WEBVTT - How are old black and white movies colorized?

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff works dot com.

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<v Speaker 1>com slash brain Stuff Today for details. Hi, I'm Marshall

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<v Speaker 1>Brain with today's question. How do they color old black

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<v Speaker 1>and white movies? Most of the classic black and white

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<v Speaker 1>movies have been colorized, mainly so that they can be

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<v Speaker 1>shown on television and color. It turns out that the

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<v Speaker 1>process used to add the color is extremely tedious. Someone

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<v Speaker 1>has to work on the movie frame by frame, adding

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<v Speaker 1>the colors one at a time to each part of

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<v Speaker 1>an individual frame. To speed up the process, the coloring

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<v Speaker 1>is done on a computer using a digital version of

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<v Speaker 1>the movie. The film is scanned into the computer and

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<v Speaker 1>the coloring artists can view the movie one frame at

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<v Speaker 1>a time on the computer screen. The artist draws the

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<v Speaker 1>outline for each color area and the computer fills it

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<v Speaker 1>in the original black and white film holds all the

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<v Speaker 1>brightness information, so the artists can paint large areas with

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<v Speaker 1>a single color and let the original film handle the

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<v Speaker 1>brightness gradients. This means that the artist might only have

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<v Speaker 1>to add ten or so actual color areas to a

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<v Speaker 1>scene to speed up the process even more. Interpretation is

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<v Speaker 1>common from frame to frame. There's normally very little variation

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<v Speaker 1>in the position of objects and actors. Therefore, the artist

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<v Speaker 1>might manually color every tenth frame and let the computer

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<v Speaker 1>fill in the frames in between. Do you have any

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<v Speaker 1>me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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