premiere's re-enactment. Also in The Aviator, Scorsese used colorized footage of Jane Russell from the original black-and-white film, The Outlaw and dog fight scenes from Hell's Angels.

13

7 Colorization examples
1. Entertainment make-overs

Colorization in 1986. From Night of the Living Dead.

Colorization in 2004 from the same film.

In the mid-1980s, the process drew controversy after Topper and then Way Out West became the first black-and-white films to be redistributed in color using the colorization process. Defenders of the process noted that it would allow black-and-white films to have new audiences of people who were not used to the format. Detractors complained (among other reasons) that the process was crude and claimed that even if it were refined, it would not take into account lighting compositions chosen for black-and-white photography which would not necessarily be as effective in color.[10] Figures opposed to the process included Roger Ebert, James Stewart, John Huston, George Lucas and Woody Allen. Cary Grant was reportedly "very gung-ho with the outcome" of the colorization of Topper. Director Frank Capra met with Wilson Markle about colorizing the perennial holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life, Meet John Doe and Lady for a Day based on Grant's enthusiasm. Colorization, Inc.'s art director Brian Holmes screened ten minutes of colorized footage from It's a Wonderful Life to Capra, which led Capra to sign a contract with Colorization, Inc. However, the film was believed to be in the public domain at the time, and as a result Markle and Holmes responded by returning Capra's initial investment, eliminating his financial participation, and refusing outright to allow the director to exercise artistic control over the colorization of his films, leading Capra to join in the campaign against the process.[9][11] In 1986, Film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert did a special episode of Siskel & Ebert addressing colorization as "Hollywood's New Vandalism." "It's about money" Siskel explained how networks were unable to show classic black-and-white films in prime-time unless they offer it in color. "They arrest people who spray subway cars, they lock up people who attack paintings and sculptures in museums, and adding color to black and white films, even if its only to the tape shown on TV or shown in stores, is vandalism nonetheless." Roger
14

Ebert added, "What was so wrong about black and white movies in the first place? By filming in black and white, movies can sometimes be more dreamlike and elegant and stylized and mysterious. They can add a whole additional dimension to reality, while color sometimes just supplies additional unnecessary information."[12] Media mogul Ted Turner was once an aggressive proponent of this process, by employing the San Diego firm American Film Technologies.[13] When he told members of the press that he was considering colorizing Citizen Kane, his comments led to an immediate public outcry.[14] Orson Welles had retained control over the film in his original contract, which would prevent any editing or other tampering with this film, without the express permission of Welles or his estate. About two weeks before he died in 1985, Welles asked filmmaker Henry Jaglom, "Don't let Ted Turner deface my movie with his crayons."[15] Turner Pictures had never actually announced that this was an upcoming planned project. Turner later stated that this was a joke designed to needle colorization critics, and that he never had any intention of colorizing the film. John Huston's opposition to the colorization of his work led to a landmark 3-year French legal case after his death, sparked by a colorized version of The Asphalt Jungle. His daughter Anjelica Huston successfully used French copyright law to set a binding precedent in 1991 that prevents the distribution or broadcasting in France of any colorized version of a film against the wishes of the original creator or their heirs.[16] Major legislative reaction in the United States was the National Film Preservation Act of 1988 (Public Law 100-446), which prohibits any person from knowingly distributing or exhibiting to the public a film that has been materially altered, or a black and white film that has been colorized and is included in the Registry, unless such films are labeled disclosing specified information. This law also created the National Film Registry. Because of the high cost of the process, Turner Entertainment stopped colorizing titles. With the coming of DVD technology, the notion of colorization was once again gaining press. Because the DVD format was more versatile, studios could offer viewers the option to choose between both versions without switching discs, and thus, the release of colorized titles once again seemed profitable. Some companies re-released the older colorized versions from the 1980san example of this is the Laurel and Hardy box set being released in the UK. [17]
To appease critics, the original black-and-white versions of Three Stooges films were included with their colorized counterparts (Beer Barrel Polecats).

Other studios, such as Sony Entertainment, commissioned West Wing Studios to colorize several Three Stooges films for DVD release. The studio was given access to the original Columbia Studios props and sets to lend authenticity to the colorized versions.[18] Both film and television restoration and colorization is produced by the company Legend Films. Their patented automated process was used to colorize around 100 films between 2003 and 2009. Shirley Temple, Jane Russell, Terry Moore and Ray Harryhausen have worked with the company to colorize either their own films or their personal favorites. Two movies that Legend Films are noted for is the colorization of the exploitation film Reefer Madness, for which certain color schemes were used to create a psychedelic effect in its viewers, and Plan 9 from Outer Space. Recently (2007), Legend Films colorized It's a Wonderful Life for Paramount Pictures (whose subsidiary, Republic Pictures, had regained control of the copyright in the 1990s) and Holiday Inn in 2008 for Universal Pictures.
15

In 2004, a classic Indian film, Mughal-e-Azam, was colored for theatrical release all over the world by a company called Indian Academy of Arts and Animation (IAAA) in association with Sankranti Creations. Founder of IAAA and Owner of [Sankranti creations], Rajeev Dwivedi used this technology for the first time in India. In 2005, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the first season of Bewitched on DVD. Because the first season was produced in black-and-white, Sony released two versions of the set: one with the episodes as originally broadcast and a second with the episodes colorized. A year later, the second season of Bewitched and the first season of I Dream of Jeannie, another show owned by Sony, were released the same way. These releases were colorized by Dynacs Digital, which was bought over by Florida based, West Wing Studios, Inc. in 2003. Their production facility is located in Goa, India.
Documentary make-overs

Colorization is sometimes used on documentary programmes. The Beatles Anthology TV show colorizes some footage of the band, most notably the performance of "All You Need Is Love" from the TV special Our World (1967). In the documentary this scene begins in its original black-and-white before dissolving into seemingly realistic, psychedelic color. The color design was based on color photographs taken at the same time as the special was shot. The documentary series World War I in Color (2003) was broadcast on television and released on DVD in 2005. There had previously been full-color documentaries about World War II using genuine color footage, but since true color film was not practical for moving pictures at the time of World War I, the series consists of colorized contemporary footage (and photographs). Several documentaries on the Military Channel feature colorized war footage from the Second World War and the Korean War.

16

8.

CONCLUSION

1. A method of colorizing a series of black and white frames having relatively high resolution and containing only black and white information in a motion picture motion sequence,comprising the steps of:

(a) generating color information for a single frame in a sequence,

(b) blurring all portions of all said color information, and

(c) combining said blurred color information with said relatively high resolution black and white information to generate a colored frame corresponding to said black and white frame and having high density luminence information and low deposingcolor information.

17

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WIKIPEDIA

y www.petantforum.com

18