What TV shows suffered in the switch from black and white to color?

I wish soneone had filmed the the second apartment or country house in color. The first apartment looks so dark here, but then again, it always did look darker than the others. Just would be interesting what those sets looked like compared to this. I get a very '50s vibe from the first season that I don't really get from later ones and that has to be at least in part due to the lighting.

 

So you had a B&W set in 67? GH is another one that shot night scenes in daylight with filters. But it was a color show from the start.

 

LOST IN SPACE for my. It looked waaaaaaay better in black and white!

 

Totally agree with all of these. My favorite kid shows, especially TMFU.

 

...and Doctor Smith was evil in b+w.
Color made him camp.

 

F: More Helen

 

Soap Operas

 

Looking at all the great posts in this thread, two questions come to mind:

1. Did some color shows seem better in B & W on your B & W TV?
2. Should some creative mind create a new show in B & W?

On a side note, we had a B & W TV until 1975. Yet, I have no memory of watching the Flintstones every day at noon when I was very young, in B & W. Maybe my mind was telling me, "I'm watching a color show on a TV that happens not to be color."

 

I believe you are right, and if I remember correctly, Ed promos the fact that the next show will be the first in color on the last Beatles episode

 

This is from my personal experience based on my equipment and not how the show was offered.
I watched Jonny Quest, in my room, on a 13" black and white TV. I never once watched it on the color TV in the living room. Because of that I never saw a single episode in color, only black and white. Years later, while serving in the Navy, I wandered into the break room and saw Jonny Quest on the color TV and thought to myself...What the heck!!?? That looks wrong. After a few seconds of that thought process my mind kicked in and I started to chuckle at my realization that I was the one who saw things incorrectly because of my single exposure via black and white. While I did enjoy the show in color it seemed wrong because it was not my childhood memory of the show I so dearly enjoyed.
I guess my imagination made the show "better" in my mind while in black and white on my tiny TV.

 

Here's an interesting documentary on the B&W to color switch for Combat.

 

I think the network execs would go nuts if somebody shot a new series entirely in B&W. But there have been series that have done segments in B&W; the first episode of The Walking Dead -- a hugely successful show with more than 16 million viewers every week -- had B&W flashbacks interspersed with color material. Though I thought that was a flashy, silly, unnecessary gimmick.

One trick with B&W is that you have to create depth in the image purely with light and shadow, whereas with color you can do it with color alone. For that reason, I believe that lighting B&W not only takes a different technique than color, but it's also harder to do. Merely turning the color off does not create good B&W; there's a lot more to it. Shooting beautiful B&W motion pictures is a real art form.

 

I just spoke to somebody about Lost in Space, and I got a long story about Jonathan Harris and all his shenanigans on that show. Quite an interesting guy. I wasn't aware that he wound up being the highest-paid actor on the show. (!)

 

The 1959-1963 NBC western LARAMIE (even though the pilot had been done in color and one of the promo peacocks was named after it!).
The color episodes just look like they must have had to cut back on location shooting-or-something (the b/w episode exteriors were almost ALL outside).

The cult soap opera DARK SHADOWS...the color was, usually, so blurry and made the scenes look as low budget as the show was (the b/w episodes are far more atmospheric and "intense"; in that early, live tv-way).

 

I like the black and white opening better.

 

The Saint starring Roger Moore...i definitely prefer the 71 B/W episodes...which was followed by 47 episodes in colour.

 

Not a surprise. He was the break put star after the first couple of episodes.

 

And I can't think of who should have been paid more except maybe Billy Mumy, but he was a kid, so that wasn't going to happen. Lost In Space really did become mainly the Dr. Smith, Will & Robot show.

 

It didn't help that it was shot on videotape and using those older video cameras. Color's tended to blur a bit.

 

Yeah, top-billed Guy Williams was very upset about that and reportedly walked off the set a few times when he'd get a new script and discover he had about three lines of dialogue in the entire episode. He was pretty bitter about that. Jonathan Harris was quite a scene-stealer (literally).

Dark Shadows was originally shot in B&W videotape from 1966 and switched to color in late 1967. The technology for all video cameras in those days was very crude and limited, and a show like that was basically switched "live to tape," so they shot it in sequential order and did very, very few pickups or redos. Even today, the tradition is that they don't do many takes on soap operas and none of the actors can use cue cards -- they all have to memorize the dialogue every day, plus they get very little rehearsal. An average 1-hour soap today takes about 5 hours to shoot because they have to change sets, move the cameras, change costumes, and so on; they typically take about one 10-hour day (plus lunch breaks) to shoot 2 episodes.

 

I don't know how they do it. The shows may be hokey, but you gotta respect that work ethic and skill.

 

Hey, I was a fan and faithfully watched the show every day after school from about 1968 to the bitter end. It was silly and nutty, but I get why it was a hit. Jonathan Frid had a lot of charisma and pulled off a part that would have been totally ridiculous from almost any other actor.

You gotta love the bloopers in a show as cheap as Dark Shadows, where there's stage managers and floor directors just barely getting out of the shot in the nick of time...