In Hollywood’s attempt to capture a younger audience, some movie and television firms have decided to add a dazzling array of rainbow shades to classic black-and-white films. This will be made possible by a computer using an electronic palette of 50,000 colors and a set designer’s eye for detail.

Yet some viewers feel the addition of color to the films is not the greatest. “If they are made in black-and-white, they should stay,” senior Ann White said. “They can’t get the colors correct.”

“The colors are off,” sophomore Colin Schott said, referring to the mentioning of a blond woman in the movie Topper. But due to the addition of color, she had gray hair.

“The color doesn’t look right,” senior Natalie Bradford said. “The people’s eyes are really weird.”

Two computer companies have independently developed a film colorization process which will add colors to movies and television programs.

The colorization process is a highly advanced version of painting by numbers. Each movie can contain 125,000 frames, and each frame can contain up to 525,000 pixels or dots.

Once a single frame has been colored, the computer keeps a record of each object and it’s designated color as it advances from frame to frame until the scene changes. The conversion process can take hours for a minute of film.

Versions of Topper, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Miracle on 34th Street as well as many Laurel and Hardy films and early newsreel footage have already been colorized. Versions of The Twilight Zone, The Honeymooners and The Phil Silvers Show are hopefuls for colorization.

Turner Broadcasting Systems has also announced plans to add computer generated color to more than 100 films including Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.

According to an article published in Science and Technology, Charles Powell of Color Systems Technology in Los Angeles believes “a color broadcasting of Casablanca would be the television event of the year.”

But not everyone is happy with the process. Actor Jimmy Stewart, best known for his performance in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and a group of directors and cinematographers at the American Film Institute object to computer coloring of black-and-white movie classics. Stewart is mostly concerned about plans to add color to It’s a Wonderful Life, a 1946 film classic in which he had the starring role.

Stewart claimed there is only one way to view the movie, in black-and-white.

“It destroys the vintage quality of the movies,” junior Emily Chick said.

Meanwhile Powell and his associates at Systems Technology argue otherwise.

“The technique gives a realistic new dimension to movies,” Powell told Science and Technology. “Many young viewers today won’t look at a black-and-white film, even though they are some of the greatest movies made.”

Some film buffs would say that colorizing Citizen Kane or Treasure of Sierra Madre would destroy the artistic and emotional impact of the films.

“Some movies made in black-and-white would change if color were added to the movie,” sophomore Angela Ely said. “It ruins the original effect.”

Yet colorization proponents like Powell predict that adding color to some motion pictures will attract enormous audiences. Also, since one third of all films are in black-and-white, the market could prove to be a profitable venture.

The Science and Technology reported that Color Systems plans to market the technique in other ways too. A spin-off of the process may be used by Hughes Aircraft to design a flight simulator for training pilots. Also, the technique might be used with fiber optic probes in delicate surgical procedures.

This article was first published in The Shield on Oct. 31, 1986.