Color

[Cenydd Ros]

Hi Roger. I wanted to get your view on something, if you have the time. If anyone would know, I think it would be you.

I have been watching (a good many times) some films shot by Conrad Smith (I meant HALL!). These include; The Professionals, Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, Hell In The Pacific, Cool Hand Luke, and Electra Glide In Blue. All of these films are fantastic, and largely due to Conrad's work. What really strikes me is the color. The color is so rich that it reminds me of paintings. These movies seem so much more vibrant than most movies today.

Is this because of the film stock used in 60 & 70's? Or is this just Conrad?

Is this simply a style issue, or is there a significant difference in what film can give in color as opposed to Digital or film that went through a DI process? Or is this more to do with older film stock as compared to newer film stock?

I know that the DVDs I watch (of old movies) have been digitally scanned, but aren't new movies filmed, scanned, put back on film, and then scanned again for DVD? Copy of a copy of a copy? What is lost there, in terms of color?

[Roger]

Conrad (Hall by the way! Not Smith) was using the same tools as any other cinematographer so the 'look' that he brought to his films was entirely down to him. Many more recent films use skip bleach processes and other photochemical and digital techniques which reduce colour saturation and blow out highlights by intention. The DI process can be used to desaturate an image but it can also be used to add saturation and can't be 'blamed' for the look of modern films. For the most part a film looks the way it does because that is the way the cinematographer intended it to look. Conrad Hall was just an exceptional cinematographer.

[Cenydd Ros]

I have know idea why I called him Smith. Wow. (maybe I was watching Butch & Sundance when I was typing - "Am I Smith or Jones" "Live" - that must be it.)

I don't know, Roger, I am really getting a strong sense of difference from movies on film and movies shot in HD. Maybe it's all in my mind - but still, I really feel I can tell. But I am no expert. Then again, I think that what I am really looking at has more to do with the use of light.

Conrad (Connie, for his friends, I guess) was amazing. That said, you are every bit as good as he was, and you have an even longer filmography of great films - and counting.
I am really looking forward to seeing what you and the C brothers do with True Grit. Not to be sycophantic - I actually do like your stuff above most others.

If you see Jeff, tell him that he is the last American hero - no one but he could fill the role of Rooster Cogburn. I mean that, too.

anyway

All the best
- Ros

[David Mullen ASC]

A lot of people comment on the color of old movies based on watching them on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is an electronic version of the movie that went through a digital color-correction process. Now ideally, a film print was used as a reference when grading the video transfer, but you can' t be sure of that so don't get too fixated on the home video color as being an accurate representation of how these movies looked when they were released (and back then, some prints may have been Eastmancolor and others Technicolor I.B., which would have an effect on saturation and contrast.) And even if you sought out these movies in revival houses, you then have the issue of either looking at an old color print of a (then) new negative, or a new print of a (now) old negative.

Nowadays, the only accurate idea of what these movies looked like forty, fifty years ago is a good Technicolor I.B. (dye transfer) print, assuming one was made and preserved well, simply because the dyes in those prints are very stable. But even there, you have to keep in mind that they were timed for projectors using carbon arc lamps, not modern xenon bulbs (which are slightly cooler... though both types are near daylight 5600K.)

I suggest reading the interviews with Conrad Hall in the book "Masters of Light", and also Maltin's book on cinematographers. He can be a bit contradictory, however, when it comes to color saturation. He said he didn't like intense saturation, especially in blue skies, which he felt often were mismatched from cut to cut, so he liked to overexpose the negative (sometimes heavily) to wash out the color a bit, and some of "Butch Cassidy" was shot with some sort of LowCon or Fogs to further soften the colors. However, he also mentions in other interviews that Deluxe Labs (which handled Fox movies at the time) printed down his overexposure and the results were somewhat richer colors... but I'm not sure he liked it that way or not. He often talked about trying to get away from the saturated contrasty Technicolor look of the 1950's and 60's, but compared to the muted style of many modern movies, some of those movies still look saturated by modern eyes.

But remember that video transfers are often goosed up in saturation to make old movies look more poppy and snappy on your TV set, partly to compensate for some fading in the film elements. But in terms of the technology of the day, which was mainly Eastmancolor negative and print stock, and also Technicolor I.B. prints, the negative stock of the day was not unusually saturated.

Another factor is that as film fades, the color layers fade at different rates. One effect is that old Eastmancolor prints go pink (magenta) as the yellow and blue dyes fade, but new prints of old negative often look blue-ish in the shadows and hair of the actors because they have to add blue to the new print to correct skintones and highlights that have shifted the other direction. So you get something of the effect of sunburned faces with blue-ish hair, blue-ish greys, etc. because the dye layers are imbalanced now due to selective fading. When it gets bad enough, they have to go back to any b&w separations that were made from the negative and work from those. Often the result from b&w seps being recombined is accurate color but more grain and contrast, so it's a toss-up sometimes compared to working with the faded color negative.

All this to say don't try to draw definitive conclusions as to how these old color movies originally looked by watching them on video.

[Cenydd Ros]

I guess what all this comes down to is, if I like the way Cool Hand Luke looks on DVD on my Mac, then I should think about how to achieve that type of color in the DI process or (if shot in HD) with color adjust software. All too deep for me, at my present level.

[koltron]

\you get something of the effect of sunburned faces with blue-ish hair, blue-ish greys, etc.

is this what happened with North x Northwest? I wondered why Cary Grant layed out so long with those ridiculous tanning bounces! Those are great points, David; and it's interesting to watch evolution happen literally 'before our eyes'. I wonder if, following Cenydd's thought, newer films coming out will harken back to what we imagine films looking from our childhoods memories and newly restored prints... Nostalgia actually is in Technicolor!

-k

[Roger]

Whilst it is true that the saturation and general image quality of some older films is affected by whichever way the films are transferred and viewed that is not the whole story. I remember watching 'Cool Hand Luke' and 'Butch Cassidy' etc. in the cinema and I would say that the colours of the original prints were quite clean and saturated. There was a difference with many of today's films, which was most probably a product of the emulsions and processing available at the time as well as a stylistic choice. Compare, for example, 'Butch Cassidy' with 'Road to Perdition' or to 'Tell Them Willie Boy Was Here'. The latter film was overexposed and pulled in development to reduce the saturation and create those bright bleached images and 'Road' certainly has none of the range of saturated colours that 'Butch Cassidy' has. Even 'Butch Cassidy' appears muted in comparison to 'The Professionals'.

[Cenydd Ros]

I think another big element about a lot of these old movies by Hall is that they were shot outside - in the sun. A good portion of Road was interior shooting (controlled studio lighting). Now, I am a complete and total novice, but exterior filming and interior filming seem to me to be two completely different animals.

Getting your exterior and interior shoots to jive - or rather, look and feel congruent (if that's the right word) seems to be something that happens in the lab, or in DI and/or color adjust.

Another film I love, and has great color (not by Hall, however) is Sorcerer (1977). I have been trying to get the New Beverly to run this. They say Paramount has a fantastic print. This is one I would really like to see a film version of, on the big screen.

[Roger]

Brilliant film! Hard not to compare it with the original but Friedkin's film is quite different from Clouzot's. I love them both. Principal photography was done by the late great Dick Bush.

[Cenydd Ros]

Still haven't figured out why he didn't call it Wages of Fear, but it is truly a special film. It is one I love to watch because of the photography. I've been trying to find out some info on the bringe sequence - wow, that was some amazing filmcraft. I have to say that equals Herzog dragging a very large boat over a mountain (Fitzcarraldo). Dick Bush - that is good info. Thanx for that. I couldn't figure it out, because there are two cinematographers named, plus some of it reminds me of Roizman's work, so I thought that might be due to Friedkin's influence. Now I know to look deeper into Dick Bush's work. I have seen a few of Bush's films, but not many.

[Roger]

The photography of Clouzot's original film by Armand Thirard has some of the most imaginative night lighting you will ever see.

[Cenydd Ros]

I have only seen the original (The Wages of Fear, 1953) a couple of times. B&W films are hard for me to figure. I like them, but they are a bit tricky in trying to analyze - in terms of photography. But then, so are the color ones. The '53 version does have some really great shadow casting.