I’m watching all these WW2 documentaries and they all have it in color now. How did they do this? I kind of understand exposure and film but that’s about it.
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It’s all done with computer after effects.
Many of the original pieces still exist; so we know the color of flags; uniforms; buildings. Civilian fashion is also known and we can make best guesses that in b&w; that particular grey would have been red if using colorized film
A lot of the time it’s as simple as the fact that we know certain items were certain colors. Army’s been using the same green paint for decades, we know what color that tank should be, what color that piece of gear was, we know the sky is blue, and we can guesstimate shades based on the shade of gray it appears in B&W.
Essentially, by coloring in every single frame of the original black-and-white film. Obviously we can infer what some colors are (the sky is blue, grass is green, etc.) but for lots of things it will just be educated guesses.
Early colorized films, like some of Georges Méliès’ works, were literally painted in by hand. Of course, nowadays we have computers and software and AI that can do some of the work for us, but that’s still what it comes down to.
There’s a 30 minute documentary about the colorization of footage and addition of audio for *They Shall Not Grow Old*, which explains the process. I’ll see if I can find it online.
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