That only happened with productions using 3-strip YCM separations. Some did, some didn't... it kind of didn't make that much difference with the image, because the films weren't actually shot in Technicolor. By the mid-to-late '50s, everybody was shooting in 1-strip monopack Kodak negative. Only films that actually used 3-strip on set -- which had ended years before Moby Dick -- would get the look of original Technicolor. The one thing you got with a true Technicolor IB print was, it would last a long time, since it used aniline dyes abd not chemical dyes, and the color had a different quality than Eastman prints. The remaster could have fixed any problems like this digitally, but it becomes a restoration problem as to "how much do you fix, and how much do you leave accurate?" If it had been me, I would hands down argue "we have to make this consistent and not have weird color looks that bounce back and forth."
Again, I have no idea whether you're agreeing with Barry Salt's explanation or not. Salt was talking about the print process of the film and you're talking about the camera negative.
I was landing on this Orson Wells sermon scene that stopped me dead in my tracks surfing with the remote on Spectrum cable tv... It looks like a painting but I do remember it being a little on the yellowish side on my eyeball calibrated HDtv. It's like a completely different movie from what I saw back in the late '60's on a B&W TV. Orson's delivery upstaged Peck's performance. I got chills watching this scene in color. As a kid back then I was mostly bored with this movie.
Well, I watched The Black Pirate (1926) again, that Douglas Fairbanks classic in Two-strip Technicolor (Process #2). This was before IB, like you'd see in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), so the colors would fade, yet its current state adds a nostalgic aesthetic to the film, even though you know it probably looked more colorful once upon a time. Most of the colors remain, yet its far less green after fading, giving a more even color pallette to the film as a whole. It looks great! A gem in my collection. Now, if someone would only release The Toll of the Sea (1922) in 1080p. The 720p partially restored version on YouTube has more of its colors intact than The Black Pirate. I don't even think it would be too miraculous of a restoration to get it up to snuff. It's the second full length Technicolor film and the first extant one (the first (Process #1) is The Gulf Between (1917) which is considered lost).
There was a conversation as to whether it would be technically possible to "derive" the missing yellow/blue information for a 2-strip Technicolor film like Wax Museum, which basically looks very cyan/magenta. If you take a look at Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, they did a great job reproducing that look digitally for the 1930s-era material. I think for Wax Museum, they finally decided, "yes it would be possible, but we can't commit historical revisionism like that." So they optimized the 2-color look as best they could, and at least took a lot of flicker and grunge out of it. I agree that the "split-tone" look is interesting, and it's a trick used frequently in modern TV shows and action films -- aka the "Orange/Teal" look.
Last night watched the Kino Lorber restored 3 strip Technicolor of Secret Of The Incas on Blu-Ray. It looks exactly like the DVDbeaver screen caps I posted a link to up thread. I'ld suggest go with the Kino Lorber warmer (yellowish) daylight white balance. It's pretty grainy but very fine and evenly diffused. White balance tint shifts throughout the entire movie but it's quite subtle. I could correct for the yellowish hue at the beginning of the movie by selecting "Standard" cooler color temp on my Samsung HDtv from its previously set "Warm 1" setting. Night scenes though end up looking a bit navy blue. Scenes of Machu Picchu color look exactly like a 1950's National Geographic only very detailed and sharp especially in the greenery and rocks. I liked the movie overall especially at the end on how they find the Sunburst treasure. Quite a few scenes reminded me of Raiders Of The Lost Arc.
"NEPTUNE'S DAUGHTER" (1949 M-G-M) Blu-ray. Nice job, very balanced color. Not a great movie but shocked to see Mel Blanc in Technicolor.
That is horrible, anathema to anybody in the mastering business. Trust me, somebody deliberately decided how the color balance was supposed to be, and all you're doing is futzing with it. Trying to out-guess them is dangerous and fraught with problems. Granted, it's your set and you can do what you want. But it's kind of like getting a graphic equalizer and randomly deciding to yank up or down on different frequencies during a song just because you can. The set should be calibrated to the normal Rec709 industry standard and then just left alone. Then you can see what the mastering really is, and not what a "warm" or "cool" setting from the factory -- which is completely random and meaningless -- will look like.
So are you saying Paramount studios/Kino Lorber dropped the ball on the yellowish white balance that defies color constancy even for daylight lit scenes where whites look neutral and everything else has a yellowish hue begging the quesiton what type of lighting did they use back then that other 3 strip Technicolor movie restorations didn't have a problem with? My point was not to go with the other bluish WB rendering shown in the DVDbeaver comparison. I provided a solution using my tv setting if some think the other bluish version is better. My correcting it on TV was quite subtle more subtle than the other overly bluish version. Yeah, it would be great if Kino Lorber fixed this but I have to ask why they didn't. But I agree with you that this should have been corrected in the restoration process.
It's not what I would do. I generally lean towards white whites and black blacks, but that's me. I'd have to see the image on a scope to understand what happened. A Vectorscope and an RGB Parade scope will instantly reveal if there's an actual technical problem in the mastering. Of course, there's always the possibility a filmmaker directed the mastering people to create that look for a specific creative reason. Sometimes, "neutral" is not what they intended or wanted. Carbon Arc lights (literally electrically-ignited, burning carbon focused in a metal frame) runs at about 6500°K, which is what 1930s/1940s/early 1950s Technicolor film was color balanced for. Operators had to "trim" the gap of the carbon rods, which would burn away over time. Since carbon arc lights fell out of favor -- because of noise, cost, size, weight, and other problems -- cinematographers have gone with incandescent light (3200°, which is very warm/yellow) for indoor scenes, and then HMI lighting and other kinds of technology for outdoor scenes (usually at 5600°). Color filters add or subtract orange or blue as required in order to get neutral lighting. There is a popular theory that one of the reasons why Technicolor "looks" the way it does is because it was photographed with carbon arc lamps, and also projected with carbon arc bulbs in theaters. It's a different look than normal Xenon bulbs, let alone digital projectors. I'd have to have a sample of the image to understand what happened, and if it's truly "overly bluish." There's ways to fix that. Sometimes, we might let whites stray a little bit into a subtle cool area just to help it look a little cleaner; a warmer white is often seen as being a little "off." But you can't do this with a gross color adjustment in a monitor: you need a scalpel, not a sledgehammer, to do adjustments like this.
I'd say they're both not neutral, and neither are what I would do (not that I'm that great, but I do know the difference). I'd split the difference and add a little contrast. Be aware that when you do a screen grab, there are discrepancies in gamma and color space between what you see on the DVD or Blu-ray and what gets turned into an internet still.
I tend to agree with you on screen grab inaccuracies for Rec 709 color space (Wizard Of Oz as an example) but the three current 3 strip Technicolor restorations on Blu-Ray I've bought have been pretty spot on to what I see on my Samsung and hardware calibrated LG Mac Monitor. Those screen grabs were taken from DVDbeaver site by copying image location and pasting in this thread, not from my computer's frame buffer. Both Imprint's and Kino Lorber color renderings shown in the screen grabs aren't what I'ld call acceptable restorations. But the yellowish color of daylight scenes improves further into the movie making me suspect this could be a second unit error on how the film stock was preserved after the shoot. But I prefer the Kino Lorber for overall color fidelity. Some interior shots are shockingly realistic looking as if I'm seeing what the actors and sets must've actually looked like. The Machu Piccu scenes of handmade dyed fabric are quite detailed. I do now recall skipping over Secrets Of The Incas surfing with the remote back in the '80's on a CRT tv on some rerun channel and finding it looked more like the Imprint version but with thick halo edges and over cranked saturation. I thought it was a dumb looking throw away movie seeing Heston's goofy hat. I don't think that now seeing the restored version. I think there is far more value offered in the color restorations of these old movies than what some may think. It's almost like a special effect in some way. Some interior scenes I have to freeze frame and just gaze at just from their presence similar to sound stage imaging in audio.
Moulin Rouge (1952) I thought the film was dreadful. Absolutely terrible. Oh, it was well-filmed, well-edited, and well-acted enough, and the restoration is first class. Above and beyond first class! BFI put this film out and the restoration notes, once again, claims that the restoration is from the original nitrate negatives. Nitrate, even! In 1952. If we're to believe them, I've long suspected that everyone didn't just switch to safety stock at the turn of 1950. Anyway, John Huston directed. A ****ing giant of a director, only I don't see that this movie did anything, or went anywhere as a film. It's an art film, and I love artsy stuff, but it has to have a purpose, and I just didn't see it, nor could I identify with the characters. Perhaps that's on me, and not the movie. Regardless, I couldn't stand the guazy look they gave Technicolor. I don't like the aesthetic.
Got my WB Archives stash today The Adventures Of Don Juan My Dream Is Yours The Night Of The Iguana The Yearling I've seen 'em all before but not what I'm sure will be the best versions out there.
I picked up 8. Where's the emoji of shame? No Three-strip Technicolor. More shame. But! For Me and My Gal Dinner at Eight Broadway Melody of 1940 Passage to Marseille Chain Lightning Battleground The Thing from Another World Brigadoon
I've been watching some Two-strip Merrie Melodies, which has been fun. Duel in the Sun (1946) KL Blu-ray This is an interesting Eastman dupe. The colors are a little faded, but still fairly vibrant. The first couple of minutes were shockingly bad. I thought this might be an ugly print, but then it evened out nicely. It mostly remained nice through the entire film, only there was about a minute or so when the matrices got misaligned, in something I had never seen before - the three strips were out of line, but it seems like they were corrected on the fly...like, could they do that while the printing was in progress? Or, what would be the mechanism for the matrices to misalign and then realign like that in the middle of the film? Because sitting 6.5ft away, it's easy to tell misaligned strips, and this went back to perfect alignment (or at least as close as the naked eye can tell). Otherwise, I don't know why this film catches some flack. I mean, it wasn't spectacular, but it was entertaining from beginning to end. I think I liked that it didn't have a lot of old skool Western tropes, but instead it was that "Psychological Western," approach, where nobody was really a good guy, except for Lillian Gish's character. Peck was an ass hole, Jones was a whore, and Joseph Cotton (one of my fave actors of the era), tried to do good, but he had to step on his crappy family to get there. Word has it that Powell & Pressburger laughed at the ending. That's a little harsh.
La Cucaracha (1934) ~ I finally saw a great print for this. It was paired with the Glorifying the American Girl (1929) BD, I guess because there was Two-strip scenes in the latter (very dupey). What struck me about La Cucaracha was Ray Rennahan's photography and the use of colored lighting. By this time, Rennahan was the most seasoned Technicolor DP in the business. In the Two-strip days, they'd use these colored lights to overcome defencies in the two-color process. Not that it helped much. But here, Ray must have been a kid in a candy store, using greens, reds, purples, and yellows to highlight different emotions, for example red lights on the face is used to show rage in one section and love in another. Green lighting shows jealousy in our heroine's face. The leading man gets just a dash of purple, reflected off his hair, displaying his regal air. What an amazing little film. Very well done. I'd like to see the short, Service with a Smile (1934) in 1080p. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong, if it's available in 1080p, because I've only been able to watch a crap 480i version on YouTube.
I saw “Service with a Smile” recently on YouTube also and went looking for the source. It’s only on the WAC dvd set “Vitaphone Cavalcade of Musical Shorts” I got mine from Import CDs for $36.56. Discs 5 and 6 each have 6 3-strip Technicolor shorts. I’d love to have these on blu-ray too, but I’ll take what I can get. “Fiesta de Santa Barbara” is found on the WAC dvd set “Classic Musical Shorts from the Dream Factory.” Disc 3 (out of 4) has 6 3-strip Technicolor shorts, also including the beautiful “Starlit Days at the Lido.” I recommend checking this out also on YouTube - I think it’s cut up into segments but all there. If people here are interested I can post a list of all the Technicolor shorts titles from these two WAC dvd collections, that would be 18 titles in all.
TCM often airs travelogue shorts made decades ago and they usually look faded and dull. A couple of weeks ago, they ran one about Ireland made in the 30s and I was struck by the vibrant color and generally sharp picture quality. It looked like it had undergone some degree of restoration but I don't know it's source. Anyone see this or know details?
