When I worked in colorization at CST, we would find color production stills (if possible) and use poster art and even written descriptions to choose colors of gowns and costumes. I preferred to work on war movies because the colors of the flags and insignia were all well documented.
An interesting dilemma is when the costumes were the wrong color because of how they would expose on B + W film. I worked on colorizing "Susanna of the Mounties." Gary Cooper wore a gray coat during filming because red would have photographed as black. however when we added color to his coat, it ended up being either orange or pink, depending on the hue chosen.
Back-in-the-day when I found myself in a "pleasant" discussion on the artistic and creative merits of colorization, I would wait for a natural pause in the conversation and then declare in a thoughtful and forcefully dedicated way that,
"It is my life dream to colorize ALL of Ansel Adams' photographs."
This was such an outrageous statement delivered with such integrity that invariably after a brief pause, everybody laughed and the mood was relaxed and no longer confrontational.
But seriously, after working in colorization for ten years during the "hey day" of colorization controversy, I came to the following general conclusion: People that had very acute vision and were trained as artists and photographers to look for flaws, tended to dislike colorizing. People that were not trained artists and just wanted to have a good time in life tended to have the attitude : "It is better because there is more information -- IT HAS COLOR. I like color."
copyright (c) 2018
William Schaeffer
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