Black and white movies in Blu-ray. Is this pointless?

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by Steelmaker

I was thinking about this today. Old b&w movies such as King Kong, Psycho, Citizen Kane, Frankenstein, Dracula, It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, etc. Would these movies really benefit all that much from blu ray in comparison to the dvd releases upscaled to 1080p? Out of my entire movie collection I'd say I have around 10 black and white movies and I'm just debating about whether I'll double dip on these when/if the high def versions are released.

There's Good Night and Good Luck. (Haven't seen the BD but watched it on cable).

[tron3]

Originally Posted by grainock

I understand the concern of the old stuff not looking as good. What is the process of transferring the old stuff? Do they find the original film strip and make a digital transfer from there? This is the same concern I have with TV shows that were not originally shot in HD. How can something that was shot at 720x480 (standard tv format) be upscaled into HD? I haven't seen "Rio Bravo" on Blu-ray yet. How does that look in comparison to the standard dvd?

Thanks,

Gibbs

Nothing shot in 720 x 480 is going to to be upscaled to any degree of accuracy. It is hit and miss, depends vastly on of the quality of the original. At best, you might have a very high bitrate at 480p on BD, which is not bad.

Anything shot on actual film benefits because physical film is said to have 4000 lines of resolution. That applies to old movies and some of the older tv shows.

In retrospect, video tape isn't the boon to television as we originally thought because lots of those classic moments are not captured in any form of high def media.

[Deciazulado]

Black and white gets the same increase of resolution from 480i to 1080p. So why would B/W films not benefit?

In case you're wondering b/w film emulsions tend to be sharper than color film, which is born as b/w film where color dye clouds form around at least three layers of silver and remain in place when the silver is bleached out.

[SS316SRV]

Raging Bull, Seven Samurai, Night of the Living Dead, Gone With the Wind, Dead Man all black and white. All of them need to be in my blu-ray library.

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by docjan_uk

Well.. the problem lies in if that master film reel has been lieing in some dank basement somewhere for the last 60 years and yadda yadda yadda... you get my point.

Normal chromogenic color dye images tend to fade a lot if not stored properly, silver doesn't in most normal circustances . (Altho there's physical deterioration of the support base and that can play a lot in this)

[alain turgeon]

Well i have jailhouse rock on bd and it looks great even tough it is black and white. I can't imagine that it would look this good on dvd.

[blukrank]

I would buy It's a Wonderful Life if it came out on Blu-Ray.But I think Paramount now owns the rights to It's A Wondeful Life-I think? The DVD copy I got is the THX one from Republic Pictures.
I also would like to have The Wizard of Oz on Blu-Ray.I'm sure Oz would look great in HD.

[DocNovak]

Black and White movies are actually at a higher definition then color movies when shot on film. When you are talking about film, as opposed to digital recordings, the image is not stored in pixels, but rather in crystals. The process that is used to develope the silver halide crystals into color film requires multiple layers and dyes (one for each color red, blue, and green) and results in a picture that is not as clear, although at the microscopic level. Now, that being said, the process for arranging the silver halide crystals has improved over the years so that film today uses a more uniform pattern of crystals and is thereby able to reduce some grain from the film. The older B&W film will also have artifacts from dust, and if not preserved right will be degraded from the breakdown of the film itself. However given optimal conditions, such as using current black and white film versus current color film to shoot the same scene, the black and white film will produce a clearer image then the color film. I am, however, a realist and know that this is not the case, and so a lot of it will depend on how much effort the studio decides to put into restoring the original film before transfering it into the digital realm.

[BigB88]

Originally Posted by SS316SRV

Raging Bull, Seven Samurai, Night of the Living Dead, Gone With the Wind, Dead Man all black and white. All of them need to be in my blu-ray library.

Gone with the Wind is Color and will look fantastic in Blu. But I'd like to see all the Gable, Bogart, Flynn, Lancaster, EG Robinson, Cagney, etc. in Blu as well, they will look and sound great.

[Kristin Simard]

Great B&W film?
Try King Lear (Kozintsev)
the films of Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, Godard, etc.
Saragossa Manuscript (weird and obscure, as I like it)
8 1/2
La Strada
Casablanca
Girl With the Golden Eyes

that's just off the top - the list goes on

DIGITAL RESTORATION ! Blu ray can bring out a lot of possibilities that were not possible before in video. Just you wait!

[thebluemax]

Originally Posted by SS316SRV

Raging Bull, Seven Samurai, Night of the Living Dead, Gone With the Wind, Dead Man all black and white. All of them need to be in my blu-ray library.

Nope, Gone With The Wind in glorious Color

[wisper9999]

Only Black & White & Red movie I want to see on Blu is Sin City. Now that movie would look awesome in Blu

[rushmore9]

Originally Posted by MacDaddyOJack

No, they aren't worth it..... You can't turn a turd into a Porsche if it is still a turd to begin with.....

Guys, i think he's joking.

[Kristin Simard]

Originally Posted by thebluemax

Nope, Gone With The Wind in glorious Color

LOL, I missed that one.

Actually GWTW was filmed in B&W. They just used three synchronized strips and filmed through 3 color filters. Then when projecting the strips through 3 color filters - you get full color. But all the original prints were all B&W.

Of course, this doesn't mean anything for Blu-ray, except that Blu will give it better color and resolution than video has ever done before.

[Marcusarilius]

There are so many movies out there that are B&W that I would love to have on BD. Classic Comedy teams, Universal Horror, 50s Sci-Fi and Horror, the Sherlock Holmes movies.... The list is practicaly endless. I would absolutely up-grade on any of these to BD if available. And yes, it would make a difference. Just because a movie is in color of any decade dosn't mean only color films take advantage of 1080p picture resolution.

[foots]

I'll take The Last Picture Show please.

[darinp2]

IMO, Casablanca on HD DVD in black-and-white was awesome. Hopefully Warner will bring that to Blu-ray. Granted, I didn't check out any DVD version for comparison, but I was impressed with it in high definition (especially given the age).

--Darin

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by Kristin Simard

LOL, I missed that one.

Actually GWTW was filmed in B&W. They just used three synchronized strips and filmed through 3 color filters. Then when projecting the strips through 3 color filters - you get full color. But all the original prints were all B&W.

Of course, this doesn't mean anything for Blu-ray, except that Blu will give it better color and resolution than video has ever done before.

Kristin, your post is half right half wrong, GWTW was shot in Technicolor which exposed b/w film to create a 3 strip B/W RGB record, and then color prints were made using the Technicolor IB Dye Transfer method (were color is overlaid on a film base using matrices made from the b/w records and YMC dyes "jumping" from them into the print's film base. (That's why it's called dye transfer). Many color films before the mid fifties were shot this way (including Disney's animated films, done with a single b/w strip sequential RGB exposure Technicolor camera)

If you search for Technicolor, there will be a couuple of web sites where they show you graphically how the process worked

[SNAP]

It is except my dumb A20 wouldnt allow me to zoom so I could get rid of the black bars on the side.

Originally Posted by darinp2

IMO, Casablanca on HD DVD in black-and-white was awesome. Hopefully Warner will bring that to Blu-ray. Granted, I didn't check out any DVD version for comparison, but I was impressed with it in high definition (especially given the age).

--Darin

[Joe Cain]

Originally Posted by darinp2

IMO, Casablanca on HD DVD in black-and-white was awesome. Hopefully Warner will bring that to Blu-ray. Granted, I didn't check out any DVD version for comparison, but I was impressed with it in high definition (especially given the age).

--Darin

pro-B posted Casablanca's Italian-release Blu box art in the "Foreign Cinema in BLU" thread. Here's hoping for many brilliant catalog releases from Warner in the next year...