I believe you meant to say that YouTube commentators are a special hell.
6 Likes
This was also the exact period of the Dreyfus Affair. If these YouTube dolts had any knowledge of the history going on in the background of that footage they’d probably be arguing in the comments that Dreyfus was guilty and calling for justice for Esterhazy.
7 Likes
I have to say, this is a hideous example of what colorization can do.
His face looks like a make-up tutorial gone wrong.
But the clothes are especially bad…(a brown, red, and navy blue suit?). Lincoln was significant enough that there’s no appeal to ignorance of what he actually wore either, since we still have examples of the actual clothes he wore in office.
Black broadcloth, not circus-tent-broadcloth.
Colorization can be okay, but this example only shows how misleading it can be when done badly.
5 Likes
Apparently, Kennedy killed the Hat.
@NashRambler I was going to comment that rather than having a “clapper loader” and a “focus puller”, film crews in those days need a “boy poker”; but, in the light of revelations about Kevin Spacey, that might be inappropriate.
@tekk There is a lovely black and white photo of my Grandad in a cool 1940s’ suit. One day he told us that the suit was purple and the shirt was lilac. 
3 Likes
Thanks! I vaguely remember that Asimov story, having read it decades ago. Nothing new under the sun…
3 Likes
the added sound- was that created? Or was it taken at the same time and places of the movies but just later on spliced together?
2 Likes
It was dubbed on using modern sources… much like every film every made… especially Hong Kong Kung-Fu flicks I’m sure that if the Lumiere Brothers had access to a Foley Editor they would have been ecstatic.
3 Likes
Including this one, which was the “office suit” he wore the day he was shot before changing into the black suit he wore at the theater. It was probably a more vibrant blue when it was new.
It could well be that the specific example I posted above was way off, but I think there’s also a bias toward colorizations that err toward the dark and desaturated because that’s how our brains have become accustomed to picturing the world during that time period.
6 Likes
That’s exactly what it is.
2 Likes
Well, I know for a fact that the UK, with some exceptions, was black & white up until the end of 1970.
The colourization went largely unnoticed at the time because National Colour timed it to coincide with Decimal Day.
8 Likes
We still have British Magenta Saving Time; that’s why the Winter months look so bleak.
14 Likes
If the colorizer is just some photoshop wizard, without any kind of historian involved, then they will always introduce a lot of silly fake history and inaccuracies that look okay on first glance.
They will make all the firetrucks red, all the taxis yellow, every copper roof green, every classical statue white…
If not treated with any care, it doesn’t add historical insight. They should do it right, or otherwise not fiddle with it.
(And nobody wants to get into another “blue dress debate” but that’s a photo of a dark black suit with a tourist’s cheap-camera color balance out of whack. If you look at the other photos from that set, you’ll see a lot of baby blue shadows that should be grey. This surviving office suit is, and was, black. You can check with the museum and the suit’s official picture, if that doesn’t sound right to you.)
(I’m extra sorry to pick on your examples.)
1 Like
If you ever read Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, this is where his idea for the fictional public transportation system of slidewalks came from, though in his version the centermost conveyor moved at high speeds and had covered seating. The idea was a mass transit system that never had to stop.
It also tangentially inspired Heinlein’s moving roadways as seen most predominantly in The Roads Must Roll.
ETA: @Ratel and @jmcgarry beat me to it. More golden age SF readers than I thought here. 
It’s interesting to me that this footage was closer to those early 20th century authors than we are to them.
6 Likes
We’ll be back there soon enough, come Brexit.
March 29th is the day the colours get turned off, again.
Foreign colourisers will need special visas to come here, but will be in high demand.
6 Likes
Well the Scottish Colourists will be stuck in here with us in Fortress Britannia, unless they get their kilts together and vote for independence. 
5 Likes
I vividly remember in 1967 or 68 (I was around 11) visiting family friends. While I was there they got a new TV (rented) that could - at last - receive BBC2 (launched in 1964 - not all sets could receive it). Setting it up, they twiddled to tune it in - looking for BBC2.
The BBC had recently been making a fuss about BBC2 being the first channel to broadcast in colour. When our friends found BBC2, I firmly declared ‘it can’t be BBC2 - it’s not in colour’. Of course, they’d rented a B&W TV set as colour ones were very expensive still.
So I think the UK was B&W until 1967, but some parts took a while to catch up.
4 Likes
My grandmother steadfastly refused to buy a color television, to the point where she had trouble finding repairmen who would service her old set. That was in the late '80s.
I was excited when we stayed with my grandmother, as we had no television at all, but imagine me as young boy trying to follow snooker tournaments by the varying shades of grey on the balls.
5 Likes
Ah, “Pot Black”.
David Atternborough has much to be praised for, not least making snooker a much more widely popular sport.
From Wikipedia:
The BBC began broadcasting in colour in 1967 and was looking for programmes that could exploit this new technology.[1][2] Broadcasting snooker, then still a minor sport, was the brainchild of the then controller of BBC Two, David Attenborough.[3] The first Pot Black was held in 1969 at the BBC Studios in Birmingham. The programme first aired on 23 July 1969, on BBC2.
4 Likes
